“A curious place for a book store, this Maxwell Street,” Dan Baker mused.
“I don’t do so badly,” Kay King smiled. “The poor wish to read. And here for a nickel, a dime, a quarter, I sell them a lamp to their feet, a light to their pathway.”
“Truly a missionary enterprise in a city wilderness,” the gentle old man murmured.
As for Petite Jeanne, her eyes had roamed up and down the dusty rows of books and had come to rest at last upon a badly hung pair of portieres at the back of the room.
“That,” she told herself, “is where he sleeps when the day is done, a dark and dingy hole.
“And yet,” she mused, “who can help admiring him? Here in his dingy little world he is master of his own destiny. While others who sell books march down each morning to punch a clock and remain bowing and scraping, saying ‘Yes mam’ this and ‘Yes mam’ that to females who think themselves superior beings, he moves happily among his own books selling when and as he chooses.”
Her reflections were broken off by a word from Kay King himself.
“There’s a story in every one.” He nodded toward the row of trunks and bags they had come to inspect.
“Little does one dream as he packs his trunk for a journey that he may never see that trunk again. Sad as it may seem, this is often the case.
“So, all unconscious of curious prying eyes, we tuck the very stories of our lives away in our trunks and watch them go speeding away in a motor van.”