Here's a strange thing, I thought. I suppose he's one of those mechanical readers who go through a book as a kind of dutiful pastime and never even notice the author's name.
"But you read a lot?" I suggested.
"Me? Good gracious, no," he said. "I don't read a book from one year's end to the other. Papers—oh, yes; but not books."
I was staggered.
"But I thought," I said, "that I heard you say a little while ago that you never bought fewer than three two-shilling books a week, and sometimes more?"
His purple took on a darker richer shade, which I subsequently discovered indicated the approach of mirth. He began to make strange noises, which in time I found meant laughter.
For a while he gave himself up to chromatic rumblings. At last, able to speak, he replied to me. "So I did say," he said; "so I did say I bought three two-shilling books a week. But not books to read"—here he became momentarily inarticulate again—"not books to read, but those little two-shilling books of stamps in red covers that you get at the post-office. I don't know where I should be without them."
Shade of Carnegie!
