"Thanks, lady," he said, "but I bought a mort o' books last year an'
I don't believe I'll ever read 'em this side Jordan. A whole set o'
'Funereal Orations' what an agent left on me at a dollar a month. I
could qualify as earnest mourner at any death-bed merrymakin' now, I
reckon."

"You need some books to teach you how to live, not how to die," I
said. "How about your wife--wouldn't she enjoy a good book? How
about some fairy tales for the children?"

"Bless me," he said, "I ain't got a wife. I never was a daring man,
and I guess I'll confine my melancholy pleasures to them funereal
orators for some time yet."

"Well, now, hold on a minute!" I exclaimed. "I've got just the thing
for you." I had been looking over the shelves with some care, and
remembered seeing a copy of "Reveries of a Bachelor." I clambered
down, raised the flap of the van (it gave me quite a thrill to do it
myself for the first time), and hunted out the book. I looked inside
the cover and saw the letters _n m_ in Mifflin's neat hand.

"Here you are," I said. "I'll sell you that for thirty cents."

"Thank you kindly, ma'am," he said courteously. "But honestly I
wouldn't know what to do with it. I am working through a government
report on scabworm and fungus, and I sandwich in a little of them
funereal speeches with it, and honestly that's about all the readin'
I figure on. That an' the Port Vigor Clarion."

I saw that he really meant it, so I climbed back on the seat. I