Kilo. Part 24

"Works fine," he said. "I tried a tomato canful on a bonfire in the back yard, and it put it out like a wink. That's a great book; I'm glad you spoke about it. I wish you'd told me about it sooner."

Miss Sally was not on the porch when Eliph' arrived, for she was still in the kitchen at the supper dishes, but Mrs. Smith and Susan were there, and they greeted him eagerly. The little man smiled as he walked up to them, and waved his hand in the air.

"You fixed it?" cried Mrs. Smith. "It is all right now?"

"Fixed from A to Z," said Eliph', as he took a seat on the porch step.

"All right from the allegorical frontispiece in three colors to the back page. Jarby's wins, and error don't. Miss Sally in?"

He heard the click of the dishes as Miss Sally laid them one by one on the kitchen table, so he knew well she was in.

"It might relieve her mind if I told her," he suggested, and Mrs. Smith smiled and said it might.

"Go right in," she said, and Eliph' did.

He went into the hall and coughed gently behind his hand, and Miss Sally looked up. She wiped her hands hastily on her blue gingham ap.r.o.n, and came into the hall.

"Jarby's fixed it," he said, and rapidly related what he had done, with ill.u.s.trations in the way of quotations from the t.i.tles and sub-t.i.tles of Jarby's. "When you have a moment to spare," he added, "I would like to speak to you. I want to tell you something about Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art, a copy of which I see lying on your parlor table, forming an adornment to the home both useful and helpful."

"Well, I don't want no books," said Miss Sally, "I've got one copy, and that ought to be enough to adorn any home. And I've got to get these dishes washed sometime. I've let the fire go out, and the water will be cold. If there's anything important you want to say about that book, you can go out and wait till I get the dishes done."

"It's about how to get the best use out of it," said Eliph'. "I'll go out and wait. It's something everybody that has a copy ought to know."

He went out as she said, and found Susan alone on the porch. Mrs.

Smith was at the gate, and he could see her white dress in the evening darkness. Susan sat with a knitted shawl about her shoulders, for the evening were already growing chill, so long had Eliph's courts.h.i.+p lengthened out. He could not have had a better opportunity to speak to Susan alone, and he warned her of the "piece" T. J. had threatened to publish in the morning, and of the disgrace and sorrow it would bring to Miss Sally. The girl listened eagerly and her indignation grew as he went on, so that he had to veer, and expatiate on the virtues of T. J.

and the right of the modern press to meddle in private affairs when it wants to.

"And can't anything be done?" asked Susan. "Why don't somebody do something? I didn't think Thomas was like that."

"He isn't," admitted Eliph' heartily. "But he needs coaxing. If you were to coax him he might see how wrong he is. I shouldn't wonder if he would come up here to-night, looking for me, being interested in Jarby's Encyclopedia and anxious to get a copy at the reduced price of two dollars off, offered to the press only. If he does, try to move him."

"I will," said Susan. "And if he publishes that piece, I'll never speak to him again."

Eliph' was still sitting there when T. J. came, and when Susan proposed a walk down to the corner he knew that it would be all right with T. J.

Jones. A light coming suddenly over his shoulder from the parlor behind him told him that Miss Sally was ready to receive him, and he took his hat and went into the house.

Miss Sally was sitting in the rocker with the cross-st.i.tch cover, and Eliph' took a seat at the opposite side of the center-table and lifted the morocco bound copy of Jarby's from its place beside the sh.e.l.l box.

The kerosene lamp glowed between them, and he drew closer to the table and laid the book gently on his knees. Miss Sally sat straight upright in her chair and looked at the little book agent.

"This book," he said, looking up at her with eyes in which kindness and business mingled, "although sold, in this handsome binding, for seven fifty, is worth, to one who understands it, its weight in gold. It holds a help for every hour and a hint for every minute of the day.

It furnishes wisdom for a lifetime. I read it and study it; for every difficulty of my life it furnishes a solution. Corns? It tells how to cure them. Food? It tells how to cook it. Love? It tells how to make it.

But," he said, laying his hand affectionately on the morocco cover, "to be understood it must be read. To read it well is to admire and cherish it, and yet, only this morning I was about to tear my copy of this priceless volume to pieces and scatter it to the four winds of heaven."

He paused to let this awful fact sink into Miss Sally's mind.

"Yes," he continued, "I was about to turn away from the best friend I have in the world and declare to one and all that Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art was a fraud!

When I left your home yesterday, I was full of anger. I was mad at Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art. I had trusted to its words and directions, as set forth in, Courts.h.i.+p--How to Make Love--How to Win the Affections--How to Hold Them When Won, and you sent me away. I went away a different man than I had come, and resolved to go away from Kilo, and never to sell another copy of this book. I resolved to take the sale of 'Hicks' Facts for the Million,' a book, although greater in cost, containing by actual count sixteen thousand less words than this.

"I went to my room at Doc Weaver's," he continued, "and seized my copy of this work from where it lay on my bureau. I called it names. I told it it was a cheat and a liar. Yes, Miss Sally, I let my angry pa.s.sions rise against this poor, innocent book. I believed it had advised me falsely. I had trusted to its words and had done as it said to do, and you had sent me away, not in anger, but in sorrow, but just as much away. I picked up the book and opened it, grasping it in two hands to tear it asunder."

He opened the book and showed her how he had grasped it.

"I pulled it to tear it in two," he said, raising the book and pulling it in the direction of asunder, "but it would not rip. It was bound too well, the copies bound in cloth at five dollars, one dollar down and one dollar a month until paid, being bound as firmly as the more expensive copies at seven fifty. I pulled harder and the book came level with my nose. I saw it had opened at 'Courts.h.i.+p--How to Make Love,' and I said, 'While I am getting my breath to give this book another pull, why not read the lie that is written here once more? It will give me strength to rend it asunder.' So I read it."

He looked at Miss Sally and saw that she was showing no signs of being bored.

"I held the book like this," he said, showing how he held it, "and read.

All that it said to do I had done and my anger grew stronger. But I turned the page! I saw the words I had not seen before; words that told me I had tried to tear my best friend to pieces. I sand into a chair trembling like a leaf. I felt like a man jerked back from the edges of Niagara Falls, a full description and picture of that wonder of nature being given in this book among other natural masterpieces. I weakly lifted the book back again and read those golden words."

"What was it?" asked Miss Sally, leaning forward.

"'Courts.h.i.+p--How to Make Love--How to Win the Affections--How to Hold Them When Won.'" said Eliph', turning to the proper page. "And the words I read were these: 'The lover should not be utterly cast down if he be refused upon first appealing for the dear one's hand. A first refusal often means little or nothing. A lady frequently uses this means to test the reality of the pa.s.sion the lover has professed, and in such a case a refusal is often a most hopeful sign. Unless the refusal has been accompanied by very evident signs of dislike, the lover should try again. If at the third trial the fair one still denies his suit, he had better seek elsewhere for happiness, but until the third test he should not be discouraged. The first refusal may be but the proof of a finer mind than common in the lady.'"

Eliph' removed his spectacles and laid them carefully in the pages of the book which he closed and placed gently on the center-table.

"Having read that," he said, "I saw that I had done this work a wrong. I had read it hastily and had missed the most important words. I felt the joy of life returning to me. I remembered that you were a lady of finer mind than common, and I understood why you had refused me. I resolved to stay in Kilo and justify Jarby's Encyclopedia of Knowledge and Compendium of Literature, Science and Art by giving it another trial.

And now," he said, placing his hand on the book where it lay on the table and leaning forward to gaze more closely into Miss Sally's face, while she faced him with a quickened pulse, and a blush, "now, I want to ask you again, WILL you put your name down for a copy of this work----"

He stopped appalled at what he had said, and stared at Miss Sally for one moment foolishly, while over her face spread not a frown of anger or contempt, but a pleasant smile of friendly amus.e.m.e.nt.

"Not the book," he said, "but me."

Miss Sally looked at the eager eyes that were not only serious, but sincere and kind.

"Well, Mister Hewlitt," she said, "I guess I'll have to marry someone some time so I might as well marry you as anybody. But I don't think pa will ever give consent to havin' a book agent in the family. He hates book agents worse than I used to."

"You don't any more," said Eliph', putting his hand very far across the table.

"Well, no, I don't," said Miss Sally graciously, "not all of 'em."

CHAPTER XIX. Pap Briggs' Hen Food

The doubt that Miss Sally had expressed regarding Pap Briggs' acceptance of Eliph' Hewlitt as a son-in-law was mild compared with the fact. When the old man returned the next day from his farm at Clarence and learned from Miss Sally that she had promised to marry the book agent he was furiously angry. For two whole days he refused to wear his store teeth at all, and when he recovered from his first height of anger it was to settle down into a hard and fast negative. He went about town telling anyone that would listen to him that there ought to be licenses against book agents, and once having made up his mind that Miss Sally should not marry Eliph' as long as he remained alive to prevent it, not even the friendly approaches of the book agent could move him from his stubborn resolution. Miss Sally would not think of marrying while her father was in such a state of opposition, and indeed, Eliph' did not urge it. He had no desire to defy his father-in-law, and he unwillingly but kindly agreed to wait.

In this way the autumn faded into winter. Mrs. Tarbro-Smith returned to New York with a note-book full of dialect and a head full of local color and types, and if she took Susan with her it was only because she agreed to bring her back in June, when T. J. Jones was to marry her. Miss Sally lived on with her father, attending to his wants, which were few and simple. An egg for breakfast, and enough tobacco to burn all day were his chief earthly desires, eggs because he could eat them in comfort, and tobacco because he liked it.

When Miss Sally had moved to town there was one thing she had said her father SHOULDN'T do, after living all his life on a farm, and that was, have store eggs for his breakfast.

"Hens is trouble enough, Lord knows," said Miss Sally, "an' dirty, if they can't be kep' in their place; but there's some comfort in their cluckin' round, and I guess I'll have plenty of time, and to spare to tend to 'em; so, Pap, you won't have to eat no stale eggs for breakfast, if I kin help it. They ain't nothing' I hate to think on like boughten eggs. n.o.body knows how old they are, nor who's been a-handlin' them; and eat boughten eggs you shan't do, sure's my name's Briggs!"

So Sally brought half a dozen hens and a gallant rooster to town with her, and supervised the erection of a cozy coop and hen-yard, and Pap had the comfort of knowing his eggs were fresh. But fresh or not, it made no difference to him so long as he had one each morning, and it was fairly edible.

"These teeth o' mine," he told Billings, the grocer, "cost twelve dollars down to Franklin, by the best dentist there; but, law sakes!

A feller can't eat hard stuff with any comfort with 'em for fear of breakin' 'em every minute. They ain' nothin' but chiney, an' you know how chiney's the breakiest thing man ever made. That's why I say, 'Give me eggs for breakfast, Sally,'--and eggs I will have."

The six hens did their duty n.o.bly during the summer and autumn and a part of the winter, and Pap had his egg unfailingly; but in December the long cold spell came, and the six hens struck. It was the longest and coldest spell ever known in Kilo, and it hung on and hung on until the entire hen population of Eastern Iowa became disgusted and went on a strike. Eggs went up in price until even packed eggs of the previous summer sold for twenty-seven and thirty cents a dozen, and angel-cake became an impossible dainty.