“I wonder if I can get some advice from you,” he began, and received an acquiescence of willingness that made his heart bound.  “You remember the other time I was here I said I couldn’t talk about books an’ things because I didn’t know how?  Well, I’ve ben doin’ a lot of thinkin’ ever since.  I’ve ben to the library a whole lot, but most of the books I’ve tackled have ben over my head.  Mebbe I’d better begin at the beginnin’.  I ain’t never had no advantages.  I’ve worked pretty hard ever since I was a kid, an’ since I’ve ben to the library, lookin’ with new eyes at books—­an’ lookin’ at new books, too—­I’ve just about concluded that I ain’t ben reading the right kind.  You know the books you find in cattle-camps an’ fo’c’s’ls ain’t the same you’ve got in this house, for instance.  Well, that’s the sort of readin’ matter I’ve ben accustomed to.  And yet—­an’ I ain’t just makin’ a brag of it—­I’ve ben different from the people I’ve herded with.  Not that I’m any better than the sailors an’ cow-punchers I travelled with,—­I was cow-punchin’ for a short time, you know,—­but I always liked books, read everything I could lay hands on, an’—­well, I guess I think differently from most of ’em.

“Now, to come to what I’m drivin’ at.  I was never inside a house like this.  When I come a week ago, an’ saw all this, an’ you, an’ your mother, an’ brothers, an’ everything—­well, I liked it.  I’d heard about such things an’ read about such things in some of the books, an’ when I looked around at your house, why, the books come true.  But the thing I’m after is I liked it.  I wanted it.  I want it now.  I want to breathe air like you get in this house—­air that is filled with books, and pictures, and beautiful things, where people talk in low voices an’ are clean, an’ their thoughts are clean.  The air I always breathed was mixed up with grub an’ house-rent an’ scrappin’ an booze an’ that’s all they talked about, too.  Why, when you was crossin’ the room to kiss your mother, I thought it was the most beautiful thing I ever seen.  I’ve seen a whole lot of life, an’ somehow I’ve seen a whole lot more of it than most of them that was with me.  I like to see, an’ I want to see more, an’ I want to see it different.

“But I ain’t got to the point yet.  Here it is.  I want to make my way to the kind of life you have in this house.  There’s more in life than booze, an’ hard work, an’ knockin’ about.  Now, how am I goin’ to get it?  Where do I take hold an’ begin?  I’m willin’ to work my passage, you know, an’ I can make most men sick when it comes to hard work.  Once I get started, I’ll work night an’ day.  Mebbe you think it’s funny, me askin’ you about all this.  I know you’re the last person in the world I ought to ask, but I don’t know anybody else I could ask—­unless it’s Arthur.  Mebbe I ought to ask him.  If I was—­”