“Thank you; now watch me make a noise like an innocent cooing dove.  The idea is just this, Miss Gorham:  the Home Travellers’ Volumes not only enable you to see and to enjoy the familiar sights and scenes which the average tourist meets, but hundreds—­nay, thousands—­of curious and wonderful customs and things which the average tourist never gets the chance to see.  The real illusion of travel is spread about you, the thousands of photographic reproductions carry you along comfortably and irresistibly, and the whole wide world is at your feet.  It is absolutely essential that you should know something beyond the narrow confines of the city or town in which you live.  Successful people acknowledge this to be a fact—­and who wouldn’t be a successful people?  Would it not be pleasant, my dear Miss Gorham—­surely by this time I may say ’my dear Miss Gorham’—­to be able to talk with confidence and almost human intelligence about the curious manners, customs, and costumes of foreign lands?  Why, of course it would—­and how else can you obtain this ability in so inexpensive, easy, and agreeable a way as by subscribing for a set of the Home Travellers’ Volumes?”

Mrs. Gorham and Alice greeted this climax with applause, but Allen sternly checked them with upraised hand.

“No flowers, please, until after the contract is signed.  I have already learned, during my brief career as an agent, that no widows or orphan children are fed or clothed by the empty, though well-meant, plaudits of an enthusiastic populace.  And now, my dear Miss Gorham—­for you are still very dear to me—­this is the beautiful full Persian Levant binding, hand-tooled in French gold, which I am permitted to offer you at three times what it is worth.  If you have more money than I think you have, we will bind up a set specially for you for just that amount.  If, on the other hand, your financial resources have been overestimated here is another binding at half the price which is exactly as good, but which is prepared for just such an emergency.  I leave it entirely to you to say which of the three it shall be.  Could any proposition be fairer or more generous?”

“But suppose—­” Alice began.

“I beg your pardon,” Allen stopped her; “the patient in the operating-chair is not allowed to suppose.  Here is a little piece of paper and an easy-flowing fountain-pen.  This is where you place your name and address for the delivery of the volumes.”

“But that is a contract blank, Allen,” remarked Mrs. Gorham.

“I know it is, but you have no right even to think such a thing.  Alice mustn’t sign it right off or it won’t be any practice.  What do the directions say?”

Mrs. Gorham turned again to the paper in her hand. “’If the prospective customer should hesitate, withdraw the order form for a moment and proceed.’”

“Please go on—­that’s as far as I’ve learned.”