“That sounds reasonable,” said Mr. Mason, and he almost smiled.  “What do you say, Emma, think we better buy a book or two?  You know those ’Funeral Orations.’...”  “Well,” said Emma, “you know we’ve always said we ought to read one of Andrew McGill’s books but we didn’t rightly know how to get hold of one.  That fellow that sold us the funeral speeches didn’t seem to know about ’em.  I tell you what, you folks better stop and have dinner with us and you can tell us what we’d ought to buy.  I’m just ready to put the potatoes on the stove now.”

I must confess that the prospect of sitting down to a meal I hadn’t cooked myself appealed to me strongly; and I was keen to see what kind of grub Mrs. Mason provided for her house-hold; but I was afraid that if we dallied there too long Andrew would be after us.  I was about to say that we would have to be getting on, and couldn’t stay; but apparently the zest of expounding his philosophy to new listeners was too much for Mifflin.  I heard him saying: 

“That’s mighty kind of you, Mrs. Mason, and we’d like very much to stay.  Perhaps I can put Peg up in your barn for a while.  Then we can tell you all about our books.”  And to my amazement I found myself chiming in with assent.

Mifflin certainly surpassed himself at dinner.  The fact that Mrs. Mason’s hot biscuits tasted of saleratus gave me far less satisfaction than it otherwise would, because I was absorbed in listening to the little vagabond’s talk.  Mr. Mason came to the table grumbling something about his telephone being out of order—­(I wondered whether he had been trying to get Andrew on the wire; he was a little afraid that I was being run away with, I think)—­but he was soon won over by the current of the little man’s cheery wit.  Nothing daunted Mifflin.  He talked to the old grandmother about quilts; offered to cut off a strip of his necktie for her new patchwork; and told all about the illustrated book on quilts that he had in the van.  He discussed cookery and the Bible with Mrs. Mason; and she being a leading light in the Greenbriar Sunday School, was pleasantly scandalized by his account of the best detective stories in the Old Testament.  With Mr. Mason he was all scientific farming, chemical manures, macadam roads, and crop rotation; and to little Billy (who sat next him) he told extraordinary yarns about Daniel Boone, Davy Crockett, Kit Carson, Buffalo Bill, and what not.  Honestly I was amazed at the little man.  He was as genial as a cricket on the hearth, and yet every now and then his earnestness would break through.  I don’t wonder he was a success at selling books.  That man could sell clothes pins or Paris garters, I guess, and make them seem romantic.

“You know, Mr. Mason,” he said, “you certainly owe it to these youngsters of yours to put a few really good books into their hands.  City kids have the libraries to go to, but in the country there’s only old Doc Hostetter’s Almanac and the letters written by ladies with backache telling how Peruna did for them.  Give this boy and girl of yours a few good books and you’re starting them on the double-track, block-signal line to happiness.  Now there’s ’Little Women’—­that girl of yours can learn more about real girlhood and fine womanhood out of that book than from a year’s paper dolls in the attic.”