Page:Abroad with Mark Twain and Eugene Field.djvu/139

 patted myself on the back, and said: 'Mark, old boy, they do love you, all of them.' Really, I felt tickled all over, and I don't know how many thousands of words at fifty cents 'per' that kid wheedled out of me by way of answers to her questions and by way of compliments. She was a princess kid, I tell you. When we arrived at No. 27, I insisted upon taking her back to her home and there formally saying good-by to her. Indeed I would have liked to kiss that little lady, but as her mother was at the window I didn't dare. And that kid kept on talking. If her words had been buns, single handed she could have beaten Fleischman with all his hundreds of bakers. But what puzzled me was that she was forever talking about selling tickets and how nice it must be to take so much cash for tickets. I thought, of course, she was referring to tickets at church festivals and, to increase my credit with her, I said that I bought lots of them and that people took chances on my books and sometimes I took chances myself and got burdened with some to cart home."

"'Oh, you write books, too?' she said.

"'Oh, yes,' I said. 'I am a sort of bookworm, and here is your home and now you must go in, for it is getting late and the bats and the bogies are coming. Good-night, little lady, and sleep well, and when you are a big girl and have a husband and a house and a motor car, then you can tell your friends that once you walked with Mark Twain" 135