Page:The Cow Jerry (1925).pdf/38

 travellin' book agent I thought you might be a teacher workin' through vacation. How did you come to take up sellin' books?"

"I guess I was talked into it. I bought the western half of Kansas for a hundred dollars."

"You paid too much, even if you got a deed," said Banjo, feelingly.

"I believe you," the lady agent agreed, leaning over in her attentive way to look at him fairly as she spoke.

"Just for the right to sell them books out here?" Mrs. Cowgill asked.

"That's the scheme. I paid another hundred dollars for a hundred books, put them in my trunk and started out."

"Where from, honey?"

Banjo was pleased to see Mrs. Cowgill softening more and more. How that girl could go tramping around Kansas with books to sell, or anything to sell, and not run out of stock in a week, was a mystery to him.

"I started from Kansas City."

"What was you doin' there before you bought in on that fool book?"

"I suppose I might as well tell you," said the girl, turning frankly to Mrs. Cowgill. "A person can't be a mystery in a little town, especially when she's got to find a job. I wasn't doing anything before dad went broke in the real estate boom. Then I sold some of my rings and ear-bobs and trinkets to raise the