"ALONG about now," said Caleb to Philip and Grace one morning in midspring, "is the easiest time o' year that a merchant ever gets in these parts; for, between the earliest ploughin' for spring wheat to the latest ploughin' for corn, the farmers that 'mount to anythin' are too busy to come to town when the weather's good; when the rain gives 'em a day off from work, they've got sense enough to take a rest as well as to give one to the hosses. I thought I'd mention the matter, in case you'd had anythin' on your mind to be done, an' hadn't found time to do it."

"H'm!" said Philip, rubbing his forehead, as if to extract some special mental memoranda.

"Thank you, Caleb, for the suggestion," Grace said, "but I believe every foot of our garden ground is fully planted."

"Yes, so I've noticed. Twill be a big advertisement, too, if the things turn out as good as the pictur's an' readin' matter in the plant catalogues you got; for there ain't many things in them boxes of plants you bought that was ever seen or heerd of in these parts. How'd you come to know so much about such things?"

"Oh, I kept window-gardens in the city all summer, and indoor gardens in winter."

"I want to know! What give you that idee?"

"The beauty of flowers, I suppose—and their cheapness," Grace replied. "Besides, flowers in the winter were a good test of the air in our rooms, for air that kills plants is not likely to be good enough for human beings."

"Je—ru—salem! I must tell that to Doc Taggess, so that word about it can get to some of our country folks. Some of them keep their houses so tight shut in winter that the folks come out powerful peaked in the spring, just when they need all the stren'th they can get. But ain't you got nothin' else on your mind to do, besides exercisin' your hoss once in a while?"

As he asked the question his eyes strayed from Grace to Philip, and an amused expression came over the little man's face, so that Grace asked:—

"What is so funny in Philip's appearance?"

"Nothin'," said Caleb, quickly pretending to arrange the goods on a shelf.

"Don't say 'Nothing' in that tantalizing way, when your every feature is saying that there is something."

"Out with it, Caleb," said Philip. "I promise that I shan't feel offended."

"Well, the fact is, I was thinkin' o' somethin' I overheard you tell your uncle, first time you came here. He asked you what you was goin' to the city for. 'To continue my studies,' says you. 'What studies?' says he. 'Literature an' art,' says you. Then Jethro come pretty nigh to bustin' hisself. After you was gone he borried some cyclopeedy volumes from Doc Taggess, an' in odd moments he opened 'em at long pieces that was headed 'Literature' an' 'Art.' I watched him pretty close, to know when he was through, so I could pump him about 'em, for his sake as well as mine; for I've most generally found that a man ain't sure of what he knows till he has to tell it to somebody else. But Jethro would most generally drop asleep 'long about the second or third page, an' one day he slapped one of the books shut an' hollered, 'Dog-goned nonsense!' Like enough he was wrong about it, though, for afterwards I dipped into the same pieces myself, a little bit at a time, and 'peared to me there was a mighty lot of pleasant things in the subjects, if one could spend his whole life huntin' for 'em."

"You're quite right as to the general fact," said Philip, "and also as to the time that may be given to it."

"Am, eh? Glad I sized it up so straight. Well, then, I reckon you didn't finish the job in the city, an' that you're still peggin' away at it."

Philip looked at Grace, and both laughed as he replied:—

"I don't believe I've opened any book but the Bible in the past month."

"I want to know! Then the hundreds of books in your house are about like money that's locked up in the safe instead o' bein' out at interest, or turnin' itself over in some other way, ain't they?"

"Quite so."

Caleb went into a brown study, and Philip and Grace chatted apart, and laughed—occasionally sighed—over what they had intended to buy and read, when they found themselves well off. Suddenly Caleb emerged from his brown study and said:—

"Ain't them books like a lot of clothes or food that's locked up, doin' no good to their owner, while other folks, round about, are hungry, or shiverin'?"

"Caleb," said Philip, after a long frown in which his wife did not join, although distinctly invited, "my practised eye discerns that you think our books, which are about as precious to us as so many children might be, ought to be lent out, to whoever would read them."

"Well, why not? Ev'rybody else in these parts that's got books lends 'em. Doc Taggess does it, the minister does it, an' a lot of others. The trouble is that a good many families has got the same books. Once in a while some book agent with head-piece enough to take his pay in truck has gone through this county like a cyclone—an' left about as much trash behind him as a cyclone usually does."

"Aha! And yet you'd have me believe that the people who have bought such trash would enjoy the books which my wife and I have been selecting with great care for years?"

"Can't tell till you give 'em the chance, as the darkey said when he was asked how many watermelons his family could tuck away. I don't s'pose you knowed there was the makin' of a first-class country merchant in you, did you, till you got the chance to try? Besides, as I reckon I've said before, you mustn't judge our people by their clothes. I don't b'lieve they average more fools to the thousan' than city folks."

"Neither do I, Caleb; but tastes differ, even among the wisest, and to risk my darling books among a lot of people who might think me a fool for my pains—oh, 'tis not to be thought of. Next, I suppose, you'll suggest that I take my pictures from the walls and lend them around, say a week to a family."

"No; I wouldn't be so mean as that. Besides, pictures, an' bang-up ones, are plentifuller than books in these parts, for people that like that sort o' thing."

"Indeed? I wouldn't have thought it. Well, 'Live and learn.' Do tell me what kind of pictures you refer to, and who has them?"

Caleb looked embarrassed for a moment; then he assumed an air of bravado, and replied:—

"Well, I haven't missed a sunrise or sunset in nigh onto twenty year, unless I was too busy or too sick to see 'em. An' I've put lots o' other folks up to lookin' at 'em, an' you'd be astonished to know how many has stuck to it."

"Bravo, Caleb! Bravo!" Grace exclaimed.

"Much obliged; reckon you enjoy 'em, too. As Doc Taggess says, when you look at that kind o' pictur', you don't have to hold in until you can hunt up a book an' find out if the painter was first-class. But there's plenty more pictur's in the sky an' lots o' other places out doors, for folks that like 'em. To be sure, you can't always find 'em, as if they was in frames on a wall, but they show up often enough to keep 'emselves in mind. But books—well, books are different."

"Caleb, I weaken. I'm willing to compromise. I promise you that I will set apart a certain number of my books—volumes that ought to be of general interest—to be loaned to customers!"

"Good! I knowed you'd see your duty if 'twas dumped right before your face. But what's the matter with doin' somethin' more? I've had a project for a long time, that—"

Caleb suddenly ceased speaking and looked hurt, for he detected a peculiar interchange of glances between Philip and Grace.

"Go on," said Philip.

"Never mind," Caleb replied.

"Please go on, Caleb," Grace begged.

"I may be a fool," said Caleb, "but it does gall me to be laughed at ahead of time."

"Really, Caleb, we weren't laughing at you. Both of us chanced to think, at the same time, of something—something that we had read. Some husbands and wives have a way of both getting the same thought at an unforeseen instant. Do go on; haven't we proved to you that we think your projects good?"

"Sorry I made a baby of myself," apologized Caleb. "Well, I've read in newspapers that books never was so cheap as they are now, an' from some of the offers that come to us by letter I should say 'twas so. I know more'n a little about the names o' books an' o' their writers, an' some of the prices o' good ones look as if the printers stole their paper an' didn't pay their help. Now, we don't make much use o' the back room o' the store. S'pose you fetch in there your cyclopeedy, an' dictionary, an' big atlas, to be looked at by anybody that likes. Then buy, in the city, a couple of hundred books,—say a hundred dollars' worth,—not too wise, an' not too silly, an' let it be knowed that at Somerton's store there's a free circulating library."

"For Somerton's customers only," added Philip.

"No, for ev'rybody—not only for the sake o' the principle, but to draw trade. The first man that does that thing in this town won't ever be forgot by folks whose hearts are in the right place—not unless I'm all wrong on human nature."

"Which is as unlikely as the wildest thing ever dreamed," said Philip. "I don't doubt that you're entirely right about the advertising value of your project. My atlas, dictionary, and cyclopedia will serve me quite as well in the back room as if in the house, and the cost of the other books will be repaid by the first new farmer-customer we catch by means of the library."

"Then the thing is to be a go?"

"Certainly it is."

"When?"

"Now—at once—as soon as my books can be brought from the house and the others bought in the city."

"And I," Grace added, "am to be a librarian, and to select the new books. I remember well the names of all the most popular books in the public library of the little town I was born in, and all the best—never mind the worst—that my fellow-shopgirls used to read, and I know the second-hand bookshops in New York, where many good books may be had at a quarter of their original price; so if a hundred dollars is to be spent, I'll engage to get three or four hundred volumes, instead of two hundred. Meanwhile, don't either of you men breathe a word of Caleb's project, until the books are here; otherwise some other merchant may get ahead of us."

"That's sound business sense," said Caleb, "but I wish you hadn't—I mean I wish one of us had said it instead of you."

"Oh, Caleb! Do you think that my interest in the business of the store is making me sordid—mercenary—grasping?"

"Well, I never saw any signs of it before, but—"

"Nor have you seen them to-day. You'll have to take to eye-glasses, Caleb, if only in justice to me. The only reason I don't wish any one else to start the library is that I think the laborer is worthy of his hire. You were the laborer—that is, you devised the plan,—and I wouldn't for anything have you deprived of your pay, which will consist of your pleasure at seeing your old acquaintances supplied with good reading matter. Honor to whom honor is due. Now do you understand?"

Caleb's small gray face grew rosy, albeit a bit sheepish, and to hide it, he tiptoed over to Philip, who was staring into vacancy, apparently in search of something, and said:—

"As I b'lieve I've said before, ain't she a peeler?"

"Yes; oh, yes," Philip answered mechanically.

"You don't seem so sure of it as you might be," complained Caleb. "Have you struck a stump?"

"No; oh, no."

"What is the matter, Mr. Owl?" asked Grace, moving toward the couple.

"I'm puzzled—that's all, yet 'tis not a little," Philip replied. "I don't think I'm a fool about business. Even Caleb here, who is too true a friend to flatter, says I've done remarkably well, and increased the number of our customers and the profits of the business, yet 'tis never I who devise the new, clever plans by which the increase comes. This matter of the free circulating library is only one of several cases in point; they began months ago, with the use of our piano in church. I don't believe I'd have done them solely with a view to business, but I couldn't have helped seeing that they would have that effect in the end, so I wonder why I, myself, shouldn't have thought of them. Perhaps you can tell me, Caleb; don't be afraid of hurting my feelings, and don't be over-modest about yourself; 'tis all between friends, you know."

Caleb leaned on the counter, from which he brushed some imaginary dust; then he contemplated the brushed spot as if he were trying to look through the counter, as he replied:—

"Mebbe it's because we have different startin'-places. In a book of sermons I've got up in my room—though 'tain't by one o' our Methodists—there's a passage that tells how astronomers find certain kinds o' stars. It 'pears that they don't p'int their telescopes here, there, an' ev'rywhere, lookin' for the star an' nothin' else, but they turn the big concern on a rather dark bit o' sky, somewhere near where the star ought to be, an' they work it 'round, little by little, lookin' at ev'rythin' they can see, until they've took in the whole neighborhood, so to speak, an' what stars of ev'ry kind is around, an' what all of 'em is doin', an' so workin' in'ard, little by little, they stumble on what they was really lookin' for. Well, that's 'bout my way in business. First, I think about the neighborhood, the people, an' what they're doin', an' what ought to be done for 'em, an' all of a sudden they're all p'intin' right at the business, like the little stars for the big one, and couldn't keep from doin' it if they tried their level best. Now, p'raps you don't work that way, but try the other, 'cause—well, p'raps 'cause it's the quickest. P'raps I ought to say that mebbe my way ain't the best, but—"

"Don't say it," interrupted Philip, "because I shan't believe it, nor shall I believe that you yourself thought there was any possibility of its not being the better way of the two."