A Country Idyl and Other Stories. Bolton Sarah Knowles
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Название: A Country Idyl and Other Stories
Автор: Bolton Sarah Knowles
Издательство: Public Domain
Жанр: Зарубежная классика
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At the next house a kind-faced woman, who really belonged to one of the old families, and felt none too proud to open her own door, bade the young man a pleasant “Good-morning,” and though she did not wish to purchase the book, which, though tastefully made, was commonplace in subject, she thanked him for seeing it, and hoped he would sell elsewhere. His heart was a trifle lighter after this kindly greeting, though his purse grew no heavier. At the next house, and the next, he met with the same refusals. Finally, near the end of the street, the colored man who opened the door was also striving to earn money for a college course. He had been two years in Harvard University already. Both father and mother were dead, but from love for a girl who taught a colored school he had become ambitious, and determined to work his way through some institution. The subject of the book touched his heart. Katie, his school-teacher, would like it; the suggestions about husbands and wives, and the words about neatness, culture, and tenderness, would do both good.
“How much is it?” said the colored youth.
“Two dollars.”
A disappointed look came into the face of the would-be purchaser.
“I receive seventy-five cents commission,” said Kent, “and I will let you have the book for one dollar and a half; that will leave twenty-five cents for my dinner.”
“I hate to ask you to take less, sir, but I can’t pay two dollars, because I haven’t so much. But here’s the one-fifty;” and he added, as he held the book tenderly, “Katie will so like it!” When a man is really in love he can’t help telling somebody, even though it be a book-agent.
Meanwhile Grant Reynolds had been learning his first experience of work in the broad world, which has too little care for and sympathy with toilers. He soon found that selling books from house to house was no “lark,” as he had anticipated. His lips curled in disdain as he was several times addressed rudely by servants, or by women whom he knew were far below him in social position. Did so many fashionable people, then, have two methods of action – one for the rich and the other for the poor?
As he was thus musing, he opened a gate and walked up to a beautiful mansion, Elizabethan in style, that one would imagine to have been just transported from England, with its ivies and great beds of roses. He stopped suddenly, for just before him a fair-haired girl, in simple blue, with broad sun-hat wreathed with daisies, was clipping a bunch of deep-red roses. She looked up half inquiringly, as the young man approached and lifted his hat. He was not abashed – he had seen attractive girls too often for that; but her kind look had an unusual effect after the sharp refusals of the morning.
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