"Oh!" I says. "A book agent! I'd have taken you for a regular salesman." "I tell you I _don't_ sell 'em," he says. "Nobody will buy. I just write 'em." I put down my other peach and looked at him. "An author?" I says. "You?" "Thank you," says he, "for believing me. Nobody else will. Now don't let's talk about that. Do you mind telling me something about yourself?" "Oh," I says, "I've got a book all made out of wrapping paper. It ain't wrote yet, it's in the bottom drawer. But I'm going to write one." "Good!" he says. "Tell me about that, too." I don't know what made me, except the surprise of finding that he was what he was, instead of a traveling man. But the first thing I knew I was telling him about me; how I'd stopped school when I was fourteen, and had worked out for a little while in town; and then when the boys got the job in the blast furnace, I came home to help Ma. I told him how the only place I'd ever been, besides the village, was to the city, twice. Only two things I didn't tell him at first--about what home was like, and about Luke. But he got them both out of me. Because I wound up what I was telling him with something I thought was the thing to say. Lena Curtsy always said it. "I've just been living at home for four years now," I said. "I s'pose it's the place for a girl." I remember how calm and slow he was when he answered. "Why no," he says. "Your home is about the last place in the world a girl of your age ought to be." "What do you know about my home?" I asked him quick. "I don't mean your home," he says. "I mean any home, if it's your parents' home. If you can't be in school, why aren't you out by this time doing some useful work of your own?" "Work," I says. "I do work. I work like a dog." "I don't mean doing your family's work," he said. "I mean doing your own work. Of course you're not going to tell me you're happy?" "No," I says, "I ain't happy. I hate my work. I hate the kind of a home I live in. It's Bedlam, the whole time. I'm going to get married to get out of it." "So you are going to be married," he says. "What's the man like--do you mind telling me that?" I told him about Luke, just the way he is. While I talked he was eating his peaches. I'd been through with mine quite a while now, so I noticed him eat his. He done it kind of with the tips of his fingers. I liked to watch him. He sort of broke the peach. The juice didn't run down. I remembered how I must have et mine, and I felt ashamed.