"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--"