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But Raymie's pale eyes were watering at her. She helped him with, “So you like to read poetry?”

“Oh yes, so much — though to tell the truth, I don't get much time for reading, we're always so busy at the store and —— But we had the dandiest professional reciter at the Pythian Sisters sociable last winter.”

Carol thought she heard a grunt from the traveling salesman at the end of the table, and Kennicott's jerking elbow was a grunt embodied. She persisted:

“Do you get to see many plays, Mr. Wutherspoon?”

He shone at her like a dim blue March moon, and sighed, “No, but I do love the movies. I'm a real fan. One trouble with books is that they're not so thoroughly safeguarded by intelligent censors as the movies are, and when you drop into the library and take out a book you never know what you're wasting your time on. What I like in books is a wholesome, really improving story, and sometimes —— Why, once I started a novel by this fellow Balzac that you read about, and it told how a lady wasn't living with her husband, I mean she wasn't his wife. It went into details, disgustingly! And the English was real poor. I spoke to the library about it, and they took it off the shelves. I'm not narrow, but I must say I don't see any use in this deliberately dragging in immorality! Life itself is so full of temptations that in literature one wants only that which is pure and uplifting.”