It made no difference how she received them, nor how she steeled her heart against their plausible words, she always ended buying whatever they had to sell, and after that it was a fight to get the money from her father with which to pay the installments.

Pap Briggs objected to paying out money for anything, but he considered that about the most useless thing he could spend money for was a book.

Whenever he heard there was a book agent in Kilo he acted like a hen when she sees a hawk in the sky, ready to pounce down upon her brood, and he pottered around and scolded and complained and warned Miss Sally to beware, and then in the end the book agent always made the sale, and Miss Sally felt as if she had committed seven or eight deadly sins, and it made her life miserable.

Only a few months before she had fallen prey to a man who had sold her a set of Sir Walter Scott's Complete Works, two dollars down, and one dollar a month, and she felt that the work of urging the monthly dollar out of her father's pocket was all she could stand.
Why and how she bought books always remained a mystery to her; it is a mystery to many book buyers how they happen to buy books.

Book agents seemed to have a mesmerizing effect on Miss sally, as serpents daze birds before they devour them.