MR. BENTON SAYS YES
Mr. Benton was at his desk, in the little, partitioned-off office, and
the boys quite filled the tiny space. Perhaps Tom’s father had been
thinking about the plan since the evening before, and had changed his
views, for it required hardly any persuasion to gain his agreement.
“Yes, Tom, I’ll advance you fifty dollars, if you decide to buy it,”
he said, when Tom had explained. “But you mustn’t come to me for any
more afterward, because I simply can’t let you have it. We’ll make a
business proposition of it, and you’ll pay me back the fifty from time
to time. Is that satisfactory?”
“Yes, sir; thank you.”
“Very well. When do you want the money?”
“To-morrow afternoon, sir, if we want it at all.”
“I’ll have it ready for you. I’m glad you’re going to share the risk
with him, Willard. Two heads are better than one. Besides, if the plan
fails, you’ll each stand to lose less. That all you wanted, Tom?”
“Yes, sir. I’m awfully much obliged, father. And――and, if we buy that
car, we’re going to make a go of it, aren’t we, Will?”
“We certainly are! We’ve got to!”
They climbed over a pile of empty mail bags and made their way out of
the post-office with jubilant faces.
“Isn’t that great?” demanded Tom.
“Fine and dandy! Now, let’s hustle down and find this fellow Brennan.
We’ve got to persuade him to look that car over to-night.”
It was a good stiff walk to the railroad, and then they had to go
along the track for some distance to where Gerrish & Hanford’s machine
shop stood――a rickety, brown, wooden building, filled with the din and
clatter of machinery. Jimmy Brennan proved to be a small, red-haired
chap, some four years older than Willard. He had a smooch of black
grease on his tilted nose, which lent his countenance quite a weird
expression. Jimmy――for it wasn’t long before they were calling him
that――heard their errand and asked no questions until Willard had
finished. Then:
“Sure,” he agreed. “I’ll look her over for you, but I don’t see how
I can do it to-night, boys. I got a sort of an engagement for this
evening. Maybe to-morrow night――――”
“But we’ve only got the option until to-morrow afternoon,” objected
Tom. “Don’t you think you might manage to do it to-night, Mr. Brennan?
We wouldn’t want to lose the car, if it really proved to be a good one,
you see.”
Jimmy scowled thoughtfully at a lathe. At last, his face clearing, “All
right,” he said. “I’ll do it somehow. Maybe it’ll be late, but that
won’t matter if Saunders will let me have the key. I’ll do it. Where’ll
I see you to-morrow? Will you be back here?”
“We’ll come down in the morning, before school,” replied Willard. “How
much will you charge to do it?”
“Oh, that’ll be all right; it won’t cost you much. I’ll have to charge
according to my time, I suppose.”
Willard was for letting it stand so, but Tom said firmly: “I don’t
believe you’d overcharge us, Mr. Brennan, but we haven’t much money,
and so, if you wouldn’t mind giving us an idea as to about what it
would be worth――――”
“Well, say two dollars, at the outside. If I can do it for less I will,
boys. I won’t stick you.”
“We-ell,” began Tom doubtfully. But Willard pulled his sleeve, as he
said: “That’ll be all right, I think. What we want is to know just what
it would cost to fix her up to run, you know.”
“Sure. Who was you going to get to do the work?” asked Jimmy.
“Why, we thought maybe you would. That is, if you had the time,” said
Tom. “Will’s father, Mr. Morris, you know, said he thought you would.”
“Why, maybe I could. I’d have to work evenings, of course. If I found
she was worth fixing, and it didn’t cost too much, and I got the job,
why, I wouldn’t charge you anything for looking her over to-night.”
“Thank you,” said Tom. “Then we’ll come down in the morning and hear
the――the verdict.”
Going back, the boys cut across lots, behind the railroad yards, and
over Town Brook, and were soon back at Tom’s house on Cross Street. All
the way they speculated and planned, and, once perched on the front
steps, they began to reckon the cost of their undertaking again. Tom
got a piece of paper from the house, and Willard supplied a pencil.
“Now then,” said the latter, “put down fifty dollars for the first
payment. Then, say, it costs fifty dollars more to put the car in
shape. Got that down? That’s a hundred, isn’t it? Well, then, if we
paint her ourselves, it oughtn’t to cost more than ten dollars at the
outside; not so much, maybe.”
“Can we do it ourselves?” asked Tom. “Wouldn’t we have to take the old
paint and varnish off first, Will?”
“I don’t know. Maybe. It would be a hard job, if we did, wouldn’t it?
We could find out about that, I guess; ask a painter. Anyhow, it
wouldn’t take much money. Did you put down ten dollars?”
“Yes.”
“Then”――Willard paused――“look here, Tom, where are we going to keep
her?”
“I’ve thought of that,” answered Tom. “There’s lots of room in our
stable, if I can get dad to let me put the old buggy in storage
somewhere. We don’t use it now, you know, since Peter died summer
before last. Dad’s been talking of getting another horse, but I don’t
believe he will. I guess Saunders would store the buggy for us pretty
cheap.”
“We’ll make it a part of the bargain,” declared Willard. “That’s
settled, then, and we won’t have to pay for a place to keep the car.
Now, what’s next?”
“I suppose gasoline and lubricating oil,” suggested the other. “I
inquired about gasoline, and it costs twenty-two cents, by the gallon,
or eighteen, if you buy fifty gallons or more. Maybe it would be a good
idea to buy a lot and get the discount. Only thing is, we wouldn’t have
anything to keep it in.”
“We could get it by the barrel, couldn’t we? Doesn’t it come in
barrels? Sure, it must. Look here, how far does a gallon run a car?”
“I don’t know,” owned Tom. “I must get a book about automobiles and
study up. I’ll go over to the library this evening. I guess they’ve got
one there.”
“Must have. Why don’t you walk up with me when I go home? And, by the
way, there’s a fellow on Linden street who sells autos; has an agency
for them. I suppose he’d tell us a lot about them if I asked him.”
“Maybe he’d want us to buy one of his cars, though,” Tom objected.
“Well, what if he did? We wouldn’t have to, would we? He could tell
us about gasoline and oil and things like that, I guess. And, about
getting a license, too. That’s another thing we’ll have to reckon in.
Say we call it five dollars. It won’t be more than that, I’ll bet. Put
down five for a license, Tom. How much is that?”
“A hundred and fifteen.”
“Golly! It mounts up, doesn’t it? And we haven’t counted in gasoline
yet. How much would we have to have to start with?”
“The tank holds ten gallons, I think. And ten gallons, it seems to me,
ought to last a week easily.”
“Well, then, put down ten gallons of gasoline at twenty-two cents a
gallon.”
“Two-twenty,” murmured Tom.
“And some oil and grease. How much――a dollar’s worth?”
Tom nodded and added another figure.
“Well, there we are. Now we’re ready for business. Now, the question
is, how many folks could we carry in a week?”
“Well, there are six express trains a day――three each way,” answered
Tom. “Most of the traveling men come on the morning express and go away
in the afternoon. Suppose we got three passengers each way for those
two trains, Will. That would be three dollars a day. Six times three
would be eighteen! Why, that’s a lot!”
“Why not seven times three?”
“Oh, I don’t think dad would like me to run the car on Sundays.
Besides, no one comes or goes then, anyway, I guess.”
“That’s so. Eighteen a week, then; and we might make a lot more some
weeks, mightn’t we? And four times eighteen is seventy-two. We’d
make seventy-two dollars a month! And, out of that, we’d have to
pay Saunders twenty, and buy gasoline and oil and things, and maybe
repairs; although, if Brennan made a good job of it, it doesn’t seem as
though we’d have many repairs for a good while. Hold on, though, Tom!
What about tires?”
Tom looked blank. “I’d forgotten those,” he muttered. “And they say
tires cost an awful lot. And the tires on the car now don’t look as
though they’d last a minute!”
“You bet they don’t. That means we might have to buy four new ones
right away. Thunder, I wish automobiles had only two wheels! How much
do you suppose they cost, Tom?”
Tom shook his head helplessly. “About――oh, maybe fifteen dollars
apiece; maybe twenty!”
“Golly!” Willard frowned a moment in silence. Then, “Well, let’s
suppose we have to buy two new tires right away at twenty each. That
makes forty more. Put it down, Tom. How much now?”
“A hundred and fifty-eight dollars and twenty cents.”
“H-m; and we’ll have a hundred only. Guess I’ll have to put in another
fifty, Tom.”
“If――if the tires that are on the car now proved to be all right for
a while,” answered Tom, “we could get by with a hundred, couldn’t we?
That is, pretty nearly.”
“Yes. If we could get along until the end of the first month we’d be
all right. Because we’d have to pay out of the seventy-two only twenty
dollars to Saunders――――”
“With interest.”
“That wouldn’t be much――only about”――Willard calculated mentally――“only
about thirty cents. Then there’d be, say, ten dollars more, for
gasoline and such things. That would leave us with a profit of
forty-two dollars, Tom. And with that we could buy two tires. I
suppose we’d better make up our minds to putting most of our profits
back into the business for a month or two.”
Tom nodded. “I think so. Gee, but I wish I knew now what Brennan is
going to tell us to-morrow. I――I’d be awfully disappointed, if he told
us the car wasn’t worth fixing, Will.”
“So would I be. I’ve sort of set my heart on the scheme now. Well,
we’ll just hope for the best, Tom. Now I must be getting along. Coming
up to the library?”
“Yes, I’ll go and get that book. It won’t hurt to know something about
automobiles, even if――if we don’t get this one, Will.”