As said before, this was vacation time. There was scarcely a boy in Greenville who did not take a turn at selling the needle packages, which Frank wholesaled at six cents each.
Most of the boys sold a few packages at home and to immediate neighbors, and then quit work. Others, however, made a regular business of it. Nelson Cady took in two partners, borrowed a light gig, and to date had met with signal success in covering other towns in the county.
“Why,” he had declared enthusiastically to Frank only that evening, when he handed over the cash for two hundred new packages of the needles, which Mrs. Ismond was kept busy putting up, “if the needles hold out, I could extend and extend my travelling trips and work my way clear to Idaho.”
“You are certainly making more than expenses,” said Frank encouragingly.
“Yes, but you see”—with his usual seriousness explained Nelson, “that letter may come any day, and I want to be on hand to get it.”
“Of course,” nodded Frank gravely, but he felt that poor Nelson’s hopes were like those of the man whose ship never came in.
While his young assistants were thus earning good pocket money and Frank was accumulating more and more capital daily, he kept up a powerful thinking.
A limitless field of endeavor seemed spread out before him. The handling of the salvage stock had been a positive education to him.
“I see where the Riverton hardware man failed,” Frank said to himself many times, “and I think I know how I can succeed.”