“Maybe this will lessen your grief,” said Bob. “Eighty divided by four makes twenty, or at least that’s what they always taught us in school. Take these four five-dollar bills, Joe, and dry your tears with them.”
“Oh, boy!” exclaimed Joe.
“Money, how welcome you are!” ejaculated Herb, as he pocketed his share. “What I can’t do with twenty dollars!”
“That will buy exactly two thousand doughnuts,” calculated Jimmy, a rapturous expression on his round countenance. “Hot doughnuts, crisp brown doughnuts, doughnuts with jelly in them, doughnuts——”
A human avalanche precipitated itself on the corpulent youngster, and he found himself writhing on the floor with his three companions seated comfortably on different parts of his ample anatomy.
“Hey! Quit, quit!” stuttered Jimmy. “Get off me, you hobos! You’ll have me flattened out like a dog that’s just been run over by a steam roller.”
“And serve you right, too,” retorted Joe. “What do you mean by talking about doughnuts when it’s almost dinner time, and we’re starved to death, anyway. Besides, you know there isn’t a place at Mountain Pass where we can buy them.”
“Yes, and if I’d known that before I started, I would probably have stayed at home,” retorted Jimmy. “Get off me, will you, before I throw you off?”
“We’ll let you up, but I doubt if you should be trusted with all that money,” returned Bob, grinning. “You’d better whack it up among us, Jimmy. You’ll just buy a lot of junk with it and make yourself sick.”
“Well, I’ve got a right to get sick if I want to,” said his rotund friend, struggling to his feet. “If you get that twenty away from me, it will have to be over my dead body.”