“We’ll have it in another day or two. We’re pretty well stocked up now and won’t need to buy much for a week, I guess. I wish, though, that Mr. Chester Young could look you in the eye for more than a thousandth part of a second!”
“So do I. And did you see the number of cigarettes he smoked in the time he was here? Do you suppose he’d help himself from stock?”
“If he did there wouldn’t be any stock very long,” laughed Joe. “Let’s go through the advertisements in today’s paper again and see if we missed any. Seems to me there must be more fellows than Mr. Chester Young looking for work.”
“Yes, but most of them want to be book-keepers or chauffeurs. We may want a chauffeur some day, but not quite yet, and as for a book-keeper——”
“We need one, but can’t afford him,” ended Joe. “You’re right. There’s nothing here. I guess Chester’s the only thing in sight.”
Five days later Mr. Chester Young was installed behind the counter in the Adams Building and at his elbow reposed a neat cash register. The former employer of Mr. Chester Young had reported most favourably on that gentleman; indeed, to hear him one could not help wondering why he had deprived himself of Mr. Young’s services! Joe left the telephone booth rather puzzled, but there seemed no good reason for doubting the Youngstown man’s veracity, and they decided after some hesitation to give the applicant a trial—if they could find a cash register they could afford to buy! Fortune favoured them. The proprietor of a fruit store whose business was expanding had one to sell and they closed the bargain with him at seventeen dollars, thereby securing a machine that had originally cost forty-five.
Mr. Chester Young started out well. The sales during his first day at the stand were better than for any other day, and neither Joe nor Jack could see that the supply of cigarettes had fallen off unduly. Perhaps, as Jack pointed out, this was because they did not carry the kind affected by their clerk! They did not find that Mr. Young improved much on acquaintance, but since he was attending to business and seemed to take a genuine interest in the venture they tried to be fair to him and to like him. In any event, it was lucky that they had found someone to tend shop, for on the fifteenth day of the month Captain Sam Craig called the baseball candidates together in the cage in the basement of the school building, and for a long time after neither Joe nor his partner had much leisure to devote to their business venture.