[CHAPTER VIII]
AN OUT-CURVE
The new department started up the last week in March, and none too soon. It had been a hard, cold winter, but its very severity seemed to wear it out along toward the first of that month and a succession of spring-like days turned boys’ thoughts toward baseball. The advertisement had appeared in the March issue of the Brown-and-Blue and the daily papers had made announcement of the fact that Cummings and Wright had installed the most thorough, up-to-date sporting goods department to be found in the state. This was perhaps an exaggeration, but advertisements are prone to exaggerate. It was a pretty thoroughly stocked department, though. Tom had been both surprised and a little alarmed when the catalogues from dealers and manufacturers had reached him. There were so many, many more things to be purchased than he had dreamed of! He had begun a list and then stopped appalled by the magnitude of the order and the size of the total cost, and had gone to Mr. Cummings in perturbation.
“How much? Over four hundred dollars?” asked Mr. Cummings. “Can we sell the things if we get them?”
“Why, yes, sir; I hope so. I think so. I don’t see why——”
“Then get them.”
And Tom got them, and the grand total of the investment was not four hundred dollars, or a little over, but nearly six hundred! And for a week or so poor Tom woke up at night bathed in a cold perspiration after a nightmare in which he saw himself buried under a deluge of sporting goods that no one would buy! It was an anxious time at first. Tom viewed the crowded shelves and showcases and felt his heart sink, for six hundred dollars seemed a frightfully large sum of money to him and he was constantly wondering whether the firm would be able to survive if the goods didn’t sell! He need not have worried about that, but he didn’t know it then.
He had put in a line of baseball goods that was as complete as it was possible to have it. There were bats of all grades and prices, balls, masks, gloves, mitts, chest protectors, base-bags, score-books, and a dozen lesser things, all more or less necessary for the conduct of the national pastime. But baseball goods were only a part of that stock. Golf made its demands as well, although Tom had held back there somewhat, and the wants of the tennis enthusiast had to be provided for. Then the captain of the high school track team had asked about running shoes and attire, and Tom had supplemented his first order. There seemed, in short, no end to what he must buy and keep in stock if Cummings and Wright’s was really to have a fully equipped department. And Tom groaned at the thought of what would happen when autumn came and he had to think of football goods! Already he had been forced to ask for a third section of shelves!
But Mr. Cummings appeared quite untroubled, and so Tom dared to hope. Even Mr. Wright seemed undismayed by the crowded shelves and took an unusual interest in the goods, pulling them out of place—and leaving them out, too—asking questions as to purpose and price and trying Tom sorely at busy times. And then, quite suddenly, his fears vanished. A Saturday morning came and, as it seemed to the anxious manager of the sporting goods department (that was Joe’s title for him), half of juvenile Amesville poured into the store. Tom was busy that day; busy and happy! Many of the boys came only to look and covet, but there were plenty of sales for all that and the day’s total footed up to forty-three dollars. After that Tom ceased worrying and within a week was sending more orders. The manager of the baseball team came to him and asked prices on new uniforms for the players. He found Tom at a loss, but a reference to catalogues soon put him in position to talk business and in the end, not then, but three days later, he began to take orders. Every fellow on the team had to buy and pay for his own uniform and, as Cummings and Wright’s had been declared the proper place to purchase—Tom having made a special price on an order of nine or more suits—the fellows soon began putting their names down. Grey shirts and trousers and caps, brown and blue striped stockings, and grey webbed belts comprised the outfit and the price was four dollars and a quarter. At first one or two fellows who had last year’s suits in good preservation held off, but Spencer Williams, the manager, bullied them, and, when Tom displayed one of the outfits in the window, they fell into line. There was scant profit on those outfits, but Tom called it “good business” and was satisfied.