Tom rather doubted it himself, but he went through with it and in due time the pump, a rather cumbersome and very heavy affair, was deposited in the basement of the hardware store. It was Mr. Cummings who advised the expenditure of further money in the shape of an advertisement in a morning paper and who helped write it.
“I guess,” he said, “we won’t put any price on it. We’ll just say, ‘Cheap for cash.’ If anyone comes to look at it, you leave him to me.”
Tom was very glad to, for he greatly doubted his ability to conduct advantageous bargaining. The advertisement ran three mornings a week for over a month and cost Tom five dollars and twenty cents and brought no returns. Nor did a card displayed at the back of the store, setting forth in Tom’s best lettering the fact that a rare bargain awaited some lucky purchaser, do any better. Tom had almost forgotten the existence of the pump when, one morning in April, he stopped on Main Street to watch the excavating for a new office building. The contractors had struck water at a depth of some eighteen feet below the street level and the workmen were wading and splashing about in a good twelve inches of it. They had one pump at work, but it was quite evident to the spectators that fringed the railing that the pump was making little if any headway. A middle-aged man with a perplexed expression emerged from the temporary office and, accompanied by a subordinate, watched the work for a moment. As the two men were within a few feet of Tom, he could not help overhearing what was said.
“That thing isn’t doing enough work to earn its oil,” said the contractor disgustedly, nodding to the pump and the long length of big hose that ran down to the water. “Brown and Cole say they can’t ship until next week. Funny thing we can’t get a pump nearer than Chicago!”
“‘Next week!’” responded the foreman bitterly. “What’ll I be doing until next week with all this gang? I don’t dare lay them off. Stevens is after men for that new job of his.”
“Bailing wouldn’t help much, I suppose.”
“Not a bit, save to keep them at work. The water’s running in faster’n we can pump it out. Sure, it’s a regular spring we’ve struck, I’m thinking.”
“No, it’s not a spring, Jim; it’s a subterranean stream that flows between that gravel and the clay underneath. With another pump I guess we could hold it all right. Meanwhile, though, we’re losing a couple of hundred dollars a day and getting behind on the contract.”
“Subterranean it may be,” replied Jim disgustedly. “I don’t know if it is or not, but it’s holdin’ us back from the work. I know that. What’s the matter with gettin’ a lot of hand-pumps, sir? The water company’ll be havin’ one or two, maybe, and the plumbers——”