“Well,” says Mr. Macmillan, “I’ve thought this over, and I guess a royalty on tonnage will be the best plan for Mr. Bell.”
“What’s a royalty on t-t-tonnage?” asked Mark.
“It means that the company will pay Mr. Bell a certain amount for every ton of copper it takes out of his mine.”
Mark nodded his head.
“That would be most satisfactory to us,” says Jiggins.
Then they went to arguing and dickering and talking and talking for hours, it seemed. Then Mr. Macmillan called in his stenographer and dictated an agreement to her. The agreement read that the company was to pay to Uncle Hieronymous or his heirs three thousand dollars every year for fifty years. They were to pay that much at the very least. That was what Mr. Macmillan called a minimum. Mark saved up that word. But uncle might get more. If the company took out so much copper that the royalties came to more than three thousand dollars a year, uncle would get whatever it was. He might get nothing but the three thousand dollars every year, and then, again, he might get ten or twenty times as much.
Uncle Hieronymous sat like he was dreaming. Every once in a while he’d break out with some sort of an exclamation like “Shucks!” or “Ginger!” or “I swanny!”
The agreement was written after a while.
“You send this to be signed by the proper officers of your company,” says Mr. Macmillan. “When it comes back with the three thousand dollars for the first year Mr. Bell will sign, too. Then the matter will be settled.”
Well, Jiggins sent the contract to his company, and they signed it and sent back the money. That fixed it so Uncle Hieronymous was rich. Think of it! Three thousand dollars every year, and maybe more! He couldn’t get used to it, and kept saying he didn’t know what to do with it and it would be a burden to him. Mark told him he’d find ways to use it and he needn’t worry.