"Say! they'll cost a lot of money. You know I don't have but a dollar a month," said Bobby, "and I know Mother won't let me open my bank."
"Of course not. That's the way with mothers and fathers," said Fred, rather discontentedly. "They get us to start saving against the time we'll want money awfully bad for something. And then we have to buy shoes with it, or Christmas presents, or use it to pay for a busted window. That's what cleaned out my bank the last time—when I threw a ball through Miklejohn's plate-glass window on the Square."
"Well," said Bobby, getting away from that unpleasant subject, "I have most of my dollar left for this month, and Pa will give me another on the first day of September."
"I haven't but ten cents to my name," confessed Fred.
"Then how'll we get new bats, and the mask, and pad, and all?"
"That's what we want to find out," Fred said, grimly. "We'll have to think up some scheme for making money. I wish I'd cleaned our yard Saturday instead of hiring Buster Shea."
"That didn't cost you much," chuckled Bobby. "Only a cent—and you couldn't have sold the five rats for anything."
"Aw—well—"
"Let's start a lemonade stand," suggested Bobby.
"No. It's been done to death in Clinton this vacation," Fred declared, emphatically. "Besides, the sugar and lemons and ice cost so much. And you're always bound to drink so much yourself that there's no profit when the lemonade's gone."