That was the beginning of a series of negotiations that ran through fully a week. It was interspersed with motor rides, dinner parties, and other amusements to which the parties treated one another alternately. The Prince Edward Island man brought himself to make a proposal of twenty thousand, and Horace came down to thirty-five thousand, and there they stuck. Finally Horace came down to thirty.
"I'll give you twenty-five," said the furbreeder at last, "but I think I'll be losing money at that."
"I'll meet you halfway," replied Horace. "Split the difference. Make it twenty-seven thousand, five hundred."
Both parties were well wearied with bargaining by this time, and the buyer gave in.
"All right!" he agreed. "You'll make your fortune, young man, if you keep on, for you 're the hardest customer to deal with that I've met this year."
The dealer went back next day to the east, taking the foxes with him, and leaving with the boys a certified check for $27,500. It was not as much as they had hoped to clear, but it was a small fortune after all.
"Comes to nearly seven thousand apiece," Fred remarked.
"Not at all," remonstrated Maurice. "I don't see where I have any share in it."
"Oh, come! We're rolling in money. You must have something out of it. Mustn't he, Horace?"
They knew that Maurice really needed the money, and it was not by his own will that he had failed to go with the expedition. In the end he was persuaded to accept the odd five hundred dollars, but he refused to take a cent more. The remainder made just nine thousand dollars apiece for each of the three other boys.