There was silence for a considerable time. Perhaps all the boys were tired after their hard day’s work. Presently Constant Thiebaud spoke.
“A hundred and ninety dollars apiece! That’s more money than any of us ever saw before. I say, boys, what are we going to do with it?”
There was a pause.
“Let him speak first who can speak best,” said Irv Strong. “So, Ed Lowry, what are you going to do with your share of the money?”
“I’m going shopping with it—shopping for some ‘bargain counter’ health,” replied the tall boy.
“How do you mean?” asked two boys at once, and eagerly.
“Well, my phthisic was very bad last winter, you know. It isn’t phthisic at all, I think. Phthisic is consumption, and I haven’t that—yet.”
He spoke hopefully, rather than confidently. He hoped his malady might not be a fatal one, but sometimes he had doubts.
Let me say here that his hope was better founded than his fear. For at this latter end of the century, Ed Lowry—under his own proper name and not under that which I am hiding him behind in this story—is not only living, but famous. His bodily strength has always been small, but the work he has done in the world with that big brain of his has been very great, and his name—the real one I mean—is familiar to everybody who reads books or cares for American history.
“But whatever it is,” Ed continued, “the doctor wants me to go South for this winter, and now that I’ve got money enough, I’m going to do it.”