The Mater shook her head. "These new-fangled business ideas are strange to me."
But what the Mater said made me think; so that, in the morning, I went to Barlow and told him I would really like to go into the gasoline business, but that, if I did, I would have to go into the automobile accessory business also.
"When any one is buying gas," I said, "they are good prospects for oil and accessories generally. If a man has a break-down, why that's a job for the garage; but, if he wants only supplies, I don't see why he couldn't get them from a hardware store just as well as anywhere else. Now, Mr. Barlow, I'll gladly pay you that half a cent on the gas, and I'll push it for you all I can, but I feel that I would have to sell automobile accessories too. So, if you will buy accessories also, and let me have a small stock, on sale or return, for just three months, I will pay you a small percentage of profit for your help, and guarantee, at the end of the three months, to carry my own automobile department without any help from you."
He tapped his counter slowly with his pencil for a few moments.
"I don't want to go into the automobile accessory business. I have no room for it at all; but I do want to sell gasoline because it is easily handled and earns a good profit. However, I will help you to get a supply of accessories. You go to Boston and find out just what it will cost you. Go and see Alex Cantling of Cantling & Farmer. They're big machinery people, and Alex Cantling is a good friend of mine, and is as shrewd a man as there is in the trade. Ask him how much you would have to buy, and then come back and tell me. If it is a nominal amount to start with, I wouldn't mind guaranteeing the account for you for three months. Now you will have to excuse me, for I am very busy. Come and see me as soon as you get the thing worked out."
"When are you going to start the gas?" I asked.
"Not before April. By the way," said he, putting his hand on my shoulder, "I must ask you not to say word of this to any one."
"But I have already mentioned it to the Mater."
"H'm. Well, would you ask her please not to mention it to any one? If, by any chance, she has, I must reserve the right to call off all offers. By the way, I expect my boy, Fred, home in about a month's time."
Fred was old Barlow's one and only child. He had been in Detroit, working in a big automobile shop for some time, and I had understood that he was coming back on a visit to Farmdale. The old man and Fred had never got along very well together, and Fred had left because the old man wanted him to work in the store and he positively refused to do so.