That evening at the supper table I inquired of Dad if he and Mother were planning to attend our show.
“I should snicker,” he winked. “We wouldn’t miss it for a panful of pickled pretzels.”
“Thirty cents,” I checked off in my mind. A hundred families at thirty cents apiece would be thirty dollars. Hot dog! I could see where we were going to make a barrel of money, all right.
Hurrying back to the boat, where Peg was on guard, I met Scoop, whose arms were full of packages and paper bags.
“Stuff to eat,” he told me.
“Are you going to serve refreshments during the show?” I grinned.
“Hardly. But if we expect to go to Ashton with our show, we might as well start living on [[60]]the boat first as last. It’ll be fun. To-morrow Pa is going to send down a boiled ham and a bag of potatoes. This is stuff I got at the store for breakfast.”
It began to get dark shortly after eight o’clock, so we lit the big lamp near the ticket stand and the dazzle lamps on the sides of the stage. Red had five dollars’ worth of change handy. He was impatient to begin selling tickets. We were impatient to have him begin—we wanted to see the money pile up in the change box. But, of course, we had to wait with our ticket selling until it was dark enough to go ahead with our show.
People began to gather on the dock, talking and laughing. Scoop’s father and mother were there and so was Peg’s folks. I could see a number of our neighbors in Dad’s party. There was a lot of jolly talk. Dad was cutting up. He was a whole show in himself. Golly Ned! The older I grow the bigger my love gets for my swell dad.
Well, about eight-fifteen Red opened the gate and the waiting kids and the grown people filed past the ticket stand, handing the ticket seller their money. In no time at all the seats were all filled. Dad and Mother were up in front with Red’s mother. Mr. Meyers couldn’t come, because, [[61]]as owner of the Lyric theater, he had to work.