The others waited for her to explain, so she placed a hand at the side of her mouth to prevent the two strange boys from hearing what she whispered.
“They are newsboys who first heard of us at the ‘Tree of Light’ last Christmas. Ikey is the thin one and he was at that Easter Egg Picnic in Van Cortlandt Park, too. That’s where Don met him; Ikey had such a lot of eggs that we asked where he got all of them, ’cause we knew he couldn’t have had that many to start with. And he told——”
“S-sh! Not so loud, Dot! He’ll hear you. What did he tell you?” interpolated Jinks.
“Why, you know he works in a newspaper printing place where they hire boys to clean up messes of inks and trash, and run errands, too. Ikey got a lot of free tickets from the printer to some lecture and he traded them in, a ticket for every egg he could get. Then he told Don he was going to sell those eggs downtown to his friends.”
“Did he?” asked Ruth, surprised that anyone would want to sell Easter Eggs.
“I’m going over and find out—I guess that’s what Don is talking about now,” replied Dot, joining her twin brother.
“Say, Dot, Ikey just told me he made 56 cents on those Easter eggs, and now he’s set up in business—newspaper business of his own. He wants me to go in as his partner—what do you think of it?” said Don in a low voice, for fear his brother or Jinks might overhear the plan.
“Pooh! You couldn’t leave Oakdale for a newspaper business, and what’s the good of having a business if you can’t look after it yourself?” replied Dot.
“He could yust invest his money an’ I’d look after it,” hurriedly explained Ikey, all for business.
“If Don looked after all he ought to at home, he’d have more interests than he could take care of. No sir! You leave Ikey Einstein to manage his own investment!” decided Dot, the practical.