After a little while we stopped to rest, and we asked Mr. Pedro to come in and have lunch with us. In the afternoon we went around the grounds and had some rides on the merry-go-round and tried our luck throwing baseballs at a negro man. I won a Japanese doll. We found out that the price of sandwiches had gone down to ten cents. Waffles were selling two for a cent and going begging—that's what a man told us. He said crullers were off the market. The coffee-man wanted to buy tenderflops wholesale from us, but we wouldn't sell him any. Believe me, we had all the visitors at that place eating out of our hands—that's no joke either; it's true.
About four o'clock I mixed up all the stuff we had left. Already we had eight dollars and we had only spent about four. So we had over four dollars' profit. It would have been bigger, except for the overhead expense. It costs a lot to advertise.
On toward evening the crowd was even bigger. That was because everybody was telling everybody else to see the Boy Scouts selling stamped cakes from their private car. We were a what-do-you-call-it—an institution.
All of a sudden came the grand climax. I was just laying the last tenderflops on the boards and trying to scrape enough stuff out of the pan to make just two or three more, when I saw a wagon stop right alongside the car. Oh, please excuse me a minute while I laugh!
Now we had seen that wagon most all afternoon, because a man was using it to cart sawdust from the ice-house and sprinkle it on the race-track. I suppose he did that on account of the races which were going to be at five o'clock.
Anyway, he got down from his wagon and came over to the platform and said, "Let's try a couple of them floperetts I'm hearin' so much about."
I said, "Is this your last load?"
He said yes, it was, and that after he got it sprinkled on the track, he was coming back for more floperetts—that was what he called them.
That man ate a whole board full and I called up to Pee-wee, "There isn't any more batter, so we're on the home stretch. Shout good and loud and tell them it's their last chance."
Just at that very minute I heard a locomotive whistle.