“Better start easy,” laughed Tom, “or Mr. Quinby will get scared and send his car back to the maker! Now go on with your checking, you loafers. It’s a good thing I came. If I hadn’t you’d have sat around here doing nothing all the evening!”
“Is that so, sonny? Just cast your eye along those shelves and tell me if you see anything,” replied Willard indignantly.
“There are a few cans there,” replied Tom.
“A few cans! There are six dozen cans, my young friend, and Jimmy and I unpacked them all with our tender little hands. Suppose you get busy and do something yourself. Get the wax crayon in the office and mark the price on each can as we give it to you. I guess that’ll hold you for a while!”
CHAPTER XXVII
THE ENEMY IN TROUBLE
There were stirring times at the station the next forenoon when Tom and Willard drove The Ark down to meet the 11:34. The Audelsville High School Football Team, resplendent in new uniforms and accompanied by a score or so of enthusiastic friends, awaited the train and in the interim indulged in the usual frolics to pass the time. Several of the boys crowded about the automobile and expressed to Tom their regrets in the matter of his retirement from the team. There were mutinous grumbles against George Connors and gloomy predictions of defeat at the hands of the Finley Falls enemy in the absence of Tom. Connors, casting an occasional glance of amused contempt at The Ark, regaled a group of his cronies with sallies of wit at the expense of the car. Jerry, sporting a new and vivid blue necktie, Spider Wells, looking taller and thinner than ever, and Teddy Thurston, with his perpetual grin, were much in evidence on the platform. Teddy’s grin from the rear platform of the last car seemed to float over the scene long after the train had disappeared.
As it was Saturday Jimmy Brennan had a half-holiday and he devoted it to work at the garage. They had determined to formally open the place for business on Monday morning and there were still a dozen little last things to be attended to. The sill of one of the swinging doors was rotten and Jimmy laid a new one. Auger holes were bored through the thick planks of the floor in the corner that was to be devoted to washing to let the water through. More supplies had arrived, a shipment of tires and tubes, and these were unpacked and stowed away. It had been decided to prepare about twenty-five advertisements to be posted in conspicuous places along the roads leading into Audelsville. For the purpose Jimmy had obtained that many half-inch boards, ten inches wide and sixteen inches long, and some heavy brown stencil paper. In the latter, with the aid of a sharp knife, he cut out the legend: “PUT UP AT THE CITY GARAGE, AUDELSVILLE.” Willard washed one side of the boards with a thin coat of white paint and set them outside in the sun to dry. As soon as the white had set, and as Jimmy had mixed plenty of drier with it it didn’t take long, the stencil was placed on and a brush dipped in black paint was flourished back and forth. The result was quite astonishing, for the signs looked as though they had come from a sign-painter’s. There was so much to be done and it was such fun doing it that it was past supper time when Tom tore himself away, promising to meet Willard there at seven o’clock—Jimmy was going to Graywich by trolley that evening to visit a friend and spend the night—and hurried home through the twilighted September evening. He expected to be late, but when he reached the house he found his father and mother in the sitting room. It only needed a glance at their faces to tell him that something was wrong.
“I guess I’m late,” he said uneasily, when he had hung up his hat. “There was so much to do at the garage, ma, that I didn’t know how late it was.”