“Yes, say fifty dollars,” went on Tom, “why, we’d be willing to pay it.”
“Fifty dollars, eh? Humph! I don’t know as I could promise that. She needs quite a few new parts.” He pulled a little red-leather notebook from his pocket and thumbed the pages. “I made a few memorandums here somewhere. Here they are. In the first place the cylinders are pretty badly scored, but it wouldn’t pay to put in new ones. I guess if they were well cleaned they’d answer. You need two new wrist-pins, though. Then your gears are badly worn; you’d have to have new gears. And you’d have to wire her all over again. Your carburetor—well, I guess that could be fixed all right; same with the magneto. I didn’t have time to take that apart. You’ve got two broken leaves on one forward spring. You need new hose couplings on your pump. The connecting rods will have to be taken up, but that’s no job.”
Jimmy closed his book again and studied a moment. Tom and Willard eyed each other hopelessly. It sounded like an awful lot! Finally: “Well, say, I’ll take the job for fifty-five dollars, boys, and that’s the best I could do. I wouldn’t do it for that if it wasn’t that I can use a little extra money. I’d have to work on her nights and holidays, of course. Where you going to put her?”
Tom told him about the stable and Jimmy nodded. “That’s all right, if your folks won’t object to the noise. Well, there’s my offer, boys. I’d like to help you out, understand; otherwise I wouldn’t take the job less’n seventy-five.”
“How long would it take, do you think?” asked Tom.
“Depends. Maybe two weeks. Maybe three. I’d have to send to the factory for the new parts, you see. Better say three weeks, I guess.”
“And you think that when you got through with it—her—she would be all right, Mr. Brennan?”
“I think she’d run smooth. That’s all I’d guarantee. She’s an old car; must be six years old, I suppose; and she isn’t as nifty as the ones they make now. But she’s built strong, all right. She’s got a good engine. What was you wanting her for principally?”
“Just—just to run around town in,” answered Willard. They hadn’t confided to Jimmy the real purpose to which they intended putting the car.
“Oh, she’d last twenty years, likely, around town. ’Course if you was thinkin’ of doing much tourin’ with her, why, that’s different. She wouldn’t stand it long. But just around here on good roads, why, she’d last a good while, boys.”