“But Brennan says it’ll go——”
“I mean suppose the scheme didn’t go, Tom. Think of the money we’d lose!”
“I know.” Tom nodded. “I don’t like to think of it, Will. We—we’ve just got to make it go! That’s all there is to it! We’ve just got to, Will!”
CHAPTER VI
WILLARD GOES ON STRIKE
“I’m afraid,” observed Willard, laying his brush down and straightening some of the kinks from his back, “that there’ll be more gnats and flies on here than paint. Wonder how it would do to rig a mosquito netting over us, Tom.”
“They are pretty bad, and that’s a fact,” agreed Tom without ceasing the slap-slap of his brush. “I’ve picked off a couple of hundred this morning, I guess.”
They were in the stable loft, with the swinging doors wide open and the little back yard and garden spread beneath them in the hot sunshine of a mid-June day. It was Saturday morning and they were courageously applying the second coat of gray paint to the automobile body. Jimmy Brennan had suggested that it would be a simple matter to hoist the body up into the loft by block and tackle and that up there it would be both out of his way and where the boys could work on it to their hearts’ content. They had had a harder job than anticipated, for the old finish on the car, while stained and rubbed, cracked and flaked, was as hard as baked enamel when it came to removing it; and they had been assured that it would be necessary to remove it before applying new paint. They had worked most of four afternoons with patent paint removers and sand paper before the task had been accomplished. Even then the corners and under surfaces hardly bore critical examination. But the new paint seemed to take very well and the first coat, while a bit thin and streaky in places, had worked a wonderful change in the appearance of the body. The second coat was going on now, and after that had dried there would be two coats of varnish.
Downstairs the chassis of the car stood dismantled, with parts distributed all over the floor. To Tom and Willard it looked a most forlorn and discouraging scene. It was terribly hard to convince themselves that Jimmy would ever succeed in getting all those gears and rods and bolts and wheels and things back in their proper places again! Just now the work was lagging because the factory had not sent the parts ordered.
“When we get this coat on we can’t do any more for a while, can we?” asked Willard hopefully, dipping his brush again with a sigh and returning to his labor.