The company started with a cash balance of four dollars on hand. Jimmy had been paid, although he had expressed his entire willingness to wait a couple of weeks for half of his money. Mr. Saunders had received his first installment, a new shoe and two new inner tubes had been bought and they had also purchased already fifteen gallons of gasoline, much of which had been used in trying the engine out in the garage. A license for the car had cost ten dollars and an operator’s license two more. They had also been obliged to buy a number of unthought of things, such as the rubber mat and brass polish and kerosene for the lamps and a new set of spark plugs. Paint, varnish, brushes, cylinder oil, cup grease and graphite had been anticipated but footed up higher than expected. Willard had put seventy-five dollars more into the business, which, with the fifty dollars loaned by Mr. Benton, represented a capitalization of one hundred and seventy-five dollars. Willard’s loan and Mr. Benton’s were to be paid back from the net profits of the enterprise.
At eleven o’clock that Tuesday morning The Ark, her brand-new number-plates in place, was run out of the garage and, with Tom at the wheel and Willard beside him, it chugged quietly—well, not quietly, perhaps, but, let us say, industriously,—through Washington Street in the direction of the station. Audelsville had six important trains a day, three from the east and three from the west. The first of these, the 9:01 from the west, usually brought few travelers, and the boys had decided to inaugurate their service with the 11:34, which was the Providence express and the favorite train for commercial travelers and business men. Later, at 1:57, there was a second train from the east, and after that one from the west at 2:06. Then there were no more until the Providence train went east at 6:05. At 8:40 the last of the half-dozen expresses passed westward.
As The Ark neared Walnut Street there came a hail and Jerry Lippit, vaulting the front fence as the quickest means of getting into the street, ran up. “How does she go, fellows?” he asked eagerly. “Give me a ride, Tom, will you?”
Tom stopped the car. “Jump in,” he said. Willard, however, could not resist a fling.
“Remember what we told you, Jerry?”
“What?” asked Jerry, as he scrambled into the rear and threw himself luxuriously on the seat.
“Why, that you’d be begging for a ride in a week or two,” responded Willard.
Jerry grinned. “I didn’t beg; I merely asked. Where are you going?”
“To the station,” answered Tom, starting the car again. They had not confided their plan to anyone as yet, and it was generally supposed that The Ark was purely a pleasure craft. They were not destined to go very far, however, without another stop, for a little further along Teddy Thurston, returning from a store with six preserving jars in a wooden box, planted himself in the middle of the street.