“It’s like this,” he said, a thumb in each arm-hole of his vest—he was seldom seen with a coat——“it’s like this, boys. Bill Connors has a sort of—of a franchise, d’ye see, to carry folks from the hotel to the depot, and t’other way, too, d’ye see. It’s a sort of a contract we made years ago and I wouldn’t scarcely like to go back on it, d’ye see. O’ course I can’t interfere with you if you bring somebody from the depot up here; you got a right to do that; but I wouldn’t like you should stand outside the hotel and take custom away from Bill. You see yourselves, boys, that that wouldn’t do.”
“It seems as if Mr. Connors was operating a sort of transportation trust,” said Willard with a sigh.
“Then there’s another thing,” continued Tim Meechin. “You fellows carry folks for a quarter and Bill he gets fifty cents. So if I let you stand outside the hotel, you’d get all of Bill’s trade away from him sooner or later, d’ye see, and that wouldn’t be hardly fair to Bill; now would it?”
“I don’t see that,” Tom objected. “If we can afford to carry folks for a quarter it seems to me that’s our look-out. All Mr. Connors would have to do would be to—to meet competition, to put his price down, too.”
“Ah, there it is, d’ye see! You fellows have an automobile which don’t cost much to run, but Bill he has a lot of horses to feed and look after and a lot of help to pay wages to. Follows, don’t it, that he can’t carry passengers as cheap as you can?”
“I suppose so,” Tom granted, “but—but if you stick to that idea, why, there wouldn’t be any competition at all!”
Mr. Meechin nodded untroubledly. “Right you are. It’s competition that’s ruinin’ the country, boys. What would I do, now, if a fellow came along, d’ye see, and opened a hotel across the street there? Say he bought the Perkins block and put up a new hotel. Where’d I be?”
“Why—why, if you gave just as good as he did and charged no more——”
“But he’d have a new building, d’ye see, with, say, a bathroom to every suite and—and a roof-garden on top, and one of those restaurants in the cellar and—” Mr. Meechin was getting quite excited and wrought up at the bare thought of the contingency. He shook his head decidedly. “First come, first served, boys; that’s my motto. Here I am and here I’ve been for thirty years, and my father before me, d’ye see, and what right has a fellow who, maybe, never saw Audelsville before to come and try to ruin my business and put me in the poor house? ’Tain’t fair dealing!”