“He won’t though. He’s—well, he’s pretty fairly obstinate. He doesn’t want to lose his money, no, but he says he won’t keep store afternoons and I know him well enough by this time to be mighty certain that he won’t!”
“Silly ass!” commented Jimmy as they reached the front of Academy Hall and the parting of their ways.
“I’m awfully much obliged to you,” said Russell. “You’ve been mighty friendly, Austen. I’ll be around to-morrow night if you’re quite certain you want to go to all that—”
“Wait a second!” interrupted the other, hunching the dilapidated parcel further under his arm with a thoughtful frown. “Look here, old son, I’ve got an idea. At least, I think I have. I’ve got something, anyhow. Would this Stick fellow be willing to stay in the store afternoons if he didn’t have to go there at all in the mornings?”
“Why, yes, I think he would. I’m sure he would. But, you see, the trouble is that he has to be there mornings, too. I have recitations—”
“A bas les recitations!” exclaimed Jimmy. “Listen! Suppose you could get some one to stick around the shop in the morning when you couldn’t. Wouldn’t old Stick be willing to put in the afternoon there?”
“Yes, but we’d have to pay some one, and—just now—”
“Not necessarily. At least, not much. Say—say twenty-five cents a week. Would twenty-five cents a week seem unreasonable? Then let us say fifteen—ten—five!”
“We might pay that much,” laughed Russell mirthlessly, “but just where could we find any one who’d come for that?”
“Where?” Jimmy struck an attitude intended to be heroic but which was somewhat marred by the sudden collapse of the parcel under one arm. A carton of crackers, a box of caramels, six oranges and two unidentified articles descended to the flagging. When the oranges had been chased down and recovered and the wreckage stowed into various of Jimmy’s pockets the latter took up the conversation where it had been so rudely interrupted.