“Tell you what I’ll do,” announced Jimmy. “We give a ten per cent discount to Alton fellows and I don’t see why we shouldn’t give the same to Mount Millard. You may have that racket for five dollars and sixty-two cents. All I ask is that you tell fellows where you bought it and that if they’ll take the trouble to come over here—or send over, if they like—we’ll treat them white and give them ten per cent discount from the regular price. What do you say?”
The boy hesitated, but the space of that hesitation was so brief as to be almost negligible. “I’ll take it!” he said crisply.
When they were gone, hurrying off to their appointment at the nearby dentist’s, Jimmy smiled proudly as he took out a pen and began to figure on a piece of wrapping paper. “‘b.j.t.,’” he murmured. “That’s 6, 5, 0. I was only a quarter of a dollar out of the way. All right. Now, ten per cent off that leaves—let’s see—yes, five-eighty-five.” He counted the money on the counter: a five dollar bill and sixty-two cents in change. Then he figured once more. “I owe twenty-three cents,” he muttered, and found the amount in his pocket and added it to the sum on the counter. Then he reached beneath for the cigar box and swept the proceeds into it, with an air of intense satisfaction not at all marred by the fact that the sale of the tennis racket, because he had translated the price-tag’s inscription erroneously, had cost him personally twenty-three cents!
That transaction satisfactorily completed, Jimmy went, whistling, back to the doorway to again play the rôle of the watchful spider. The tune he whistled evidently did not please Mr. J. Warren Pulsifer who had left his cage and was listlessly arranging a bunch of asparagus fern in the wax-papered bottom of a long card-board box. As he worked he shot impatient, even indignant glances at the unconcerned Jimmy, who, not realizing the pain he was inflicting on the florist’s nerves, went heedlessly and blithely on. It is just possible that, even had he realized the discomfort his melody was causing, he would have continued it, for Mr. Pulsifer didn’t stand very high with Jimmy.
Others came and looked into the window, some interestedly, some carelessly, and all ultimately passed by. The better part of an hour passed. The sunlight became very warm, and Jimmy looked longingly across the street toward the screen door of the Blue Front Pharmacy from behind which came the hiss of carbonated water. Jimmy wanted a cooling drink very much. But duty held him sternly at his post. If, he warned himself, he were to cross the street even for a scant three minutes some one might enter the store in his brief absence and, finding none to wait on him, go away again. Besides that—and Jimmy glanced at his watch—Rus Emerson had promised to run over at ten to see how he was getting on, and it certainly wouldn’t do to be missing when Rus arrived! Tiring of watching the street, Jimmy went back behind the counter. There was no chair there, which he thought showed a sad want of interest, on the part of his employers, in his comfort, but he found that it was possible to squeeze a scant portion of his anatomy against the boxes on the lowest shelf and maintain his position there by bracing his feet against the edge of the counter. He had just got himself satisfactorily settled when the doorway was darkened and an anxious voice hailed him above the tramp of hurrying footsteps.
“Where’s the tennis racket?” called Russell anxiously.
Jimmy dropped his feet and came upright very promptly. “Tennis racket?” he repeated. “The tennis racket? If you mean—”
“I mean the one in the window,” interrupted Russell excitedly. “It’s gone!”
“Oh, that!” replied Jimmy casually. He brushed an invisible speck from a sleeve and smiled boredly. “We sold that.”