“We might,” began Russell, “put an ad. in their paper—” But Stick’s unhappy frown cut him short, and he dropped the subject and turned back to Jimmy. “You keep talking about six and a quarter,” he said perplexedly. “You mean six and a half, don’t you?”
“Eh? Oh, the price of it! Yes, yes, six and a half. I was thinking about the discount, I guess.”
“But the discount brought it to five-eighty-five.”
“Yes, well—you see, I’m an awful ass at figures,” answered Jimmy desperately. Not for worlds would he have had Russell know that he had mulcted himself of that twenty-three cents!
“Well, I don’t know what you think about it, Stick,” said Russell, “but I believe Jimmy has brought us luck!”
And Stick, rather unwillingly, agreed.
And as time went on that conviction strengthened with Russell. By the end of that week business had picked up enormously at the Sign of the Football. There had come a letter from Mount Millard ordering “one of those rakets like George Titus bought from you resently,” and as the money was enclosed Russell didn’t find it incumbent on him to criticize the spelling. High school boys were frequent visitors in the afternoons. They didn’t always buy, but those who didn’t spread the news and others came in their places. Another football had found its way to the Academy, and more and more Altonians were learning to enter under the alluring sign rather than to proceed a few doors further to the more pretentious House of Crocker. All this was vastly cheering to Russell and to Stick, and hardly less so to Jimmy, who, if not one of the firm, was nevertheless fully as interested in the success of the business as either of the others. Sid Greenwood had dropped in one morning when Russell was there and had looked and talked and pored over catalogues, and it was already an assured fact that the Sign of the Football was to have the patronage of the Basket Ball Team. And Bob Coolidge had broadly hinted but a few days later that it would be a good plan for Russell to put in a few sample hockey sticks and skates and so on; and Russell had duly ordered. Ordering was a regular daily performance now. Fellows were very good-natured about waiting a day or so, which was certainly fortunate, for only occasionally as yet did the store have just what was wanted! Russell or Stick or Jimmy would open an empty box, out of sight of the customer, frown, put it back, open a second and then shake his head. “Sorry, but we haven’t your size,” he would announce apologetically, or, “We’ve sold the last one.” Always, though, such a remark was invariably followed promptly by a reassuring: “They’re on order and will be along to-morrow. If you don’t mind dropping in about half-past four it’ll be here.” The New York train that carried the noon mail and express reached Alton at four. It took only fifteen or twenty minutes to get the goods from the post office or express company, and at four-thirty the customer went away contentedly. There was a slim black-covered book behind the counter and into this the orders went, and some time before six o’clock Russell would take himself to the telephone office and call up the New York dealer. Seldom did the dealer disappoint him.
Money was coming in now, but money was also going out, and the balance in the firm’s name at the bank was growing very slowly. Stick frowned often and darkly at the size of the orders that were despatched to the city and still more darkly at the checks drawn in settlement for them. But even Stick’s economical brain couldn’t find any way of selling goods without ordering them or of ordering them without ultimately paying for them. Meanwhile Jimmy was becoming a salesman of ability, to say nothing of poise. Jimmy had a way of selling a nose-guard as though it were a diamond set in platinum, and no purchaser of so small an item as a tennis ball went away without feeling that he had been treated like a person of importance and had somehow unintentionally managed to get the best of the transaction.
Russell’s aches left him gradually and by the end of that week he had fairly beaten out Tierney for the position at the right end of the second team line. The first team found their daily opponent a harder and harder proposition, and on Friday, for the first time, the scrimmage ended without a score for either side. To be sure, only one twelve-minute period was played, but even so—
The big team made its first trip away from home the next day and played Lorimer Academy. Lorimer had last year held Alton to a 3 to 3 tie, and an easy contest was neither expected nor found. At the end of the first half the opponents were even, with a touchdown and goal each. In spite of the story told by the score, Alton had showed rather better work, and the ball had, save for one brief and regrettable period, remained in Lorimer territory. The regrettable period had occurred at the beginning of the game, when, receiving the ball on the kick-off, Lorimer had brought it back to Alton’s forty-one yards. That unexpected feat had quite nonplused the visitors and during the next series of plays they showed that it had, for two gains had been made through the left of their line for a first down on the thirty-yard line. From there, following an attempt at Putney that yielded a scant stride, Lorimer threw forward to the fifteen-yard line where an unwatched half-back caught and, although chased down by Harley McLeod, managed to fall across the last line mark just inside the boundary. There was some discussion as to whether the runner had not gone out before he got the ball over, but the officials gave him the benefit of the doubt. Lorimer kicked the goal easily.