“Must be a leak somewhere,” said Dick. “Why, with forty-three boys at four hundred dollars a year, I don’t see why the Doctor doesn’t make slathers of coin.”
“He used to,” said Harry; “but everything costs so much more nowadays, you see. Papa says that if we had accommodations for twenty more boys the school would make money.”
“What kind of accommodations?” asked Dick.
“Why, places to sleep and eat,” answered Harry.
“But if he’s losing money now with forty boys I should think he’d lose half as much again with sixty,” said Chub.
“Didn’t you ever hear the saying that it costs as much to feed three persons as it does two?” laughed Dick.
“Papa means,” explained Harry, “that the expenses wouldn’t be much larger than they are now. It would take more food, of course, and—and things like that, but there wouldn’t have to be any more teachers, because papa and Mr. Cobb and Mr. Buckman could teach sixty boys just as well as forty.”
“I see,” said Chub. “But—could he get twenty more boys? The school isn’t quite full now, you know.”
“He could if he advertised in the magazines and papers,” said Harry. “He never has advertised because he says it wouldn’t pay to do it unless he could take lots more boys.”