“All right. Good night, sir.”
Mr. Gibson had a free ride along with his goods, and the team reached Wayback about nine o’clock next evening.
The boys carried the merchandise into the store, and as the storekeeper had a barn large enough to accommodate the horses and wagon, Dick arranged with him to put up his team there, they to sleep in the wagon themselves.
While Dick and Joe were hitching up next morning a farmer came up in company with Gibson and inquired what it would cost him to get a load of potatoes to Albany.
“How much do you expect to get for them?” asked Dick.
The farmer, with some shrewdness, named a lower price than he actually expected to receive, thinking thereby to cheapen the cartage.
“All right,” said Dick, promptly. “I’ll buy the lot from you for so much”—naming a lower figure—“and I’ll pay you cash down for them.”
The farmer saw he had made a mistake and started to hedge, but Dick said those were the only terms on which he would take the potatoes.
“But they’ll fetch more’n that in town,” objected the farmer.
“I expect to make a profit, or I shouldn’t have made you the offer,” said Dick.