The picture on the desk was Z for zebra.
Lewis stared worriedly at it. “Now we’re really in a fix.”
“Yeah,” I admitted. “I don’t know what the market price is, but they can’t be cheap.”
“Figure it out—-expedition, safari, cages, ship, rail, fodder, keeper. You think we can switch him to something else?”
“I don’t see how. He’s put in his order.”
Bill came wandering in and wanted to know what was up.
When I glumly told him, he said cheerfully, “Aw, that’s the whole trick in trading, Pop. If you got a bum jack-knife you want to trade, you unload it on somebody who doesn’t know what a good knife is like.”
Lewis didn’t get it, but I did. “That’s right! He doesn’t know a zebra is an animal, or, if he does, how big it is!”
“Sure,” Bill said confidently. “All he saw was a picture.”
It was five o’clock then, but the three of us went uptown and shopped. Bill found a cheap bracelet charm about the size of the drawing in the book. When it comes to junk like that, my kid knows just where it’s sold and how much it costs. I considered making him a junior partner in charges of such emergencies, with about 10 per cent share or so—out of Lewis’s 35 per cent, of course—but I was sure Lewis wouldn’t hold still for that. I decided instead to give Bill a dollar a week allowance, said compensation to commence immediately upon our showing a profit.