Jim and Ned were evidently bound to be good business men. Some of their plans for money-making were very peculiar. They lived side by side on Staten Island, in places where there was a magnificent view of the bay and harbor, and whence incoming and outgoing steamers could be seen to great advantage. They fitted up an office in a room in the attic of Jim's house, hung up a sign, "Shipping Office; latest news furnished of incoming and outgoing crafts"; and as they went at it in a systematic manner, had a capital spy-glass, and had been drilled from their earliest infancy in the knowledge of the different boats, they were often called upon by their neighbors to tell when a ship was due, or if it had already entered the Narrows. For this information they charged varying sums; and while not on the high-road to fortune, still made enough to provide many bottles of sarsaparilla, and more chewing-gum and bolivars than were at all good for the digestion.
Another scheme was selling eggs to their respective mothers, and they really had a very good chicken-yard for a time, while a mysterious account-book which bore the heading "JimandNedeggs" occasioned much merriment among their families (of course unknown to the boys). But latterly business had been dull. The best hens had succumbed to an epidemic, nobody wanted to know about the ships; it was early winter, and there were no more walks to be raked; in fact, a financial crisis was fast overtaking the two partners. Something had to be done, for there were Christmas presents to be bought, new bob-sleds to be had, and of a kind more dangerous than any they had yet risked their lives on. It was evident that only serious and concentrated thought could extricate the firm from the situation in which it was placed.
"Ned, we must think of some way in which we can make money. I was talking to Tom about it the other day, and all he would say was, 'Marse Jim, you leave it to me, and I'll think out a plan.' But not a syllable will he say as to what the plan is. He came up to the dining-room last night and called me out, said he had something of importance to tell me, and all it was, he asked me to ask mother for five dollars. Now you know as well as I do that mother won't let me have another cent for I don't know how long. She's mad because that money she gave us to put into the incubator was all thrown away by our forgetting about it, and leaving the eggs in there till the lamp exploded, and the eggs too. No, there's no use; we've got to find our way out ourselves. What do you think of our going out on a musk-rat hunt, and then selling the skins?"
"All very well," said Ned, the more prudent of the two; "but where are you going to find musk-rats, to begin with? How are you going to catch them when you do find them, and who's going to skin them?"
Blank despair settled down upon the two boys' countenances, and two more unhappy-looking individuals have, fortunately, rarely been seen. Suddenly around the corner of the house appeared a colored boy of about eighteen, black as the ace of spades, but grinning from ear to ear with good humor and amusement.
"What you sitting here in the cold for, you boys? Marse Ned, Marse Jim, you ought to be ashamed of yourselves. If missus found you sitting in the cold, she won't give you no more money for your 'lowance, and you dun bus' now, you tole me."
"Oh, Tom, do tell us a way to get out of this—a way to make money!" said the two boys, simultaneously.
"Well, this nigger ain't much good making money, but you two boys come in the black hole and talk it over, and Tom'll help when he can."
The black hole was in the cellar where the furnace was, and was a favorite resort of Tom's. As they talked now Tom looked up suddenly. An idea had come to him, and he said: "Marse Jim, Marse Ned, you better raise rabbits. Then ask yer mother to let me go to New York jus' befo' Christmas-time; I'll sell 'em in the streets, fifty cents and dollar apiece. Rabbits don't cost nuffin' down hyar, to begin with, and we'll make so much money that you boys will give Tom 'nuf to go down South with an' see his poor old father and mother."
The scheme sounded very plausible, told in Tom's excited way; but then Ned suddenly said, "Tom, where are we going to get the rabbits to start with?"