“Gee! Wish I could do as well!” cried Herman Boyd. “Maybe, though, I can scrape together five or six dollars. I’ve sort of run ahead of my allowance, or I’d promise more.”
“I’m in the same box with Herman,” the Trojan declared.
Step coughed uneasily. As the especial crony of Poke, he really should be taking a leading part in these measures of financial relief.
“Ahem, ahem! I—I—er—er—course you fellows know where I stand. And I’d give my eye-teeth to help Poke out of the scrape. But it just happens I’m awfully short of cash. But I tell you what I’ll do: I’ll subscribe as much as the next fellow, and I’ll put it in, if only I can borrow it somewhere.”
“All right,” said Sam hastily, and shook his head warningly at the Trojan who was beginning to grin.
Again Step cleared his throat. “Ahem! Poke’s folks don’t want to hear about this, you understand—that is, we don’t want ’em to hear about it. You see, what with one thing and another lately—well, things have been breaking mighty badly for Poke at the house—things that weren’t really his fault, if you’d look at ’em right, but that just kept piling up on him. And so—well, this isn’t any time for more bad news to arrive.”
“I should say not!” groaned Poke soulfully.
Sam had been doing some mental arithmetic. “Look here, everybody! With what I can chip in, and what the Shark’ll do, I feel sure we can raise sixty or seventy dollars. That ought to be enough for sort of a first payment.”
“But I ought to make the payment,” Poke insisted.
“You can’t,” Sam told him bluntly. “That’s why we’re going to help you. And we’ll gain a little time for you to look around and scheme out ways to get the rest of the money.”