Adventure stories; Automobiles -- Juvenile fiction; New York (State) -- Fiction; Teenage boys -- Fiction
“I don’t suppose I know anyone just now,” said Jimmy hesitatingly. “I
should think maybe you’d find someone by advertising in the Providence
papers.”
Willard’s gaze came away from the photographs. “Don’t suppose you’d
want to do it, Jimmy?” he asked.
Jimmy didn’t seem surprised. Probably he had suspected that the boys
had him in mind from the first. He shook his head. “I’d like the work,
I guess, but I don’t suppose you could pay me enough to make it worth
my while, fellows. You see, I get three-eighty a day at the shop.”
Tom sighed. “We were afraid that would be it,” he said. “You see, the
best we could pay would be――――” he looked questioningly at Willard.
“Twenty a week,” supplied the latter. Tom stared. They had agreed the
day before that they couldn’t afford to pay more than fifteen! Jimmy
shot a look of surprise at Willard.
“That would be over eighty a month,” he said. “There wouldn’t be much
in it for you fellows at that, would there?”
“No, not very much unless the business grew. But it would be better
than losing it altogether, I guess. What we want to do some day, Jimmy,
is get one of those motor trucks, you see, and handle baggage and
freight. There’s a lot of money to be made that way.”
Jimmy grinned. “Say, Connors will be after you fellows with an axe the
first thing you know,” he said.
“We’re not troubling about Connors. At first I sort of disliked the
idea of interfering with his business, Jimmy, but he’s worked all sorts
of games on us, like getting the police to refuse us a stand on Main
Street and having Johnny Green try to smash our car――――”
“Oh, maybe Connors didn’t get him to try that,” said Jimmy. “I guess
Green thought of that himself, he and Pat Herron. Pat’s a pretty tough
old rascal.”
“Anyhow, Connors must look after himself. Besides, my father says he’s
worth a couple of hundred thousand dollars right now; owns lots and
lots of houses――――”
“He certainly does. He owns this one we’re in now. Still――I don’t know;
a couple of hundred thousand is a lot of money, Will.”
“Well, he’s rich, all right. It isn’t as though we were getting
business away from a poor man, is it?”
“No, I don’t think you need to let that worry you,” Jimmy laughed.
“You won’t send Connors to the poor house if you get twenty motor
trucks.” He was silent a moment. “It’s a good scheme, too,” he went on
presently. “You could keep a truck busy just hauling freight to the
stores, I guess. And then there’s baggage besides.”
“How much would one cost?” asked Tom practically.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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