Mr. Benton considered a minute. “It sounds all right, son,” he answered at last. “It all comes to this. If you need more money to enlarge your business you’ve got to pay for it. Brennan will want a third of the business, as I understand it. Now the question is whether that’s paying too much for the sum of seven hundred dollars.” “But we’re getting more than the money, sir,” said Willard. “We’re getting Jimmy. He knows all about automobiles, can run them and repair them, and is just about the best fellow we could get to go in with us. Don’t you think so, Tom?” “Yes, I do. What father means is that if we’re satisfied to go on the way we are, why, that’s one thing; if we want to――to expand, that’s another. In that case we’ve got to have money and help. So, then, could we get hold of seven hundred dollars without taking Jimmy in with us and giving up a third interest in the company?” “We might save that much in the course of time,” said Willard doubtfully. “But what I’m afraid of is that by the time we’d scraped up that much money someone else might have stepped in and be doing what we want to do.” “That’s so,” Mr. Benton agreed. “In fact――――” he hesitated. “What is to keep Jimmy from doing it, boys?” “Doing――――” “Going into the business by himself, I mean.” “Why――why, he wouldn’t do that!” exclaimed Willard. “He wouldn’t be mean enough!” Mr. Benton smiled. “He’d have a perfect right to, I guess. It’s only what you did, isn’t it? You didn’t hesitate to run in opposition to Mr. Connors, did you?” “That’s so,” said Tom thoughtfully. “I don’t see why Jimmy shouldn’t start in business for himself if he wants to.” Willard frowned and moved uneasily in his chair. “Then――then let’s get him before he thinks of it!” “He’s probably thought of it long ago,” Mr. Benton laughed. “And I don’t say that he would start an opposition to you; I only say he might――and could without doing anything out of the way. Probably he wouldn’t. Someone else might, though. I guess if you really want to enlarge and want to risk it, now is the time, boys.” “Then you think we’d better go ahead?” asked Tom. “I hardly like to advise you, Tom. I don’t know much about automobiles or garages. If there’s really as much money to be made as Jimmy Brennan says there is, it sounds like a good thing. You’d better talk it over with your father, Will. See what he thinks.” Tom went over to Willard’s after supper. Mr. Morris was at church when he arrived, but returned half an hour later, and the three sat out on the porch and discussed the matter thoroughly. Mr. Morris had had money and lost it and so had learned caution. But he favored the boys’ plan from the first.