“He don’t seem to have much. No,” said Stet, “I saw him borrow from two or three chums. But he’s got great prospects, I heard him say. He’s waiting for somebody to come to Pleasantville, or for something to happen. You leave it to me. I’ll watch him like a ferret, only you’d better leave word where I can find you, if anything important comes up.” “All right, Stet. My mother will know where I am each day I am gone.” “And say,” continued Stet, “I want you to say something to me.” “Say something to you, Stet?” repeated Frank in a puzzled way. “Uh--huh.” “What?” “I want you to look at me fierce, and frown, and say that you order me out of your place, and if I show up again you’ll break every bone in my body.” “See here--” began Frank in wonderment. “Now, you just say it,” persisted Stet. “I know my business,” and he blinked and chuckled craftily. “All right--here goes.” “Good as a play,” declared Stet, as Frank went through the rigmarole. “Now I needn’t tell any lies. Thrown out by my friends, discharged from my job, O--O--Oh!” and Stet affected sobs of the deepest misery. “Had Bob Haven kicked me--not hard--out of the shop last night. See? Object of abuse and sympathy. Oh, I’m fixed now to play Mr. Dale Wacker good and strong.” Stet disappeared the way he had come in a high state of elation. Frank went into the house for breakfast. He walked as far as the office with his mother. Then he went to the livery stable where he had hired the turnout. He was soon on the road. Frank tried to forget the anxieties of the mail order business and his missing friend. He planned to cover six little towns by nightfall. Frank had good luck from the start. At a crossroads there was a country schoolhouse, a general store and some twenty houses. The man running the store was just stocking in for the fall term of school. Frank came in the nick of time. He sold the man over ten dollars worth of notions and novelties. Watering his horse at a roadhouse, a little later on, he interested some loungers on the veranda. Frank got rid of two rings, a cheap watch, a pedometer and three of Markham’s puzzles. At noon he took dinner at Carrollville, quite a good-sized town. A small circus was playing here. Frank conceived the idea of buying a privilege to sell on the circus grounds. The manager wanted ten dollars for a permit, however, so Frank took up his stand near the railway depot. As the crowds came for their trains at five o’clock, he opened up his novelty stock. “A pretty thrifty day,” mused Frank, an hour later, as he started for his final stop of the day at Gray’s Lake. “Profits eleven dollars and twenty cents. Why, thirty days of this kind of trade will give me back my lost capital.” Gray’s Lake was a settlement and a summer resort. Frank put up the horse, got a good supper, and then selected the newest and most salable of the trinkets and novelties he carried in stock.