He started to open the register, but the Watermelon objected. "Here," he cried, "let Harry do it. I’m not wanting to be bunkoed out of me hard-earned lucre." And he lovingly rattled the keys in his pockets. Harry and the others stepped forward. "How much has been registered?" asked the Watermelon. Harry drew forth the strip of paper and after a few moments of mental agony, confused by the different results each obtained as all peered eagerly over his shoulder, he finally arrived at the correct answer, three dollars and sixty cents. It was Sunday and shaving day for the male quarter of the population. "Three, sixty," announced Harry in some trepidation, lest he be flatly and promptly corrected. The barber reached for the slip and added it on his own account. "Three, sixty," he agreed, and sighed. "Count the cash," ordered the Watermelon, and Harry counted, slowly, carefully, laboriously, and the rest counted with him, more or less audibly. When the last coin had been counted, there was a moment of puzzled silence. The Watermelon broke it. "Three, thirty-five," said he. "What did I tell you?" "Here," snapped the barber, "let me count it." He pushed Harry aside and again all counted as the barber passed the coins. Quarters, dimes, nickels and pennies, the last one was lingeringly laid on the pile and the sum was lacking a quarter to make it complete according to the registered slip. "Three dollars and thirty-five cents," said the Watermelon again, like the voice of doom. "Well, I vum!" exclaimed Harry. "How’d he do it?" asked the grocer’s son, with an eye out for possibly similar emergencies nearer home. The Watermelon shrugged. "I don’t know," said he. "Can’t do it myself, but the fellers in the cities have gotten so they can open ’em the minute the clerk turns his back. They can do it without any noise, too, and so quick you can’t catch ’em. I’ll be hanged if I know how they do it." Again the barber counted the change, again he totaled the numbers on the registered slip. They would not agree. That painful lack of a quarter could not be bridged. "He said it was automatic bookkeeping," moaned the barber, glaring at the slip that would register nothing less than three dollars and sixty cents. "The bookkeeping’s all right," said the Watermelon, "it’s the money that ain’t." He gathered up the coins, slowly, lovingly, and the barber turned away from the painful sight. "Do you want a shave?" he asked crossly. The Watermelon sank gracefully into the chair. "It’s hard luck," said he sympathetically, "but you oughtn’t to be so easy. Get wise, get wise." *CHAPTER III* *ENTER MR. BATCHELOR*