“Yes,” said Ed, speaking the word slowly as if thinking; “but that calculation hardly fits the case. It related to a single person, and we are five persons. We can live more cheaply together than five persons could live separately. Besides, that calculation up the river was made on a guess-work basis. It is very much better to base the calculation on facts, and fortunately I have the facts.” “What?” “Where did you get them?” These and like exclamations greeted Ed’s announcement. “Well, you see,” said Ed, “I have been keeping accounts in order to find out what it has cost us just to live on this voyage. I’ve set down the exact cost of everything we started with and everything we have bought since, including the two cords of wood we bought for the cooking-stove, and which we haven’t used up yet. I’ll figure the thing up and tell you exactly what it will cost us to board ourselves at college, provided we are willing to live as plainly there as we do on this boat.” “Why not?” called out Irv. “We’ve lived like fighting cocks all the way down the river--except that we’ve run out of milk pretty often.” “Do fighting cocks consume large quantities of milk, Irv?” asked Phil. “No, of course not. You know what I mean. I’m satisfied to live in college precisely as we have lived on the flatboat, and if I drink more milk, I suppose I shall make it up by eating just so much less of other things.” “Do you hear that, boys?” called out Constant. “Irv agrees that if we go to college together he’ll eat one pancake less for every extra glass of milk he drinks. Remember that. We shall hold him rigidly to his bargain.” By this time Ed, who had gone to the forward lantern to do his figuring,--for one really cannot “see to read” by even the brightest moonlight, as people often say and think they can,--was ready to report results. He said:-- “Counting in everything we have bought to eat, and everything that the Cincinnati banker gave us at Memphis, and the cost of our fuel, I find that it has cost us for our table, precisely $3.98 per week, as an average, since the day we left Vevay to drop down to Craig’s Landing. Let us say $4.00. That’s 80 cents apiece per week, for we won’t reckon Jim Hughes’s board. The college year is forty weeks, or a little less. At 80 cents a week apiece, we can feed ourselves on $32 a year each, or only $128 each for the whole four years’ course.” “Good,” said Phil, “now let’s figure a little.” With that he went to the light and made some calculations. On his return he said, “I reckon it this way:-- Rent $10 a year for each, or for the course $40 Board for each, $32 a year, or for the course 128 Fuel, lights, and incidentals--say for each 40 Tuition, if we have to pay it, for each 100