"I guess I shall; that"s right," agreed Paul. "How am I going to get together the rest of that money! You haven"t any suggestions, have you, sir?"
"Not unless you want to do Thompson"s work while he takes his trip West.
He is going out to Indiana to see his mother and will be away a month or so; in the meantime I have got to hire another man to do the ch.o.r.es about the place. The lawn must be cut; the leaves raked up; the driveway kept trim and in order; and the hedge clipped. If you want to take the job I will pay you for it."
"I"d have to do the work Sat.u.r.days, I suppose."
"That wouldn"t hurt you, would it?"
Paul thought a moment.
"N--o."
"Undoubtedly it would interfere with your school games, the football and baseball," said his father. "Maybe a typewriter isn"t worth that amount of sacrifice."
"Yes, it is."
"Think you want to make a try at Thompson"s job?"
"Yes, sir."
"Then I won"t hire in another man; only remember I shall expect you to stick to the bargain. I can"t have you throwing up the place in a week or two."
"I shan"t do that."
"And I can"t have my work done haphazard, either," continued Mr.
Cameron. "It must be done well and regularly."
"Yes, sir."
"You want me to give you a trial?"
"Yes, Dad."
"Do you want to do the whole job--the bra.s.ses indoors too?"
"Yes, I may as well take on the whole thing since I am out for money,"
laughed Paul.
"That"s right. You have the proper spirit--the spirit that buys typewriters," answered his father. "I don"t believe the exercise will hurt you, and at the end of it you will have something more to show than a dislocated shoulder, maybe, or a cracked cranium."
"Do you think I can earn what money I shall need to make up the rest of my fifty dollars?" inquired Paul anxiously. "Can I do it in a month?"
"A month of work will give you the rest of your fifty, son; have no fears. It will give you, too, all the work you will want for one while," answered Mr. Cameron. "Unless I am greatly mistaken, you will be quite ready to resign your post to Thompson when he comes back."
"Perhaps I shall," Paul replied, "but if you are repenting your bargain and are trying to scare me off, Dad, it is too late. You have hired me and I mean to stick it out."
"Go ahead, youngster, and good luck to you!" chuckled his father.
CHAPTER X
A DISASTER
It was after Paul had toiled early and late and put aside enough money for the new typewriter, and even a little more, that the first calamity befell the _March Hare_.
When the accounts were found to be short, it was unbelievable. Melville Carter, the business manager, who handled all the funds, was the soul of honesty as well as an excellent mathematician. His books were the pride of the editorial staff. Therefore when he was confronted with the hundred-dollar deficit, he could scarcely speak for amazement. There must be some mistake, he murmured over and over. He had kept the accounts very carefully, and not an expenditure had been made that had not been talked over first with the board and promptly recorded. There never had been a large surplus in the bank after the monthly bills were paid, but there was always a small margin for emergencies. The treasury had never before gone stone dry. But there it was! Not only was there no money in the bank, but the _March Hare_ was about fifty dollars in the hole.
Paul and Melville went over and over the accounts, vainly searching for the error. But there was no error. The columns seemed to add up quite correctly. So, however, did the deposit slips from the bank. And the tragedy was that the two failed to agree. The bank had a hundred dollars less to the credit of the _March Hare_ than the books said it should have.
In the meantime, at the bottom of Paul"s pocket, lay a bill of fifty dollars for publishing expenses. What was to be done? The bill must be paid. It would never do to let the _March Hare_ run behindhand. To begin to run into debt was an unsafe and demoralizing policy.
Paul"s father had urged this advice upon him from the first. The _March Hare_ must pay its bills as it went along; then its editors would know where they stood. And so each month the boys had plotted out their expenses and kept rigidly within the amount of cash they had in reserve.
They had never failed once to have sufficient money to meet their bills.
In fact, their parents had enthusiastically applauded their foresight and business ability.
And now, suddenly and unaccountably, here they were confronted by an empty treasury. What was to be done?
Of course the bill was not large. Fifty dollars was not a tremendous sum. But when you had not the fifty, and no way of getting it, the amount seemed enormous.
Then there was the balking enigma of it. How had it happened?
"If we only knew what we had done with that hundred, it would not be so bad," groaned Melville. "It makes me furious not to be able to solve the puzzle."
"Me, too!" Paul replied gravely.
And worse than all was the humiliation of finding they were not such clever business men as they had thought themselves to be. That was the crowning blow!
"A hundred dollars--think of it!" said Paul. "If it had been twenty-five! But a cool hundred, Mel!"
He broke off speechlessly.
"We can"t be that amount short," protested Melville for the twentieth time. "We simply can"t be. I have not paid one bill that the managing board has not first O.K.-ed. You know how carefully we have estimated our expenses each month. We have kept a nest-egg in the bank, too, all the time, in case we did get stuck. I can"t understand it. We haven"t branched out into any wild schemes. Of course, after the party we did make those presents to the school; but we looked over the ground and made sure that we could afford to do so."
"We certainly thought we could," returned Paul glumly. "Probably, though, we were too generous. Wouldn"t people laugh if they knew the mess we are in now!"
"Well, they are not going to know it from me," growled Melville. "If I were to tell my father we were in debt he would say it was about what he expected. I wouldn"t tell him for a farm down East. And how the freshmen would hoot!"
"I don"t think my father would kid us," Paul said slowly, "but I know he would be awfully disappointed that we had made a business foozle."
"I, for one, say we don"t tell anybody," Melville burst out. "I"ve some pride and I draw the line at having every Tom, d.i.c.k, and Harry shouting "I told you so!" at me. What do you say, Paul, that we keep this thing to ourselves? If we have made a bull of it and got ourselves into a hole, let"s get out of it somehow without the whole world knowing it."
"But how?"
"I don"t know," Melville returned. "All I know is I"m not for telling anybody."