"I suppose an even eighteen dollars will satisfy you?" asked the hotel man.
"Yes, sir," admitted the greatly delighted Prescott.
While the money was being counted over, Dave slipped away with the push cart.
"In about ten minutes, sir," said d.i.c.k, after he had pocketed the money and had thanked the hotel man, "I"ll have something else to show you."
"What?" asked the man, eyeing d.i.c.k keenly.
"Now, if you don"t mind, sir," coaxed d.i.c.k, with a smile, "I"d rather not destroy, in advance, the keen delight you"re going to feel when you see the next cartload."
"How many of these cartloads have you lying around?" asked the proprietor quickly.
"The next one will be also the last, sir. May I call you out when my friends get here with it?"
"I---I guess so," a.s.sented the hotel man, and then went inside.
d.i.c.k found a seat on a nearby bench and waited.
Dave and Harry presently came along with the cart. d.i.c.k once more went after his prospective purchaser.
"What have you now---more ba.s.s?" asked the hotel man, eyeing the heavy box on the cart. Water was dripping from the ice and running to the ground.
"No, sir; just look!" begged Prescott, lifting some jute bagging from the top of the box, then digging down through the top layer of cracked ice.
"Brook trout?" cried the hotel man. "Where on earth did you get them?"
"We have a factory where we turn "em out nights, sir," volunteered Dave, with a grin.
"What do you want for them---same price as for the ba.s.s?" demanded the proprietor.
"We could hardly afford to do that, you know," Prescott replied.
"Down in a town like Gridley these brook trout ought to retail for a dollar and a half a pound. We"ll offer them to you, sir, at sixty cents a pound---flat."
"Take "em away!" ordered the hotel man, with an air of finality.
This time it was plain that he did not propose to purchase.
"You won"t be sorry after we"re gone, will you?" asked d.i.c.k politely.
"I can"t afford to put sixty-cents-a-pound fish on my bill of fare," said the hotel man.
At this moment two well-dressed, prosperous-looking, middle-aged men came strolling around the corner of the building. As d.i.c.k was about to cover his fish one of them caught sight of the speckled beauties, and stopped short.
"h.e.l.lo! Aren"t these fine, Johnson?" the man demanded of the proprietor. "Going to buy these trout for the hotel?"
"I can"t afford to put such costly fish on the bill of fare,"
replied Johnson candidly.
"Man, you don"t have to," replied the other. "Send these trout to the grill-room ice-box. Let guests who want brook trout order them as extras. Why, I"ll eat a few of these myself, if you serve "em."
"Certainly," nodded the other man.
Proprietor Johnson had caught a new idea from the suggestion of serving the trout as an "extra" in the grill-room of the hotel.
All of a sudden he began to scent a profit.
"All right, young man," smiled Mr. Johnson. "Begin to unload.
I"ll have the scales brought out again."
The weight proved to be a little over one hundred pounds. d.i.c.k accepted an even sixty dollars, while Harry Hazelton nearly strangled himself in his efforts to keep from cheering l.u.s.tily.
This money, too, was counted out.
"Are you going to bring any more fish this way?" asked Mr. Johnson.
"I can hardly say as to that, sir," d.i.c.k hesitated.
"If you do, I can"t agree positively to buy, but I"ll be glad, anyway, if you"ll give me the first chance. I will see how these trout "go" in the grill-room in the meantime."
"We"ll give you the first call, sir," d.i.c.k nodded. "Thank you very much for this morning"s business."
"That boy is a budding merchant," thought Johnson, staring after d.i.c.k as the three high school boys trundled their cart away.
But in this estimate the hotel man chanced to be wrong.
"Let"s hurry up and get away from the hotel---a long way off,"
urged Hazelton.
"Why?" asked Dave. "It was a fine place---for us."
"Yes; but I want to yell, with all my might," Darry declared.
"Seventy-eight dollars---think of it!"
"Nothing to get excited about," d.i.c.k declared calmly.
"When did we ever make so much money in life same time before?"
blurted Hazelton.
"Never, perhaps," Prescott admitted. "We made money, this time, because we had something that everyone wants, and the supply of which isn"t large. We would have made far more money if we had had a cart full of diamonds in the rough."
"What are you talking about?" demanded Hazelton. "We don"t know where to find diamonds."
"I didn"t say that we did," d.i.c.k rejoined. "But we had something that is rare, and in demand. The rarer a thing is that everyone wants the better price can be had for it. The ba.s.s didn"t bring anywhere near as much money as the trout, just because people don"t call for black ba.s.s as much as they will for brook trout."
They were entering the little village beyond the hotel. They had to go there in order to mail their letters, for all the boys had taken advantage of this opportunity to write home.
"We"ll be nervous with this seventy-eight dollars in camp, in addition to the few other dollars we have," Dave suggested.
"We won"t keep a lot of money in camp," d.i.c.k replied. "I"m going to buy a money order for seventy-five dollars, payable to myself, and send it to my father to hold for me until we get back. Then I"ll cash the order in Gridley and turn the money into our common fund."
"And we"ll add to that fund," proposed Hazelton eagerly.