The company started with a cash balance of four dollars on hand. Jimmy had been paid, although he had expressed his entire willingness to wait a couple of weeks for half of his money. Mr. Saunders had received his first installment, a new shoe and two new inner tubes had been bought and they had also purchased already fifteen gallons of gasoline, much of which had been used in trying the engine out in the garage. A license for the car had cost ten dollars and an operator’s license two more. They had also been obliged to buy a number of unthought of things, such as the rubber mat and brass polish and kerosene for the lamps and a new set of spark plugs. Paint, varnish, brushes, cylinder oil, cup grease and graphite had been anticipated but footed up higher than expected. Willard had put seventy-five dollars more into the business, which, with the fifty dollars loaned by Mr. Benton, represented a capitalization of one hundred and seventy-five dollars. Willard’s loan and Mr. Benton’s were to be paid back from the net profits of the enterprise.
At eleven o’clock that Tuesday morning The Ark, her brand-new number-plates in place, was run out of the garage and, with Tom at the wheel and Willard beside him, it chugged quietly—well, not quietly, perhaps, but, let us say, industriously,—through Washington Street in the direction of the station. Audelsville had six important trains a day, three from the east and three from the west. The first of these, the 9:01 from the west, usually brought few travelers, and the boys had decided to inaugurate their service with the 11:34, which was the Providence express and the favorite train for commercial travelers and business men. Later, at 1:57, there was a second train from the east, and after that one from the west at 2:06. Then there were no more until the Providence train went east at 6:05. At 8:40 the last of the half-dozen expresses passed westward.
As The Ark neared Walnut Street there came a hail and Jerry Lippit, vaulting the front fence as the quickest means of getting into the street, ran up. “How does she go, fellows?” he asked eagerly. “Give me a ride, Tom, will you?”
Tom stopped the car. “Jump in,” he said. Willard, however, could not resist a fling.
“Remember what we told you, Jerry?”
“What?” asked Jerry, as he scrambled into the rear and threw himself luxuriously on the seat.
“Why, that you’d be begging for a ride in a week or two,” responded Willard.
Jerry grinned. “I didn’t beg; I merely asked. Where are you going?”
“To the station,” answered Tom, starting the car again. They had not confided their plan to anyone as yet, and it was generally supposed that The Ark was purely a pleasure craft. They were not destined to go very far, however, without another stop, for a little further along Teddy Thurston, returning from a store with six preserving jars in a wooden box, planted himself in the middle of the street.
“Let me in, Tom! Gee, but don’t it look swell? Here, Jerry, take these things till I get in.”
“I’ll take you to the station,” said Tom, “but you may have to walk home.”
“Walk home! Why, is it going to break down?” asked Teddy with a laugh.
“No, but—there may be others to come back.” Tom looked questioningly at Willard.
“You fellows might as well know, I guess,” said Willard as Tom started on. “We’re going into the livery business.”
The passengers stared. “What’s that?” asked Jerry.
“Why, we’re going to take folks from the train to the hotel, or wherever they want to go,” Willard explained. “This is the Benton and Morris Transportation Company, Limited; limited to one automobile,” added Willard with a smile.
“Are you joking?” Teddy demanded.
“Not a bit of it. Ask Tom.” Tom nodded.
“Gee, but that’s a scheme!” exclaimed Jerry. “Say, you fellows might make a lot of money that way!”
“So we thought,” responded Willard dryly. “That’s why we’re doing it, although I suppose you chumps thought we’d bought this thing just so that we could take you to ride.”
“You mean that I’ve got to lug this blamed box all the way back from the station?” demanded Teddy.
“I hope so,” said Tom. “You’ll have to if we get any passengers.”
Teddy stared doubtfully and dubiously back toward home. Jerry grinned heartlessly. “Serves you right for butting in,” he said.
“Well, I can ride home on the trolley,” sighed Teddy. Then, “Look here, how much do you charge to bring folks back?”
“Twenty-five cents.”
Teddy put his feet on the preserving jars and settled himself comfortably in a corner of the comfortable leather seat. “All right,” he said magnificently, “I’ve got a quarter. You take me to my house, fellows!”
Tom and Willard laughed, but Jerry viewed Teddy thoughtfully a minute as they turned into River Street. Then, ingratiatingly, “You don’t happen to have two quarters, do you, Teddy?” he asked.
“I do not,” answered Teddy promptly and coldly. “Besides, you haven’t anything to carry and it would be wasteful and extravagant for you to ride home. And besides that, Jerry, you owe me a dime now. And it’s about time you paid it!”
“I’d rather do that than borrow any more from you,” returned the other disgustedly. “You’re a tightwad.”
“Honest, I haven’t got any more,” replied Teddy. “Look.” He pulled a leather purse from his pocket and held it open for inspection. It held a quarter, two flattened and defaced pennies and a much begrimed one-cent stamp. Jerry nodded.
“All right. I can walk back without hurting myself. Say, she goes like a breeze, Tom. Let her out some more, why don’t you? How fast can she go?”
“Eighty miles an hour,” replied Tom, winking at Willard. Jerry jeered.
“I’ll bet she can’t go thirty! How fast is she going now?”
“About twenty.”
“Let her out a little,” begged Jerry. “Just to show us!”
But Tom declined. “Some time I will, when we’ve got a good road. If I went any faster here, you’d be shaken out.”
They were in sight of the station now, an old red brick building some sixty feet long that had been built when the railroad first reached Audelsville and had never been altered or improved.
“Where are you going to stop her?” asked Willard as Tom slowed up.
“I don’t know. Most any old place, I suppose. I’ll run down by the freight shed and turn around.”
Although the train was not due for fully fifteen minutes the edge of the platform was pretty well occupied by vehicles. Connors, the livery man, was represented by a two-horse hack and a one-horse surrey. Mr. Martin’s big limousine was there, too, and the chauffeur, a smart young Irishman in a whipcord livery, looked curiously at The Ark as it trundled by. A couple of private turn-outs completed the roster. When, having turned the car around, Tom drew up toward the platform again there seemed no place to stop.
“Take it around there,” suggested Jerry, pointing to a short stretch of platform at the further end of the building which was unoccupied. But Tom shook his head.
“That’s where the express wagons back up,” he said. “They’d be mad and put me out. I guess we’ll have to leave her here, Will.”
“They ought to have more platform,” replied Willard. “This is a punk old station, anyway. Look here, Tom, we ought to have a sign or something on the car to let folks know that it’s public. We didn’t think of that.”
“I guess there are lots of things we haven’t thought of,” sighed Tom as he stopped the engine. “You fellows will have to get out when the train comes in. Then, if I don’t catch anyone, you can get back again.”
“Who get out?” demanded Teddy. “Me? I’m riding back. Here’s your old quarter now, if you can’t trust me.”
“I don’t want your quarter. If I don’t get any passengers you can ride back for nothing, but you’ll have to get out now until I see. Folks won’t want to get in here if it’s filled with kids.”
“Kids!” exclaimed Teddy wrathfully. “Gee, I like that! All right, Jerry; pile out. Can I leave my box in here?”
“Put it in front,” said Willard, “under my feet. Is that the train?”
It wasn’t, however; it was just a shunting engine down in the yards. Meanwhile the various drivers about the station were passing facetious remarks about The Ark. Finally the man who was driving the hack called across. “Where’d ye get it, byes?” he asked with a grin and a wink at the Martin chauffeur.
Tom held his peace, but Jerry smiled genially and answered: “Made it ourselves, Old Snookums. Want a ride?”
“Cut it out,” said Willard. “Don’t get fresh, Jerry.”
“You mean your great-grandmother made it,” retorted the Irishman on the hack. “Sure, I’ve seen better ones than that in the junk yards!”
“Oh, we don’t care what you’ve seen at home,” replied Jerry flippantly.
“Is that so? You’re a pretty smart kid, aren’t you?” the driver sneered angrily. “Mind, now, if that thing you have there scares these horses——”
“They look scared already,” offered Teddy. “Do they ever look around?”
A guffaw from the driver of a smart looking runabout and grins from others added fresh fuel to the Irishman’s wrath. “For two cents I’d get down from this box and punch your heads,” he declared, “the whole bunch o’ ye!”
Further hostilities were interrupted by the screech of the train down the track. The boys moved across to the platform and Tom and Willard walked around to the front of the station. The express came to a stop with a grinding of brakes and the passengers began to disembark. There were not so very many to-day, perhaps a score in all. Tom and Willard, the former at the front end of the train and the latter at the rear, were ready for them, however.
“Automobile to all parts of town!” announced Tom. “Ride up, sir?”
A man with a sample-case in each hand viewed Tom jovially but pushed by and transferred his luggage to the hack-driver. Several others viewed the boy good-naturedly but passed him by. An elderly lady, however, who was probably a trifle hard of hearing, handed a small brown bag to Tom and followed him around the station. But when she saw the automobile she shook her head in alarm and seized her bag again. “Sakes alive, you don’t expect me to trust my life in one of them things, do you, young man? Aren’t there any carriages here?”
Tom conducted her to the surrey and helped her in, while the driver grinned from the front seat. Meanwhile Willard had fared no better, and the boys, standing on the platform, watched the horse-drawn vehicles rattle away well filled.
“I guess it’s a sort of—of an innovation,” observed Willard. “I suppose we’ll have to educate them up to riding in an auto.”
“How long’s it going to take to educate them?” asked Tom disappointedly. Willard had no answer for that. Teddy and Jerry looked properly sympathetic but were doubtless relieved to find that they would not have to walk home.
“What you want, Tom, is a sign, a good big one,” said Jerry. “‘Any Part of the City for a Quarter,’ or something like that. Folks don’t know the thing’s public, you see.”
“I told them it was,” responded Tom bitterly. “I can’t very well knock them down and throw them in, can I?”
Teddy dug his hand in his pocket and sidled up to Tom.
“Eh? What’s this?” asked Tom.
“The quarter,” replied Teddy. “I’m going to ride back, you know.”
Tom pushed the hand away with a smile. “That’s all right, Teddy, I don’t want your money. Climb in, fellows!”
So The Ark trundled back to the village, completing its first, and unsuccessful, trip.