Ken, on this first day, helped the old man load the trunks, rode with
him to their various destinations, saw them received by unbelieving and
jubilant owners, and then tore back to Applegate Farm, exultant and
joyful. Having no breath for words, he laid before Felicia, who was
making bread, four dollars and a half (six trunks at seventy-five cents
apiece), clapped the yachting cap over Kirk's head, and cut an ecstatic
pigeon-wing on the kitchen floor. "One trip!" gasped Phil, touching the
money reverently with a doughy finger. "And you're going to make two
round trips every day! That's eighteen dollars a day! Oh, Ken, it's a
hundred and twenty-five dollars a week! Why, we're--we're millionaires!"
Ken had found his breath, and his reason.
"What a little lightning calculator!" he said. "Don't go so fast,
Philly; why, your castle scrapes the clouds! This time of year I won't
carry _any_ baggage on the up trips--just gasolene wasted; and there's
the rent of the dock and the store-room,--it isn't much, but it's quite
a lot off the profit,--and gas and oil, and lots of trips when I sha'n't
be in such luck. But I _do_ think it's going to work--and pay, even if
it's only fifteen or twenty dollars a week."
Whereupon Felicia called him a lamb, and kissed him, and he submitted.
That night they had a cake. Eggs had been lavished on it to produce its
delectable golden smoothness, and sugar had not been stinted.
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