more truck than any other kid in Tutter. If he took a sudden notion to start a circus all he would have to do would be to whistle and his folks would stock him up with a baby elephant and a flock of camels. 

Peg was silent. 

“I don’t like to ask Pa for money,” he finally spoke up. “For he has to work hard for what he gets. If I could sell some of my rabbits.…” 

“Don’t sell the white one,” grinned Scoop, “for we need it in our act. Remember?—I wave the magic wand over the empty teacup and out jumps a white rabbit.” 

“Tommy Hegan wants to buy a pair of rabbits,” I told Peg, who promised to call on the Grove Street kid the first thing in the morning. 

Scoop was adding in his mind. 

“If you can get three dollars,” he told Peg, “we’ll have an even thirty. That ought to be enough to start with.” 

“Thirty dollars,” repeated Red, thinking of his stomach. “That will buy—um—three hundred [9]ten-cent dishes of ice-cream; or six hundred ice-cream cones; or three thousand penny sticks of licorice; or——” 

[9]

ice-cream

Scoop gave the hungry one a contemptuous up-and-down look. 

“Good-night!” he groaned, throwing up his hands. “It’s a hopeless case.” 

Red grinned. For he likes to get Scoop’s goat. 

“I can’t work,” he strutted around, holding his freckled nose in the air, “if I can’t eat. And if you expect me to put in ten dollars——” 

“Your ten dollars is an investment,” explained Scoop, who has learned a lot about business from his father. “It gives you a quarter interest in the company.” He paused, then added with a grin: “If we take in a million dollars, you get a quarter of it.” 

“I’ll be satisfied,” Peg spoke up in his sensible way, “if we make a hundred dollars … twenty-five dollars apiece. I’ve been wanting a bicycle.” 

“You and me both,” I put in. 

“Well,” grinned Scoop, “it’s a bit unlikely that we’ll get to be millionaires. Still, you never can tell.” [10]

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