WO days later, on Monday, there was a meeting of the F. H. S. I. S., the call having been hurriedly issued by the secretary-treasurer in person. And when the members of the society were assembled in the barn Harry produced triumphantly three letters.
“They came this morning,” she said excitedly, “and I haven’t opened them yet. I thought you’d all like to be here when I did, you know. Here’s two from New York and one from Cleveland, Ohio, and—and they all feel as though they had something in them!”
“Bully!” cried Chub. “Open ’em up!”
“You do it,” said Harry, handing the letters to Dick. There was a moment of silent suspense while Dick carefully slit the first envelop with his knife. Out came a letter and—a check!
“How much?” cried the others in chorus. Dick looked at it, scowled and glanced at the few lines in the letter. Then:
“Five dollars,” he said blankly.
There was a moment of disappointment, broken by Chub.
“Mail it back to him,” he said disgustedly.
“Try the next one,” murmured Harry. Dick did so. Again a check came into sight.
“Fifty,” said Dick encouragedly.
“That’s better,” said Roy. “Try the next. Let’s know the worst.”
Dick opened the third letter, unfolded the sheet of paper within and looked on all sides of it. There was no check.
“Rotten!” growled Chub. “What’s the beast say?”
“It’s all right!” cried Dick who had been reading the letter. “He promises five hundred whenever we get ready to use the money!”
“That’s the stuff!” said Roy. “He’s all right, he is! What’s his beautiful name?”
“Lemuel Fish,” answered Dick.
“Well,” said Roy, when the laughter had subsided, “he may not be much on name, but he’s all right on promises.”
“He’s a promising man,” murmured Chub.
“You don’t think the promise is—is fishy?” asked Harry, and for a moment didn’t know why the others laughed. “But I didn’t mean to make a pun,” she declared earnestly.
“Oh, Harry,” teased Roy, “I saw you thinking that up whole minutes ago! And such a weak pun, too!”
“I didn’t! I didn’t!” cried Harry, stamping her foot, between smiling and frowning. Methuselah, who had so far been perched comfortably on her shoulder and behaving himself thoroughly, resented being jarred and so climbed down to the lid of the grain chest and from there to the barn floor, sidling off into the semi-darkness behind the harness-room with many cunning chuckles.
“Oh, he will pay all right,” said Dick. “He’s a railroad man according to his letter-head, and railroad men are all rich, you know.”
“Are they?” asked Chub. “Let’s start a railroad instead of a dormitory, then. What do you say?”
“Let’s see how much we’ve got subscribed,” suggested Roy. “Five hundred and fifty and five and forty—”
“Wait,” cried Harry. “I’m secretary! I’ll make a list of the subscriptions.” She started to work on the pad she carried, and the others waited patiently while she frowned and labored. Presently, “There!” she said. “Now listen:
“Well,” said Chub, “that’s something, even if it is a long way from thirty thousand.”
“And there are eleven people still to hear from,” said Harry hopefully.
“The one I wanted most to get a reply from,” said Dick, “hasn’t written yet. I hope he will.”
“Who is that?” Roy asked.
“David Kearney.”
“What? The banker? Why, he’s worth millions!”
“That’s why I hope he’ll answer us,” said Dick dryly.
“Do you mean that he went to school here?” asked Chub incredulously. Dick nodded.
“He was here for two years just after the school started, about twenty-three years ago. I don’t think he graduated, though. But that wouldn’t make any difference if he wanted to give us some money. He gives lots, you know. Only last fall he gave a small fortune to some little old college in Pennsylvania that no one ever heard of before.”
“I wish you’d registered that letter,” said Chub thoughtfully. “I wouldn’t want it to miss him.”
“Seems to me it’s time he wrote, if he’s going to,” said Roy.
“Oh, men like Kearney are pretty busy, I guess,” said Dick. “There’s plenty of time yet. I was rather hoping that he’d give a good big sum, say ten or twenty thousand. If we could get some one to give that much I’ll bet we wouldn’t have much trouble raising the rest.”
“I love the way Dick talks about ten or twenty thousand as though it was fifty cents,” sighed Chub. “Why, if I saw twenty thousand dollars coming along on the other side of the street, I’d be so scared I’d run up an alley! But Dick—why, Dickums would just smile and walk across and slap it on the back!”