It was Stanley’s turn to do a little head-shaking. “Look here,” he confided earnestly, “you’ve got us wrong. We weren’t thinking of _buying_ the room; we just want to _rent_ it. Now, what about a room on the _back_ of the house? Something about fifteen dollars for the three of us? We aren’t crazy about the view, anyway; besides, we couldn’t see much at night, could we? You just take another peep into the old book there and talk reasonable!”
The gentleman seemed inclined to be haughty for a moment, but Stanley’s smile was captivating and he went back to the book good-naturedly enough. “There’s a room on the third floor,” he announced at last. “It’s rather small, but perhaps it will do. The rate is sixteen-fifty.”
Stanley mused a moment, mentally dividing sixteen dollars and fifty cents by three, and then nodded. “All right,” he agreed. “Guess that’ll have to do.”
“Say,” broke in Jimmy with very evident anxiety, “that includes meals, doesn’t it?”
This time the clerk smiled quite humanly. “Certainly,” he replied. “We are on the American Plan.”
“Idiot!” breathed Stanley as they turned away.
“That’s all right,” replied Jimmy doggedly. “It’s just as well to be sure. Look at the time they held us up for seven dollars apiece and then we found we had to pay extra to eat!”
“That was in a city, you chump,” reminded Stanley. They bade the boy with the luggage wait a minute, but Harley McLeod came hurrying in just then and they began the ascent of the stairs. Harley showed a wrathful countenance.
“Those robbers want three dollars for the car!” he sputtered.
“Three dollars for the car?” echoed Jimmy. “Let ’em have it, I say. It’s worth five, maybe, but three dollars is three dollars, and the room’s costing us sixteen-fifty--”
“_What!_” exclaimed Harley, standing stock-still on the landing. “Sixteen _dollars_?”
“And fifty cents,” confirmed Jimmy cheerfully. “The fifty cents is for the food.”
Harley McLeod stared darkly at Stanley. “You’re a swell little bargainer, you are! Why, that’s five and a half apiece!”
“Well, what of it?” asked Stanley huffily. “We had to pay six and a half last night, didn’t we? Say, if you don’t like the way I do it, why don’t you do it yourself? If you think you can get better terms--”