Page:Tales in Political Economy by Millicent Garrett Fawcett.djvu/95

 as ever I shall do to finish this by the time the Carrier Pigeon sails, and I expect it will fetch a hundred guineas in San Francisco. I've been at work on it ever since the ship left for the first time, five weeks to-day; I shall be lucky if I finish it in another three; but it'll bring me a hundred guineas if it brings me a penny." "A hundred guineas," gasped Collins, "for eight weeks' work! Why, leaving out the Sundays, that's more than a guinea a day." "Right you are," said the carpenter, chuckling; "and that's what I shall want to earn now, whatever I work at and whoever I work for." Poor Collins went away, and said to his wife, "We must do without that new room—the carpenter won't work now under a guinea a day; he says he can make that by sending things to San Francisco, and that he won't work for less." Mrs. Collins was very angry. She had been out to buy cloth and various things that she wanted for the making of the clothes she intended to send away in the ship. She had found everything either about twice the price that it had been before the return of the ship, or that it was not to