“Hey! inside there! Hey! Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd, are you at home?”
“It’s Zadok,” says I, and we ran to the door.
Sure enough, there was old Zadok Biggs, the tin peddler, who was such a good friend of ours. Zadok was about half a man high and a man and a half wide, with the soberest, most serious-looking face you ever saw. He traveled all over the State in his red wagon, swapping tinware with wimmen for old rags.
“Come in, Zadok,” Mark called, and in he came.
“Ha!” says he. “My friend Marcus Aurelius. Remarkable boy, remarkable name. Where’s your ma and pa? Extraordinary folks. No ordinary ma and pa would have picked out such a name. Live up to it,” says Zadok Biggs. “And there’s Binney Jenks, too. Howdy, Binney?”
“Fine,” says I, “and how’s yourself?”
“Excellent,” says he, “or, to put it in plain language, very well indeed. What have you boys been accomplishing? Accomplishing is an elegant word. I love to use it. Most folks would say’doing.’”
“We’re runnin’ a newspaper,” says I. “At least Mark is, and the rest of us are helping.”
“Newspaper. Ha! Splendid! Molding public opinion. I, Zadok Biggs, might have been a great editor, though nature fitted me to be a judge. What newspaper?”
“The Wicksville Trumpet” says Mark.