“No matter, no matter. I am accustomed to that. Give me but a corner to slumber in, food for my stomach, tobacco for my pipe, and my soul is at peace.”
“You’re hired,” says Mark.
“Where’s your coat?” says I.
“In useful service, my young friend. It hangs from crossed sticks in the midst of a garden patch a mile or more away. It was a lovely garden patch wherein grew peas, string-beans, luscious cabbages, fragrant onions. But it was being destroyed. The birds of the air descended upon it in thousands. I looked, I comprehended. What a pity, said I. So, to avert further depredations, I stripped my coat, hung it from crossed sticks, and stood it in the midst of the garden patch. The garden needed it worse than I. Each time I gaze upon my uncoated arms I say to myself, ‘Tecumseh Androcles Spat is doing his part to preserve the nation’s food.’”
“He talks like he was a lot educated,” says Plunk.
Tecumseh Androcles overheard him. “Educated. Ah, indeed. Have I not in my day set type for every page of Goober’s Grammar, Mills’s Spelling Book, to say nothing of histories, philosophies, dictionaries. But most important of all, almanacs. Young gentlemen, I have set no less than ten almanacs from beginning to end. What university, I ask you, can equip you with the facts contained in a family almanac?”
“You’ll n-n-need all you know around here,” Mark says, with a grin. “We just bought this p-paper at sheriff’s sale, and we’ve got the whole business to learn.”
“Good! Splendid! You’re in luck. Tecumseh Androcles Spat is the man to teach you. Where’ll I begin?”
“You might go out in the shop and l-look around. Sort of get the lay of the land,” says Mark.
He hung his silk hat on a hook and, in the most pompous, dignified way you ever saw, he stalked out into the press-room.