The members of the Home Culture Club has read the challenge put out by Mrs. Strubber and them other wirnmin that calls themselves the Literary Circle, and the idea of their being smarter than the Home Culturers made us all laugh till we was sick.
We’re tickled to death to contest with them in any kind of a contest from washing dishes to building a house. If they can do a single thing that we can’t do a heap better, why, now’s the time to show us. We’re going into this thing, and when we’re through somebody in this town is going to be made to look mighty foolish—which is their natural way of looking.
There was more of it, but that’s enough to show how friendly it was and what a pleasant and sociable little contest it was going to be.
But what Mrs. Bobbin said was singing a baby to sleep when you come to compare it with what was said later and what was done later. The town took sides, and there was more bitter feelings than there was before the election when we voted on local option. Yes, sir, and more fight, too, because every husband of a club-woman figured he had to let on he was certain his wife was smartest and the best cook and the whole bag of tricks, and some of them men didn’t have any arguments to offer except what they could double up in their fists. Why, you could go down back of the fire-hall and see a fight almost any time of day!
The contest was to run two weeks, ending up with those two dinners and the exhibit of cooking, but before twenty-four hours was gone by it looked like maybe there wouldn’t be enough folks left undamaged to be in at the finish.
Folks didn’t dare stick their heads out of doors for fear of bumping into a woman after their subscription to the Trumpet. They just dug in like it was a matter of life and death. Mark watched it and grinned, for, says he, if there’s a man, woman, child, cat, dog, or parrot in Wicksville that hain’t a subscriber for our paper before this thing is over, it’s because he’s up so high in a balloon that nobody can reach him.
As for Tecumseh Androcles Spat, he worked with a baseball bat right beside him, and the way to both doors barricaded with packing-boxes so nobody could get to him. And when he went out he pulled up the collar of his coat and he jerked his hat down over his eyes so nobody would recognize him. He said, as far as he was concerned, he’d a heap rather have a whole skin and no excitement than to be having all the fun in the world, but obliged to see it out of a bed in the hospital.
Some of us had to be in the office all the time these days, and we drew sticks to see who it would be every morning. I lost three days hand running, so I didn’t get out to see Rock, nor out to the bridge when Jethro and G. G. G. met there the night that was set. No, I just hung around the office and took in subscriptions that the women brought in, and gave them out receipts, and talked to them, and kept both sides happy, like Mark told me to do. He said I was to do what I could to make both parties sure they was winning, but not to give out any real facts about how many subscribers was got. Which I did as good as I could.
Mark and Tallow went to the bridge, and it seemed from what G. G. G. told Jethro that the man called Pekoe, who had brought Rock to Wicksville, was doing something that hadn’t been expected of him, and that G. G. G. was startled over it and wanted Jethro to take extra pains to see that Pekoe didn’t get to see Rock. From what Mark and Tallow could gather, this Pekoe was coming to see Rock, but they didn’t know why—G. G. G. and Jethro didn’t.
“What he’s up to I don’t know,” G. G. G. told Jethro. “He don’t know anything. He can’t tell the boy anything. But something’s in the air. You keep them apart.”
“You bet I will,” says Jethro.