“You better move away from here,” says he, “before I lose my temper.”
“Huh!” says I, moving off where I’d have a good start if he came after me. “Folks that loses their temper in Wicksville gen’ally gits all the help they want findin’ it ag’in.”
“Go ahead,” says he; “get all the laugh you can out of it now. In another day or two you’ll be laughin’ crossways of your mouth. What would you smart newspaper kids say to a daily in Wicksville, eh? Reg’lar city daily. Guess that would sort of put the lid on that old weekly of yours, wouldn’t it? Spragg is my name. Begins with a capital S, remember that.”
I wasn’t going to let on to him that what he said worried me, so I said to him: “You’d have to be spryer ’n you be now to git out a daily. The way you move around I guess a monthly’s about your speed.”
He made a move after me and I scooted down the street to tell Mark. He wasn’t in, though, and Tallow said he and Plunk had gone out to see Rock at the farm.
“When he comes back,” says I, “he’ll have all the rock he wants, and it looks to me like it would be rock bottom. We’re goin’ to be up against a daily paper here.”
An hour after in comes Mark and Plunk.
“B-been studyin’ the yard there at Rock’s,” says he, “and I c-c-can’t make head nor tail to that message of Mr. Wigglesworth’s. Found the cat, all right, and w-w-walked where she l-looked. M-measured off a hunderd and six feet, but there we come to n-ninety degrees in the shade. Stumped us. Found the shade, all right, but it wasn’t ninety degrees. Held a t-thermometer, and it wasn’t but sixty-seven.”
“It’s goin’ to be ninety degrees in the shade of this office,” says I. “Spragg’s back and is goin’ to start a daily to run us out of business.”
“How d’you know?” says he.