“I wonder what he’s g-g-got to do with it, then,” says Mark to me.
And then Plunk and Rock and Jethro all came around the corner of the house, and Mark didn’t dare make another move. We didn’t stay long after that, because we had a lot of work at the Trumpet office, so we went along. But we promised Rock we’d be back next day, some of us, and for him to lay low and not to try monkeying with Pekoe unless he got a good chance and was sure Jethro wasn’t around.
While we were walking home Mark says, “P-p-perty good day’s work. Got the worst part of Mr. Wigglesworth’s writing f-f-figgered out, and had a l-little chat with Pekoe.”
“There’s some bridges to cross yet,” says I.
“Yes,” says he, “but we’ll cross ’em. You bet.”
CHAPTER XVIII
My, how those Home Culturers and Literary Circlers did work to get subscriptions for us. I never would have believed it, and how any of them had time to cook their husbands’ meals, or wash their kids’ faces, I don’t see. Probably they didn’t, for little things like keeping house wouldn’t matter when there was a contest on to see who had the most brains.
Old Grandma Smedley claimed both clubs didn’t have any brains or they wouldn’t be fussing with such things. “I calc’late,” says she, “that I’m the only woman in town that’s got even common sense. If a woman wants dumb foolishness in the family she don’t have to do it herself. Her husband’s always ready.” But what she said didn’t matter; the contest went on just the same.
The rules of the contest were that the money had to be paid right in with a subscription before it counted, and the first thing Mark and us fellows knew we had quite some considerable of a bank account. You get forty-odd women hustling for subscriptions at a dollar and a quarter apiece, and it don’t take long to have the money mount up.
While the subscriptions were coming in we didn’t forget the advertising, you can bet. Mark figured out arguments for us to shoot at the merchants, and they worked pretty good. Every week we carried more advertising than we ever had before, just because we had convinced business men how interested everybody was in the Trumpet just now while the contest was going on, and how everybody was reading it. The business men could see that for themselves, because they were reading it, and their wives were reading it.