“Nix,” I says. “We’re goin’ to be right with you.”
“What you git we git,” says Plunk.
We listened and could hear the folks stamping their feet and clapping and yelling.
“Who won? Who won?” they started to yell over and over.
“Here goes,” says Mark, and out he went. We stuck right to his heels. The first thing I noticed, even in all that crowd, was Rock standing over at one side, and with a hand on his shoulder was the big man that we saw getting off the train. I nudged Plunk, and he looked, and Rock saw us and waved his hand.
Mark began. He made a regular speech, and it kept getting longer and longer, because he hated to come to the point and announce that nobody had won and that it was a tie. But he had to at last, because folks began to holler again.
Finally he says, “T-this has been a wonderful contest, ladies and gentlemen. There hain’t ever been sich a contest in Wicksville, and—if I got anything to d-d-do with it—there’ll never be another.” I believed that all right.
“The l-ladies,” says he, “has proved some-thin’. They have p-proved that nobody in the world kin beat the wimmin of Wicksville—not even the wimmin of Wicksville themselves.” He stopped and looked around, and though he was pretty uncertain in his mind, he grinned jest as calm as a cabbage.
“The number of subscriptions got by the Home Culturers,” says he, “is four hunderd and f-f-forty-six.”
There was yells and stamping from the Home Culturers.