“Oh,” says Mark, “you’re aimin’ to do that, eh? I didn’t have any right to complain when you came in here with your p-p-paper. You had a right to if you wanted to. And you had a r-r-right to take away my subscribers and advertisers if you could get ’em—by fair, b-b-business-like means. But you didn’t have a right to come in here d-d-deliberately intendin’ to bust up our business. That hain’t fair or honest.”
He stopped and looked Mr. Spragg over from head to toes.
“Come to t-think of it,” says he, “I don’t b’lieve I like your l-looks. You look like a bluffer to me, and your eyes are too close t-together for folks to be warranted in t-trustin’ you far. So I sha’n’t.... That’s about all. I wanted to be d-d-decent about it, but I guess that hain’t your way of doin’. So I’ll issue a little warnin’. Go as far as you kin to get business. Go after my business as hard as you can m-m-manage—but do it fair and above-board and the way d-decent business men do. As l-long as you stick to the rules there won’t be any trouble. But the f-first time I catch you t-t-tryin’ to do anythin’ underhand or shysterin’ you’ll think you sat down unexpected on to a nest of yaller-jackets. Jest f-f-fix that in your mind, Mister Spragg.... Good-by.”
For a minute Spragg stood looking at Mark bug-eyed. He was ’most strangled with astonishment, I guess. We turned and walked off, and we’d gone fifty feet before he came to himself enough to say a word. Then he yelled:
“Hey, come back here! Hey, you! What you mean talkin’ like that?” And he started after us. But just then Billy Green, the hotel clerk, came out.
“What’s matter?” says he, and then he saw Mark and me. “Hain’t been goin’ up against Mark Tidd, have you?” says he to Spragg.
“That fat kid was sassin’ me,” says he.
“Thank your stars,” says Billy, “that’s all he done to you. Take my advice and forgit it.”
Mark didn’t miss a word of it, and I could see his ears getting pink with pleasure. He wasn’t swell-headed, and I guess I’ve said so before, but he did like to hear nice things said about himself, and more than anything else he liked to know that folks figured he wasn’t the sort you could take advantage of. Mark was different from most fellows. He’d rather have the sharpest brain in town than to win the most events in the Olympic Games. And you could tickle him more by praising something he’d thought up than by praising something he’d just done.
Mark didn’t say anything while we walked a couple of blocks, but a man with one eye, and that one under a patch, could have seen he was studying and studying.