And I’ll be kicked hard if he didn’t. In an hour he came to the office with ten photographs and twenty-two dollars and a half. He handed over to the collector man what was due him, for Tallow had got in most of the collections, and had enough left to pay for the cuts of the photographs. The man signed a receipt for the money and went away, looking like he was disappointed.
“Well,” says Mark, “we s-s-scrambled out of that hole, didn’t we? But we got to do some harder s-scramblin’ now. I’m goin’ after more photographs.”
He took most of the day at it, and when night come around how many do you think he’d grabbed on to? Forty-one. Yes, sir. And he had the cash money for every one of them. That left us with just exactly ninety-one dollars and a half in the treasury, and so we were really some better off than we had been before the collector came around.
“Fiddlesticks!” says Tallow. “Wisht the collector hadn’t showed up. We’d almost be rich.”
“If he hadn’t s-s-showed up,” says Mark, “we wouldn’t have thought up this s-scheme. It’s havin’ to do things that makes folks do their best. Bein’ necessary is one of the best things can happen to a f-f-fellow.”
Wasn’t that just like him! And you’ll notice he didn’t grab all the credit himself, though, goodness knows, he was entitled to it. No, sir, he says, “we” thought up the scheme. He was the real kind of a kid to do anything with, because he kept you feeling good. All the time you knew he was the one that was thinking up things and doing them. All we did was trail around and help. But just the same, he made us feel we had as much to do with it as he did. I expect we worked all the harder because of that. Do you know, I shouldn’t wonder if that was a pretty good way for all folks that has other folks working for them to act. The working folks would work harder and take more pleasure in it. I expect Mark had it all figured out that way.
CHAPTER VII
After supper we met at the office, though I’m bound to say I wasn’t tickled to death with the prospect of what was ahead.
“Mark,” says I, “here we’re goin’ out to Center Line Bridge to meddle with somethin’ that don’t concern us. It ’u’d serve us right if this Man With the Black Gloves caught us and gave us the larrupin’ of our lives.”
“’Tis our b-business,” says Mark. “Anythin’ that’s suspicious is the business of a newspaper man. There’s news in it.... And b-besides I figger it’s our duty to do.”