Well, there was a mass meeting, and our folks adopted resolutions paying their respects to Eagle Center and to everybody that lived in it, and they vowed they wouldn’t have any dealings with the town or anybody in it. They appointed committees and everything.
Mark and the rest of us were at the meeting, and we got busy getting subscriptions. Civic pride was the tune we played.
“Here,” says Mark, “is a paper all our own. It’s a b-b-better paper than Eagle Center’s. Yet you f-folks let an Eagle Center man come in here and sell that paper of his, and you r-refuse to buy ours. Now’s the time to show them. If you mean what you say, why, cut out that Eagle Center paper and dig down for a dollar ’n’ a quarter to subscribe for your own.”
That was the way he talked, and the rest of us took a leaf out of his book. And it got results, too. That night we took more than fifty subscriptions. Which was pretty good. We thought it had disposed forever of the Eagle Center Clarion, but it hadn’t. Anyhow, it hadn’t disposed of Mr. Spragg, who seemed to have got a grudge against us. He wasn’t much of a newspaper man, but as an enemy he did pretty well, so we found out before we were through with him.
CHAPTER X
“We’ve been sort of neglectin’ Rock,” says I to Mark Tidd, that evening.
“We have been perty b-busy,” says he, “but we better go out to see him to-morrow.”
“Fine,” says I. “I liked his looks.”
“Man With the Black Gloves is in t-town,” says Mark.
“When did you see him?” says I.