“You ain’t the only kid that can carry things,” Plunk says, with a scowl.
Mark he pulled out a little silver watch and held it in his hand. “Twelve m-minutes, was it? Can’t do it. I’ll keep time.”
Well, Plunk and me went at those boxes like sixty, and the way we ran them up-stairs was a terror to cats. When the last one was up we were panting and sweating and most tuckered out. Mark looked off his watch when we came out with a sort of surprised expression. “You kids is stronger than I figgered. You did it in eleven minutes and a half.”
“Sure,” I says.
“But them boxes wasn’t very heavy. You can’t carry that big box, by j-jimminy!”
Plunk and me was good and mad, and if anybody’d seen the way we hustled that big box in they wouldn’t have believed their eyes.
“That’s perty good,” says Mark. “Wouldn’t thought it of you kids. Must be stronger here in Wicksville than over to Peckstown where I come from.” He stopped a minute. “I can’t lift that big rockin’-c-c-chair myself.”
“Huh!” snorted Plunk. “That’s a easy one.” And in we wrastled with the chair.
We weren’t going to have any strange kid think we weren’t up to all he was, so we stayed right there all the afternoon, and I guess we proved pretty conclusively we could carry. And that wasn’t all: we proved we could last. I bet we carried two-thirds of the Tidds’ furniture in. When it was all done we sat down on the fence to pant and rest. Mark’s mother called him.
“I got to go to s-s-s-supper,” he says. “Come again when you feel s-s-strong.” And then he went into the house.