Well, pretty soon along came my father and Mr. Whiteley, excited as could be and perspiring so their collars were melted. Dad he grabbed onto me and says: “What does this mean, young man? Where have you been? You’ve been scaring your mother and me most to death.”
“We—we went to get back Mr. Tidd’s engine,” I said, kind of shaky.
“Pretty pickle,” snapped Mr. Whiteley, “standing the town on its head. You ought to be ashamed of yourselves.”
“If you’d had the sense of a pint of mice,” says my father, “you’d have known a couple of kids couldn’t do any good. Why didn’t you come right off and tell me?”
“Didn’t think of it,” I says; and that was true, too.
“Now see what comes of being headstrong,” says Mr. Whiteley. “Probably the engine is gone for good. The men that took it have got a whole day’s start. If you’d come to us right away there wouldn’t have been much trouble getting it back. What you need is a good belting, both of you.”
“I’ll look after that, Whiteley,” says my father; “don’t ever worry.”
Now that was a nice thing, wasn’t it? After what Mark and I had gone through, to get licked for it! Seems like grownup folks are mighty unreasonable sometimes.
“I guess maybe,” says Mark to Mr. Whiteley, “we’ll git back the t-t-t—”
“Turbine,” says I.