“Dunno,” says Uncle Ike. “He didn’t say. Just come a-struttin’ up to me and says, ‘My good man, can you take me to the house of a man named Tidd immediately?’ I looked him in the eye and says back: ‘My good man, I kin take you there, and I kin take you immediate, or I kin take you less immediate. It all depends.’ Well, he got in without sayin’ any more, and I charged him double fare. He’s there now.”
“Uncle Ike,” says Mark, with his mouth set firm and his eyes twinkling bright, “can you make these horses git?”
“I kin,” says Uncle Ike, “if it’s necessary.”
“It’s mighty necessary,” says Mark.
Uncle Ike leaned over and laid his whip across the horses’ back. “Giddap, there!” he yelled, and off we went, rocking and rattling and jumping and tipping down the road toward Wicksville.
CHAPTER XXI
Mark Tidd’s father was walking up and down the parlor with a volume of the Decline and Fall in his hand when the pompous man with the silk hat rapped at the door. Mr. Tidd would read a few lines and then go stamping across the floor, shaking his head and talking to himself as though he’d lost his mind. His hair, what there was of it, was all rumpled up, and he was so excited and afraid and fidgety he couldn’t keep still.
Mrs. Tidd was out cleaning up in the kitchen. That was just like her; she would have to go on working if a cyclone came and blew away the front of the house. Yes, sir, she’d keep right on scrubbing what was left.
The man with the silk hat pounded on the door two or three times before anybody heard him, but at last Mr. Tidd went poking out and opened the door a crack.
“Is this Mr. Tidd?” the man asked.