Mr. Tidd shook his head slow and worried. “Don’t seem like that was enough. No, sir, that don’t seem enough nohow.”
“Well, I’ll stretch a point. Just sign your name to this assignment and I’ll give you seven hundred and fifty.”
Mr. Tidd walked to the table and took the fountain-pen the lawyer offered him. He held it in his hand and looked out of the window with tears standing in his eyes. “An’ I figgered it would make me rich. Seven hundred and fifty dollars. Oh, ho! Mister, it’s cost me more’n that to make the model. Oh, ho!”
“Sign right there,” said Carver, pointing to a line.
“Maybe I better speak to my wife about it first,” Mr. Tidd said, not being certain what he ought to do. I guess he didn’t really know just what he was doing.
“Nonsense,” the lawyer put in, quick. “Just sign right there, and the money’s yours. It’s just getting that much you never would get any other way.”
“I s’pose maybe so,” Mr. Tidd says, and drew up a chair to sign. The lawyer sat back and sort of held his breath until Mr. Tidd’s name should be written on his paper. Mr. Tidd looked at the pen, shook it a little, and leaned over the table. He made the first letter of his name when there was a whopping racket on the porch and Mark came running slam-bang into the house.
“D-d-dad!” he yelled. “Dad!”
Mr. Tidd looked up and then heaved a big sigh.
“Marcus,” he said, “you’re all right!”