“‘Oh,’ says I. ‘I ain’t met up with no engines like that, not in Wicksville. We ain’t much on fancy names here, and I guess if a Wicksville feller had invented anythin’ he wouldn’t have named it that—he’d ’a’ called it a engine right out.’
“‘Umph!’ says the feller, like he was mad, and then got out at the hotel. I stopped long enough to see him talkin’ with Bert Sawyer, so it’s likely he knowed all Bert did inside of ten minutes. And that’s all there was to it.” He looked at Mark with his eyes twinkling.
Mark got up kind of slow, blinking his eyes and looking back at Uncle Ike.
“I guess I’ll go home,” he said.
Uncle Ike slapped his knee and laughed a rattling kind of laugh way down in his throat. “There,” he whispered, like he was talking confidential to Binney and Plunk and me, “what’d I tell you? Hey? What’d I tell you? Don’t take him long to make up his mind, eh? Quicker’n a flash; slicker’n greased lightnin’!”
We went off up the hill after Mark, leaving Uncle Ike sitting on the log laughing to himself and slapping his leg every minute or so. He sat there till we were out of sight.
CHAPTER IV
Mark was pretty quiet walking along, thinking hard what to do, or whether he had better do anything; but finally he seemed to make up his mind and hurried off faster than I ever saw him walk before. And it was a warm day, too. We turned into his yard, and as we went through the gate he jerked his thumb toward the back yard.
“You w-w-wait there,” he stuttered. “I may want you.” Then he went in the front door.
As we walked by we looked through the window and saw the stranger sitting in the parlor talking to Mr. Tidd, and he was nodding and smiling and being very polite; or, anyhow, it seemed that way to me. I always was sort of curious, so I stopped close to the window and listened, while Plunk and Binney went on around the house. I guess it isn’t very nice to listen that way, but I never thought of that until it was all over.