“Wa-all, I hain’t never been tempted very hard, but I guess I can keep one good enough for ordinary purposes.”
“This is the secretest thing that ever was,” says Binney.
“Um!” says Uncle Ike. “You don’t tell!”
“We’re the Ku Klux Klan,” says Plunk, to save Mark the trouble of stuttering so many k’s.
“And we want you to join if you’ll take the oath.”
“Sure,” says Uncle Ike. “I’ve always hankered to b’long to somethin’ secret, but I hain’t never seemed to git around to it.”
Mark recited the oath, and Uncle Ike swore to it solemn as could be. He seemed real glad to be a member. After that we spent most of the afternoon teaching him our secret signs and tokens and things. He said he didn’t think he could learn all of them, but that a few dozen of the most important would do. He seemed particular delighted with the jack-knife sign.
“But looky here,” he said, shaking his finger in our faces, “don’t go workin’ any of them signs on me unless you mean ’em in earnest. You young fellers kin fool with ’em as much as you want to, but don’t go sendin’ me no jack-knives till you git where you need my help and need it bad. I’m too old to go gallivantin’ around chasin’ wild geese.”
After that he stopped to our meetings more often than ever, and pretty nearly every time he’d have a big bass, or maybe a nice mess of pan-fish for us to cook for our dinner. We were all glad we made him a member.
All this while Mr. Tidd was working steady on his turbine, and it was getting nearer and nearer to being ready for a trial to see if the model would work and do what he thought it was going to do. He didn’t do anything else but work in the barn and read the Decline and Fall and forget things. I mean he didn’t have any job, but lived on money that he had in the bank. If it hadn’t been for that he’d have had to go on being a machinist all the rest of his life, and probably wouldn’t ever have had time to do any inventing.