A fat boy like that is a good thing to have in a town, so when things sort of slow down you can always go and have fun with him. At any rate, that was what we thought then. It seemed to us that Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd was a ready-made joke put right into our hands for us to fool with, but afterward we changed our minds considerable.
Mark’s father and mother got off the train after him, and his father said something to him we couldn’t hear. Mark waddled across the platform to where Uncle Ike Bond’s bus stood waiting, and Plunk and me listened to hear what he would say.
“D-d-do you c-carry p-p-p-passengers in that b-bus?” Yes, sir, he said it just like that!
Well, Plunk he looked at me and I looked at him, and he soaked me in the ribs and I smashed his hat down over his eyes, we were so tickled. If we had been going to plan a funny kid we couldn’t have done half so well. We’d have forgot something sure. But nothing was forgot in Mark Tidd, even to the stutter.
Old Uncle Ike looked down off his seat at Mark, and his eyes popped out like he couldn’t believe what they saw. He waited a minute before he said anything, sort of planning in his mind what he was going to say, I guess. That was a way Uncle Ike had, and then he usually said something queer. This time he says:
“Passengers? What? Me carry passengers? No. I’ve just got this bus backed up here to stiddy the depot platform. The railroad comp’ny pays me to do it.”
Mark Tidd he looked solemn at Uncle Ike, and Uncle Ike looked solemn at him. Then Mark says, respectful and not impertinent:
“If I was to sit here and hold down the p-p-platform could you drive my folks? I could keep it from m-m-movin’ much.”
Uncle Ike blinked. “Son,” says he, “climb aboard, if this here rattletrap looks safe to you, and fetch along your folks. We’ll leave the platform stand without hitchin’ for wunst.”
At that me and Plunk turned to look at the fat boy’s father and mother. Mr. Tidd was a long man, upward of six foot, I guess, and not very wide. His shoulders kind of sloped like his head was too heavy for them, and his head was so big that it was no wonder. His hair was getting gray in front of his ears where it showed under his hat, and he had blue eyes and thin cheeks and a sort of far-off, pleasant expression, like he was thinking of something nice a long ways away. He was leaning against a corner of the station reading out of a big book and paying no attention to anybody. Afterward I found out the book was Gibbon’s Decline and Fall, and that he always carried it around with him to read in a little when he got a spare minute.