Mrs. Tidd wasn’t that kind of person at all. As soon as Plunk and me looked at her we knew she could make bully pies, and wouldn’t get mad if her fat boy was to sneak into the pantry and cut a slice out of one of them in the middle of the afternoon. You could tell she was patient and good-natured, but, all the same, she wasn’t the kind you could fool. If you came home with your hair wet it wouldn’t do any good to tell her somebody threw a pail of water on it. She was looking around to see what she could see, and I bet she didn’t miss much.
The fat boy he motioned to her to come to the bus, and she spoke to her husband. He looked up sort of vague, nodded his head, and came poking across the platform, holding his book in front of him and reading away as though he hadn’t a minute to spare, and clean forgot all about the valise he’d set down beside him.
“Jeffrey,” says Mrs. Tidd, “you’ve forgot your satchel.”
He shut his book, but kept his finger in the place, and looked all around him. Pretty soon he saw the satchel and nodded his head at it. “So I have,” he says, “so I have,” and went back to get it.
Then all of them got into Uncle Ike’s bus, and he stirred up his horses who had been standing ’most asleep, with heads drooping, and they went rattling and banging up the street. When Uncle Ike’s bus got started you could hear it half a mile. I guess it was all loose, for it sounded like a hail-storm beating down on a tin roof.
“Wonder where they’re goin’?” says Plunk.
“You got to do more’n wonder if you’re goin’ to find out,” I says, and started trotting after the bus. It wasn’t hard to keep it in sight, because Uncle Ike’s horses got tired every little while and came to a walk.
They stopped at the old Juniper house that had been standing vacant for six months, ever since old man Juniper went to Chicago to live with his daughter Susy’s oldest girl that had married a man with a hardware store there. The yard was full of boxes and packing-cases and furniture all done up with burlap and rope.
“They’re goin’ to live here,” Plunk yells; and I was as glad as he was. The benefits of having a stuttering fat boy living near you aren’t to be sneezed at by anybody.
We found a shady place across the street and watched to see what would happen. It’s always interesting to watch other folks work, especially if what they’re doing is hard work, and I guess carrying furniture and trunks and boxes is about as hard as anything.