Mark he grabbed them with one hand and hunched them up under his arm so that one end dragged on the ground, walking off slow and eating pie as he went. It took him quite a while to get back. I could see him look across the street at Plunk and me as he came down the steps. He stopped a minute, sort of thinking.
After a while Mr. Tidd came back again.
“Put the Decline and Fall down somewheres so you can use both hands, Jeffrey,” his wife says. And he did it as meek and obedient as could be. Between them they carried a hair-cloth sofa in after she had told Mark to fetch along some medium-sized boxes.
Mark stooped over one, and we could hear him grunt.
“Hello, Skinny,” Plunk yells. “Git your back into it and h’ist. That’s the way to lift.”
The fat boy straightened up and looked at us quite a while. Then he sat down on the box and called, “I bet the two of you can’t l-l-lift it.”
“I’ll bet,” says Plunk, “we kin lift it. I’ll bet we kin carry it from here to the standpipe and back without lettin’ her down wunst.”
“Braggin’ don’t carry no b-boxes.”
The way he said it sort of made me mad. “Come on, Plunk,” I says; “lets show this here hippopotamus whether we kin carry it or not.” And we went running across the street.
“Where d’you want it put?” I says.