For once he didn’t have a scheme. Yes, sir. Right there he seemed to go dry. We expected him to come up with a new idea that would stand Skip and his moving-picture show on their heads, but he didn’t. He never said a word. I guess he’d been thinking up so many plans that he was about run dry. And I don’t blame him. I’d have run dry long before.
But just the same it was the most discouraging thing that had happened to us yet. So long as Mark Tidd kept going there was hope, but if he began to slip we might just as well close the doors and give the Bazar to Jehoshaphat.
That day we did a little business, and for the next week we sold enough so there was something to send mother at the end of the week, but we didn’t lay a cent aside. We paid expenses and a little over. If there had been clerks to pay we would have come out behind. Most of the time Mark sat back on a packing-box and whittled. We left him alone. He was as worried as we were, and we knew he was trying, trying every minute.
I guess the only thing that kept our heads above water was that beauty contest. Folks kept right on being interested in that and watched for results every time we put up names. Principal Pilkins, with a lot of young ladies working for him, was climbing up pretty fast. Mr. Peterson was coming strong, too. His wife stirred up a lot of votes for him, and so did Mrs. Bloom for her husband. One week one of them would be ahead, and the next week the other would shoot into the lead. Then there were Chet and Chancy! I guess those two gave up everything else to run down votes. They begged them and borrowed them and worked for them and traded for them. Yes, that is a fact. Votes got to be a sort of money among the boys. You were always sure you could swap them for something. Most of the time there was a boy or so hanging around the front of the Bazar to ask everybody that came out for the votes they’d got. Some people weren’t interested a bit, and would toss them over. So the boys managed to get a stock. Those five were in the lead a little. You never could tell which one would come out ahead until there was a count. But at least a dozen more men were up where they had a chance. So everybody was interested, and almost everybody was mad at somebody else. That’s all that kept us going.
The next week Mark managed to think up a couple of things to interest folks. One was a guessing-contest. He filled a big bottle with beans and put it in the window. Everybody who bought a nickel’s worth could have a guess at how many beans there were, and the one who came nearest was to get a prize. If it was a lady she got a pair of gloves, and if it was a man he got a patent safety razor that looked like a cross between the cow-catcher on an engine and a hoe.
Wicksville was quite a place to guess, so we got in a little trade with that. That week we did better than the week before. But after we had sent mother what she needed we only put by five dollars in the bank. We were still nearly three hundred dollars away from having enough to pay Jehoshaphat P. Skip his five hundred dollars and get free from the chattel mortgage.
“Mark,” says I, that Saturday night as we were closing up, “how about it? Of course we’ve got to hang on as long as we can for the folks’ sake, but we’re beat, hain’t we? Jehoshaphat has sunk our ship.”
Mark was mad in a minute. “S-sunk nothin’!” says he. “We got a couple of weeks more, and who knows what’ll turn up? I’m a-goin’ to think of somethin’. I know I am. It’ll come. So don’t you go gittin’ any more downhearted than you can help. Jehoshaphat P. Skip isn’t goin’ to b-b-bust this business while I got a leg to stand on.”
“All right,” says I, “but your leg’s gettin’ sawed off fast.”
He didn’t say anything to that. I guess there wasn’t anything to say. After a while he says: