“I say,” says Mark Tidd, “that it comes at a l-l-lucky time.”
“Get down and come in,” says Mrs. Tidd. “Dinner’s all ready and there’s chicken and biscuits in gravy and pumpkin-pie and—”
Zadok didn’t let her finish.
“Don’t repeat the bill of fare, ma’am. It is not necessary. What there will be I do not care. That I am to dine with the parents of Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd is enough. Any food prepared by the hand of Mrs. Tidd is better than a banquet. I will come down. I am coming down. See—I am down.”
It was a fact. He was down, and went trotting ahead of us into the house.
“The opportunity—” he started in; but Mrs. Tidd cut him off.
“You can fuss around with your opportunity after dinner,” she says. “I don’t want these vittles to get cold. Set right down and ’tend to eatin’.”
So we sat down, and you can bet we did ’tend to eating. I expect Mrs. Tidd is one of the reasons why Mark is so fat. Anybody would be that ate the kind of things she cooks every day. Why, Mrs. Tidd can take a cold potato and the hoop off a barrel and a handful of marbles and make a meal out of them that beats anything you can get even at a city hotel!
After dinner we went into the parlor and Mr. Tidd got down his Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire and started to read to us, but Mrs. Tidd stopped him. Mrs. Tidd was boss around there. “Now, pa,” says she, “you put that book right up. Mr. Biggs has something he wants to tell the boys.”
“Um!” says Mr. Tidd, “that’s so. I was clean forgetting all about it. I guess the Decline and Fall will wait a spell. But I would like to read ’em jest this leetle piece here—” He started to open up the book again, but Mrs. Tidd took it right out of his hand and put it on the table.