“There don’t need to anybody say anything,” says he, but all the same I knew he’d be pretty disappointed if nobody did, and I knew he’d want mother’s letter to keep always. There was Mark’s little weakness. He could do big things and fine things and he was honest and the sort of fellow you could downright admire—but he did like to be admired. I don’t know as I blame him. I’d like to be admired myself if I could find some way of making folks do it.
CONCLUSION
That’s about all there is to it. Skip stuck it out two weeks, then he moved over to Sunfield into Mr. Hoffer’s store where he couldn’t bother us any more. And that was the last of him.
The business was a little slack at first, but it began to pick up in a day or two, and just before the Saturday when the announcement of the result of the beauty contest was to be made there was quite a rush. Mark Tidd had stirred it up with advertising. The last time we put up the names before the final count the contestants stood:
Mr. Pilkins, 967 votes.
Mr. Bloom, 958 votes.
Chet Weevil, 947 votes.
Chancy Miller, 941 votes.
Of course there were others, but these men were at the top and nobody was near them.
Well, sir, on Saturday morning in came young Mr. Hopkins, whose father owns the bank, and bought a phonograph just like Old Mose Miller’s, and a lot of records. It gave him eleven hundred votes.