He asked a question back: “What had Wicksville folks rather g-g-g-go to than anythin’ else?”
“Fires and weddin’s and auctions,” says I.
“We won’t have a f-fire,” says Mark, “nor a weddin’, but you can kick me seven times, Plunk, if we don’t have the rippin’est, roarin’est, bang-up-est auction ever held in the county.”
I sat right down on the floor, kerflop. I might have known it. He’d hit on the very thing, and done it as easy as wiggling your thumb. Almost anybody can cook up a scheme, but Mark Tidd always cooked up the scheme, the one that was copper-bottomed and double-riveted, and guaranteed to do just the business where it was most needed.
“Where,” says I, “will you git an auctioneer?”
“M-me,” says he, and walked off to go to work just like he’d said he’d play a game of miggles.
CHAPTER III
“What’ll we auction off?” I asked Mark.
“That,” says he, “is what we’ve g-got to find out.”
“Let’s auction everything,” says Binney.