“N-now hain’t that too bad!” says Mark, still looking as serious as a wall-eyed pike. “I hope it won’t draw away from your crowd any.”
“You better mark my word, young feller,” says Mr. Long Neck, “and put it off. I won’t have no interferin’ with my plans.”
“Um!” says Mark.
“And these here five-and-ten-cent tables,” says Mr. Skip. “You got to do away with ’em.”
“We’re doin’ away with ’em now,” says Mark, with just the beginning of a grin, and he pointed at the tables that were surrounded by folks like flies on a lump of sugar. “Don’t look like there’d be much l-left, does it?”
“You’re a young smart Alec,” says Mr. Skip, and then he hurried out like he was afraid he’d burn up if he stayed.
Mark turned and winked at me.
Everybody was interested in the auction and we were answering questions about it all day. You could see folks picking out things they figured on bidding for and making memorandums of them, and that pleased us a good deal and made me feel a whole heap better about our chances of making a showing against Mr. Skip.
When everybody was gone we counted the money we had taken in, and it was a hundred and sixty-two dollars and ninety-five cents. Once I heard pa say a hundred and forty-five was the biggest day he ever had. I tell you we were tickled. And the best of it was everything we sold was at regular prices. Yes, sir. We didn’t reduce a cent.
Before we left the store I wrote mother a long letter and told her about it all and bragged considerable, and let on I guessed we were going to get as rich as Mark Tidd’s father had out of the turbine-engine he invented. Then we all signed it and sent it off. I was pretty proud, but when you come to think of it, there wasn’t anything for me to be very stuck up about. Mark was the fellow who had a right to think he was some pumpkins, but he didn’t act like he’d done anything out of the ordinary. That was the way with him. If he was to be elected President of the United States to-morrow, it wouldn’t even make him blink. He’d just go ahead and be President like he was used to it all his life. Sometimes it made me mad to see how cool he took things. But he says you can think a lot better when you’re calm-like than you can when you’re all het up and flabbergasted. I guess he’s right about it, too.