“Wigglin’ the thumb means raise it a nickel,” says Mark. “Wigglin’ both thumbs means raise it a d-dime.”
“Listen to that, now,” says Uncle Ike to himself. “Easy, hain’t it? Jest as easy as swallerin’ slippery ellum. But it took him to think of it.” Then he looked at Mark and says, “Your Uncle Ike’ll be there, you can bet you; and will he bid? Jest you lissen to him holler.”
“You m-might sort of act mean, too,” says Mark. “That’ll make the other folks that’s biddin’ get mad. If they get good and mad they’ll bid high just out of spunk.”
Uncle Ike slapped his knee and laughed all over, though you couldn’t hear a noise. That’s the way he always laughed. To see him you’d think he was hollerin’ loud enough to bust a gallus, but there isn’t a particle of sound.
“G’-by, Uncle Ike,” says Mark.
“G’-by, boys,” says he, and Mark and I came away.
Monday morning bright and early all four of us boys were at the Bazar, getting things ready. The first thing we did was to fix up a place for Mark to do his auctioning from. That was easy. We put two big packing-boxes side by side against the front of the store, and on one of them we put a smaller box to use for a table. We covered these all over with flags and bunting and signs. This was done before another store on the street opened up. Even Jehoshaphat P. Skip wasn’t stirring around yet.
The whole front of his place was covered with big signs and flags. Between us we made Wicksville look like it was the Fourth of July. Pretty soon we saw Skip come down from the hotel. He walked past our place with his nose in the air and never looked. My! but he was mad! He went into his store and opened up. For his Grand Opening he had four clerks he’d brought from some of his other stores, because he figured he’d have a whale of a crowd. His store did look nice and attractive. I went snooping past, and in that little time I could see a bunch of things I’d like to buy—but I’d have gone without them till a week from next year before I’d have bought from him.
Our auction was set for ten o’clock. You see, Mark Tidd knew the Wicksville folks. Everybody had something to do early in the morning, and nobody would have time to go down-town before ten. But Jehoshaphat P. he didn’t know. He started right off to boom things—hired a fiddle and a horn and an accordion to sit inside his place and play tunes. But there wasn’t anybody to play to, and wouldn’t be for a couple of hours.
“Tallow and Binney’ll stay inside,” says Mark, “to l-look after folks that want to buy things—”