“You don’t mean for us boys to run the store?” I says.
“Sure,” says he.
“But runnin’ a store’s business,” says I.
“B-b-business,” says Mark, “hain’t nothin’ but makin’ m-money out of somethin’ you like to do. P-poor business men is them that tries to make money out of somethin’ they d-don’t like to do.”
“Um,” says I.
“We’ll enjoy runnin’ the Bazar,” says he, as if the whole thing was settled.
“I’m afraid,” says I. “S’pose we was to bust the business.”
“We won’t,” says he. “L-let’s talk to your ma about it.”
We went in, and after a while my mother came down-stairs. I felt sort of foolish when I told her Mark’s idea, and it didn’t get any better when she said, “Bosh!”
But I was forgetting about Mark. He started in to talk to mother, and he spluttered and stuttered along for fifteen minutes, arguing and wiggling his stumpy fingers, and explaining to her how easy running a bazar was, and just why he and Tallow and Binney and I were a lot better able to do it than anybody else on the face of the earth. Why, I began to believe him myself! So did mother. Mark knew just how to go at it. At the start, when she didn’t want to listen, he talked so fast she couldn’t find a chance to tell him to keep quiet, and by the time he was beginning to slacken up mother was bobbing her head and almost smiling, and saying, “Yes, yes,” and, “Do you honestly think you could?” and, “I don’t see why I didn’t think of it myself,” and things like that.