“Why,” says Mark, “you d-d-don’t need to worry about the Bazar a minute. Just look after Mr. Smalley.”
“I wish I could ask your father’s advice,” mother said to me, finally, “but I daren’t. I’ll just have to decide myself. And it seems like there wasn’t but one way to decide. I won’t say a word to father about it.... You can try, boys ... and it will be a—miracle—a blessed miracle if it—comes out all right.” Then she started to cry again.
Mark, he waddled over and patted her on the back and says, soothing-like, “Jest you t-t-trust me, Mrs. Smalley—and don’t worry—not a mite.”
It ended up by mother giving me the keys to the Bazar, and kissing me and Mark, and telling us she was proud of us, and—hurrying out of the room so we couldn’t see her cry any more.
Mark looked at me and scowled. “Looky there, now,” he says. “Looky there. Guess we g-g-got to make a go of it. Calc’late she’s got trouble enough without us makin’ it worse.... C-come on.”
We went out and found Binney and Tallow. At first they wouldn’t believe us when we told them, but when they did believe they set up a whoop like somebody’d up and given them a dollar to spend for peanuts. Anybody’d think running a bazar was some kind of a circus, which it isn’t at all, because I’ve worked for dad holidays and Saturdays sometimes, and I know.
“When do we start?” asks Tallow.
“F-f-first thing in the mornin’,” says Mark.
“When they goin’ to take your father?” Binney asks me.
“On the five-forty to-night,” I told him, “and I guess I’ll be goin’ home to see if there hain’t somethin’ I can help with.”