“I ought to be k-k-kicked,” says he.
“All right,” says I. “What for?”
“For not askin’ who Uncle Hieronymous w-w-worked for.”
To be sure. Neither of us had thought of it. It would have been as easy as biting an apple to find him if we knew who his boss was, but we didn’t. Now there wasn’t any way of finding out. Mark felt pretty bad. He said he guessed he was getting feeble-minded and a lot of things like that. And he was mad, too. I was glad to see that, for when Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd gets mad you want to look out. From now on Jiggins & Co. would have to travel pretty fast to beat us.
About fifteen minutes later I saw Jiggins and Collins about a block ahead.
“There,” says I to Mark, “is the enemy.”
“F-f-fine,” says he. “Come on.”
“Where?”
“F-follow ’em, of course. If they find Uncle Hieronymous we can b-bust in on ’em. If they go to b-bed we’ll be able to get some sleep, too.”
That was a fact. So long as we knew they were in bed it would be safe for us to take a rest, and if they were to find my uncle with us looking on it would be pretty funny if there wasn’t some way for us to warn him before he signed any papers and made over his mineral rights. It looked, as Mark said, like we occupied a pretty fine strategical position. He knows a lot of words like that, and you ought to hear him say them. On a good long word with “s’s” in it like “strategical,” he’ll hiss and stutter and splutter for five minutes. It’s better than listening to a phonograph.