“Quite a walk d-d-down here, ain’t it?” he asked, with his face solemn. “Dun’no’s I’d care to walk it for n-n-nothin’.”
“Dun’no’s I would, either,” said the fat man, pretty short. “Let’s start back,” he says to Collins.
“When uncle gets back I’ll tell him you were here,” I promised, and they said thank you.
“L-l-let’s git something to eat,” says Mark, and the way he stuttered to get it out was a caution. I’ve noticed he stutters worse when he’s hungry than when he isn’t. “I’ll cook,” says he, “if you fellers will wash the dishes.”
There’s no denying Mark was a good cook. He ought to be, for there never was anybody who thought more about eating than he did. He was always hanging around the kitchen watching his mother, and I’ll bet there never was a girl who could make better baking-powder biscuits than he did that night. There were some raspberries Uncle Hieronymous had found time to pick, and lots of ordinary stuff like fried potatoes and ham.
“T-t-to-morrow,” says Mark, “I’ll make a pie.” He stood looking out of the window, thinking a minute. Then he turned sudden-like, and frowned so his forehead got all ridgy. “Careless,” says he. “Here we are, surrounded by hostiles, and the c-c-c-canoe right there under their eyes. N-n-never would be there in the mornin’. Hain’t you f-f-f-fellers read any books? Don’t you know folks fixed like we are always hide their canoe? Well, you b-b-better git right at it.”
“It’s all paint,” says Plunk Smalley.
“P-p-p-paint!” Mark says, disgusted as could be. “What’s p-paint against losin’ our boat? Where’d we be if we lost it, I’d like to know? Hundreds of m-m-miles from civilization. Our only hope of gittin’ back alive is that b-boat.”
Off we went in a hurry, I can tell you. It seemed real. That was a way Mark had: he could make the games you played with him seem like you were doing the things in earnest. We took that canoe, paint and all, and hid it down the path that ran through the underbrush. We piled limbs of bushes all around it, hid the paddles near, and then went back to the house.
“That was a narrow escape,” Mark says. “Wish we had it provisioned, but it don’t look possible. We can p-p-put blankets and things in it, anyhow.”