“Why,” says I, trying to make out I was as imbecile-like as Mark let on to be—“why, from where he went to.”
“Can you beat that?” Collins says to Jiggins, and his face was funny to look at. “What is this, anyhow? A home for the feeble-minded?”
Jiggins began to sing to himself—a way he had, I found out afterward, when he was provoked or thinking hard. “Diddle-dee-dum,” says he, in a squawky voice. “Diddle-dee-dum. Diddle-diddle-dum-dum.” Then he stopped sudden and asked, “When’s he coming back?”
“D-d-don’t b’lieve he’s comin’ to-night,” says Mark.
“It isn’t any use,” Collins says to Jiggins. “They don’t know, or if they do they haven’t got brains enough to tell. Though where their brains went to I don’t know. Last time I saw them they seemed to have plenty.”
“They did, eh?” says Jiggins, sharp-like. “Oh-ho, they did, eh? Um. Him. Diddle-diddle-dee. Diddle-dee-dee-dum.” And he went on singing for a couple of minutes. “Look here, young feller,” says he to Mark, “you ain’t fooling me. I’m onto you, and don’t you forget it. I take off my hat to you, I do. All the way off.” He turned to Collins. “I’d give a dollar,” says he, “to know what that kid’ll be when he grows into a man.”
Now when you come to think of it that was a sort of a compliment.
“Come on,” says Collins. “We might as well get along. When your uncle comes back tell him we just dropped in. It wasn’t anything important. Just visiting.”
“I’ll tell him,” says I.
They turned and went off. As they got to the road Jiggins stopped and twisted his pudgy head on his fat neck to look at us again, and he had the sort of expression a boy wears just before he sticks out his tongue. If he hadn’t been a man I bet he would have stuck out his tongue. Somehow that made me mad, and right then and there I did the biggest fool thing I ever expect to do in my life.