“And Wiggamore would get the dam and the mill,” says I.
“He hain’t got ’em yet,” says Mark, “and he hain’t g-goin’ to get ’em.”
“What’ll we do,” says I, “drag our chair stock and bowls and things around in carts? It would take quite a spell to git a car-load to the city, or even to Bostwick, that way.”
“I don’t know how we’re goin’ to do it, but we’re goin’ to. You f-fellers git to work and I’ll go and f-figger on this. We got to hit on some scheme, and we got to hit on it right off. These here goods has got to be shipped immediate, because we got to have the money.”
So he went and sat down in the office, and I could see him pinching his cheek and pulling his ear like he always does when he is puzzling out something. He kept at it more than an hour, and then I saw him come out and get a piece of wood and take out his jack-knife to whittle. At that I got scairt, for he never whittles till he’s in the last ditch. When everything else fails he takes to his jack-knife, and when he does that it’s time to get worried.
He whittled and whittled and whittled, and nothing come of it. You see, he hadn’t ever had any experience with railroads, and he didn’t know what kind of a scheme would work with them.
He didn’t go home to dinner, but just called to me to stop at his house and fetch him a snack. I knew what a snack meant for him, so I fetched back three ham sandwiches and three jelly sandwiches and two apples and a banana and a piece of apple pie and a piece of cherry pie and a hunk of cake and about a quart of milk. He went at them sort of deliberate and gradual, but the way they disappeared was enough to make you think he was some kind of a magician. Before you knew it the whole lot was gone and he was looking down into the basket kind of sorrowful.
“What’s the m-matter, Plunk?” says he. “Was they short of grub at home? Seems like the edge hain’t hardly gone off’n my appetite.”
“You’ve et enough to keep me for a week,” says I.
“Huh!” says he. “Well, a f-feller kin think better when he’s hungry, they say.”