“Me?” says Silas. “Me go at it? Woosh! How’d I go at whittlin’ out a locomotive engine with a penknife? Tell me that. Twenty dollars in a day! Say, young feller, there hain’t twenty dollars in Wicksville.”
“There’s enough m-money,” says Mark. “The t-trouble is to git it.”
“If that’s all that’s standin’ in our way,” says I, “just the trouble of gittin’ it, I don’t see no cause to worry.” I was a little sarcastic because it looked to me like we was busted before we started.
Mark he looked at me kind of squintin’, but didn’t say a word. Pretty soon he says to Silas: “We got to-night and till the whistle blows to-morrow n-n-night.... And only twenty dollars to raise.”
“That’s all,” says I. “Might’s well be twenty million.”
That sort of riled Mark and he turned around and says to me, “I’ll b-bet you I git that twenty before f-f-four o’clock to-morrow.”
“What’ll you bet?” says I.
He figgered a minute. “If I win,” says he, “you take your baby s-s-sister’s doll and carriage and wheel it around town for an hour Saturday n-night singin’ ‘Bye, Baby Buntin’’ to it. If you win, I walk around town an hour Saturday night with a card on my b-b-back sayin’ whatever you want to p-print on it.”
I might have known better, but I was sort of riled, and before I got time to do any thinking I up and told him it was a bet. And right there I begun to get sorry. If there’s one thing in the world Mark Tidd hates it’s to be made ridiculous. He just can’t bear to have folks poke fun at him. I ought to have known he had some kind of an idea or he wouldn’t have made a bet like that. Anyhow, I’d let myself in for it, and there wasn’t any getting out.
“I’ll start thinkin’ up what to print on that card,” says I.