“You bet you!” says Mark.
“Well, I swan!” says Silas. “If that hain’t the beat of anythin’.”
“I read somewheres,” says Mark, “that it’s the concern that makes money out of what other concerns wastes that gits ahead. Maybe, Mr. Bugg, you’d ’a’ made more money with this mill if you’d ’a’ watched out for the little things. Why, I know a mill that burns its sawdust and slabs for fuel, not havin’ water-power, but they don’t waste their ashes. No, sir. Them wood ashes is good for fertilizer, and they sell every spoonful of ’em for a quarter or more a bushel. Paid the engineer’s wages with ashes. That’s how to git ahead in the manufacturin’ b-b-business.”
“I swan!” says Silas again, and sat there waggling his head and looking at Mark like Mark was some kind of a five-legged elephant with pink ears. “I swan!” he says, after a minute, and then he got up and walked out, still waggling his head like a dog with a bee in its ear.
“Anyhow,” says I, “we hain’t got any more slabs to sell.”
“Correct,” says Mark. “Guess I’ll look over Silas’s bookkeepin’.”
He went over to the pile of board ends that Silas had used to figger on, and began studying ’em careful.
“I wisht,” says he, “that Silas was able to make head or tail to these. I’ll bet there’s quite consid’able money owin’ to this mill.”
“What you goin’ to do about it?” says I.
“I’m goin’ to set down all the n-n-names I kin find here, and the amounts, and try to collect ’em all. Them that’s paid won’t pay ag’in, but them that hain’t paid will mostly be willin’ to, I expect.... Silas Doolittle was what you might call a slap-up man of business.”