“Here’s Silas Doolittle Bugg,” says I.
We didn’t say anything till he got up to the steps. Then, all of a sudden, he seemed to see us and stopped and reached for a handful of them whiskers. Sort of gathered together all he could in one grab and jerked ’em like he aimed to haul ’em out by the roots.
“Howdy!” says he.
“Howdy!” says we.
He kind of leaned over like he was breaking in two in the middle and pointed a finger nigh six inches long right in Mark’s face. “You’re the Tidd boy,” he says, in a voice like shooting off a giant firecracker. He didn’t speak; he exploded!
There wasn’t any use in Mark’s trying to deny it. Nobody would have believed him, so he says he was the Tidd boy.
“Pa home?” says Silas.
“Yes, sir,” says Mark.
“I come to see him,” says Silas, exploding it again. But then the queerest thing happened to his voice. It sort of faded away. It got littler and littler. “But,” he says, turning around on his heels, “I don’t calc’late I’ll wait. I guess I’ll be goin’. Somehow it don’t seem’s though I needed to see him to amount to anythin’. I guess maybe he druther not see me.... Say, young feller, how’s he feelin’ to-night? Savage or jest so-so?”
“I don’t call to m-m-mind a time when Dad was s-savage,” says Mark.