“Dad never bit nobody,” says Mark.
“You calc’late it’s safe for me to see him?”
“Course,” says Mark.
“Well,” says Silas, letting off another of those big sighs, “I guess it’s got to be did. Hain’t no way of puttin’ it off; but, gosh! how I dread it!”
Mark got up and went in to call his father. In a minute he was back with Mr. Tidd, who had his thumb in the Decline and Fall and was blinking peaceful and looking as gentle and serene as a ten-year-old rabbit-hound. When Silas saw him coming he was like to have taken to his heels, and he fidgeted and moved from one foot to the other and twisted his fingers like he was trying to braid them, and breathed hard. You would have thought he was going to run into a tribe of massacreeing Injuns.
Mr. Tidd stood on the top step and peered down at Silas with those mild eyes of his, and nodded, and says, “It’s Silas, hain’t it?”
“Yes,” says Silas, with all the explosion gone out of his voice. “How you feelin’, Mr. Tidd? Be you patient and long-sufferin’ to-night, or be you kind of riled about somethin’? ’Cause if you be I kin come back to-morrow.”
“I calc’late I feel perty peaceful, Silas. Wouldn’t you say I was feelin’ peaceful, Marcus Aurelius?”
“I’d call you so,” says Mark.
“You’ll need to be,” says Silas, “when I break it to you.”