“There,” says I, “goes thirty-nine dollars and a half.”

Tallow and Binney were pretty discouraged, too, and Mark looked more downhearted than I ever saw him. Mr. Jehoshaphat P. Skip had about knocked us all off our feet.

“We’ll have to go on with the sale,” I says. “Maybe we can get rid of some—and that’ll save us a dollar or so, anyhow.”

Mark didn’t say a word. I saw him fumbling around in his pocket after his jackknife—and that meant business. He had done a lot of thinking since we started to run the Bazar, but this was the first time he had wanted to whittle. That was about the last help he depended on. When everything else failed Mark Tidd whittled.

He went back behind the counter with a piece of box and started littering up the floor. We stayed away from him and waited. It was fifteen minutes, maybe, before we saw his head coming up into sight. He didn’t look happy and his eyes didn’t twinkle. But he did look determined. We fellows have been in some tight places with Mark, and have met some pretty mean men, but Jehoshaphat P. Skip was the first one to get Mark mad clean through and through.

“Well?” says I, as he came around the end of the counter.

“This man Skip,” says he, “hasn’t had time to get in a fresh s-s-stock of Mason jars.”

“What of it?”

“D-don’t b’lieve he’s got many. Just his regular stock.”

“But he’s spoiled our sale, anyhow.”

Mark shook his head. “Maybe so—but we’ll see. Got some friends we can depend on? Grown-up folks?”

“There’s Uncle Ike Bond—and I’ll bet Chet Weevil and Chancy Miller ’d do ’most anything for us, with the beauty contest going on.”

“G-good,” says Mark. “Who else?”

“Dad,” says Binney.

“My dad, too,” says Tallow.

“F-fine. Need more, though.”

We thought up a dozen folks and Mark asked us to run to see them and find out if they would come to the Bazar just a minute. He said to tell them it was important.

In another fifteen minutes they were there—a dozen of them. Mark stood up and says:

“I want you f-f-folks to buy Mason jars—from Jehoshaphat P. Skip. He’s sellin’ ’em for less than we can buy them for. D-don’t b’lieve he’s got many dozen.”

“What’s the idee?” says Uncle Ike.

“We got a sale on,” says Mark. “Th-three jars for a dime. This man Skip—just to bust up our sale—goes and advertises f-four jars for a dime. What we got to do is buy every last jar he’s got—quick! We got to buy ’em before Wicksville folks start buyin’. When they come to buy from the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store there mustn’t be any there to b-b-buy.”

Uncle Ike slapped his leg. “Smartest kid I ever see,” says he to himself. “Greased lightenin’s slow. Folks, I’ve been drivin’ a ’bus a good many years, and you git to know a lot on a ’bus. Grand eddication. But never in all them years have I seen the beat of this here Mark Tidd. No, sir. He tops the pile.”

Everybody was willing to help us out, so Mark gave them money out of the till and they straggled off to the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store. Each one was to buy all he could.

Uncle Ike came first with two dozen, and Binney’s dad brought two dozen—seems that’s all Skip would sell to one person. Then the rest straggled in with two dozen apiece till it came to Chet Weevil.

“Only got half a dozen,” says he, grinning all over. “The last half-dozen there was. We’ve cleaned him out. Every last can’s bought.”

Then Mark grinned—and said thank you to everybody and told us to get to our places, for the sale was going to start. He went back to paint a new sign. It said:

He put that up and then we waited.

I stood in the door where I could watch the Five-and-Ten-Cent Store. Quite a lot of folks went in—and came out again looking sort of mad. Most of them came back up the street, and when they saw our new sign they turned in. Provoked! Say, they believed, I guess, that Skip had played a joke on them.

“Have you got any Mason jars?” old Mrs. Stovall says, sharp-like.

“L-lots of ’em, ma’am,” says Mark. “Three for a dime.”

“Gimme two dozen,” says she. And then she shook her black bonnet till the jet beads rattled. “I went into that other place,” says she, “and that smart Alec of a clerk says they was all sold out. Fine way to treat folks! Advertise a thing and then not have it to sell.”

“Yes, ma’am,” says Mark. “You’ll find this Bazar always has what it advertises, and as g-g-good as it advertises.”

“I hain’t never been cheated here,” she says, “and I won’t never be cheated there. I’ll never step a foot inside that store again if it was the last place on the footstool.”

Mark began to look cheerful, and as time went along he looked more cheerful. We had a steady stream of customers—and most of them had been to the other store first. And they were mad. Skip had done his business more harm that morning than as if he’d locked up his door to shut folks out. He’d made them mad—and he’d fixed it so they were suspicious of him. Mark says if you get folks to distrusting you you might just as well shut up shop, and I guess it’s so.

By noon eight gross of our cans were gone and we were beginning to worry for fear we would run out—and we would have run out, too, if it hadn’t been for those we bought from Skip—almost a gross. They just saved our bacon. When we shut the store at six o’clock there were exactly six cans left in the house. We had made a profit of eight dollars and forty cents on our own cans, and on the one hundred and twenty-six jars we bought from Skip at two cents apiece we had cleared just one dollar—and lots of satisfaction. It was a total profit of nine dollars and forty cents instead of a loss of thirty-nine dollars and a half. And Mark Tidd had done it. With that thinking brain of his he’d got us out of the worst kind of a hole—and put Jehoshaphat P. Skip into one. He’s done a lot of things that got bigger results, but I don’t believe he ever did anything that was any smarter.

“Wish somebody’d tell Skip just what happened to him,” I says.

“Me, too,” says Binney and Tallow, and Tallow said he guessed he’d go tell Skip himself.

“No need,” says Mark, “the story’s all over town. Everybody knows by this t-time—and everybody ’ll be laughin’ at Jehoshaphat to-morrow. It hain’t a good th-thing for a b-business man to have the town laughin’ at him.”

“Humiliatin’,” says I, “and especially when he got caught in his own trap by a kid he’s ’most old enough to be granddad to.”

Mark chuckled.

“We did pretty good,” says he.

“We!” says I. “We didn’t have anything to do with it. It was you—and you get all the credit that’s comin’.”

Mark shrugged his shoulders so the fat at the back of his neck tried to crowd his ears. He was willing enough to be praised and liked to have folks think he was a wonder—but he wasn’t mean about it. He never tried to hog the glory and was willing the rest of us should get all we could. But it did tickle him to know we appreciated him—and he deserved to be tickled.

We passed Jehoshaphat P. on our way home and grinned at him cheerful-like. I thought for a minute he was going to stop and say something, but he strangled it back and went on as fast as his thin legs would carry him. Tallow started to yell something after him, but Mark made him shut up.

“That’s all right for kids,” says he, “but we’re business men—for a while, anyhow. Let’s act like b-b-business men.”

Wasn’t that Mark all over! Whatever he did or whatever he pretended to do—he was that thing. If we played cowboy he was a cowboy, and acted and thought like a cowboy. I calculate if we were to make believe we were aeroplanes he’d spread his arms and fly.

We passed my house and I turned in.

“To-morrow’s Saturday,” says I, “and a long day. Get a good sleep to-night.”

“Yes,” says Mark. “We g-got to stir things up t-to-morrow. Folks ’ll be expectin’ somethin’ of us. Mustn’t d-disappoint anybody. Good night.”

I said good night and went in the house. There was a letter there from mother. She said dad was getting along pretty well, but it would be a month before he could leave the hospital. She said she told him what we boys were doing and he was proud of us, and she was proud of us, too.

“I don’t know what we’d ever do without our boy and his friends,” she said. “Especially Mark Tidd. You thank the boys for us, son, and tell Mark Tidd the thing he is doing and the way he has come to help us is something a very sick man and a troubled woman are grateful for to the bottoms of their hearts. His mother must be proud of him.”

I went over to Mark’s house after supper and read him that. He was quiet for a long time—and I saw him blink and blink because something came into his eyes he didn’t want me to see. Pretty soon he says:

“Plunk, there’s different ways of gettin’ paid for things. There’s money and fame and such-like, but, honest, seems to me, and you can t-tell your mother so for me, that what she says in her letter is the f-finest thing that ever happened.” He blinked again a couple of times. “When you’re th-through with it, Plunk, I wish you’d give me that letter. I’d—I’d like to keep it—always.”

That was a side of Mark Tidd I never saw before. It sort of gave me a look inside of him. Always before I’d thought about his being smart and scheming and sharper than most folks, but now I saw there was something more—maybe something better and worth more to have—a great big heart that was full of sympathy for folks and that could be sorry when other folks were sorry and glad when they were glad.

I was pretty embarrassed and couldn’t find a word to say, but I gave him the letter. He folded it carefully and put it in his pocket.

“Plunk,” says he, “I’d s-sort of like to read this to dad and m-mother.... I guess they’d like to hear it.”

“Sure,” says I, sort of pinched in my throat. I know how my folks would be glad to have somebody say such a thing about me. My mother ’d cry, I know, but it wouldn’t be because she was sorry. Not much. So I says “Sure,” and got out of there as fast as I could, because I didn’t know how much longer I’d last without getting messy and acting like—like a fellow doesn’t like to act.