mrs. tidd was just the kind of person i thought she would be. she cooked lots of things and cooked them good; and, no matter how often mark wanted to eat, she never said a word. plunk and binney jenks and me got to going there a lot, and there was always cookies and pie and things. of course, we didn’t go specially to eat, but knowing we’d get something wasn’t any drawback. i liked mrs. tidd, and sort of admired her, too. she was always working at something and managing things and keeping track of mr. tidd and mark. i never heard her complain, and i don’t remember ever seeing her sit down except in the cool of the evening after supper.
i don’t want you to get the idea that mr. tidd was lazy or shiftless, because he wasn’t. he was just queer, and his memory was as long as a piece of string, which is the way we have in wicksville of saying there was no knowing just how long it really was. lots of times i’ve seen mr. tidd start out to do a job of work and forget all about it before he got a chance to commence. he was sure to forget if mrs. tidd didn’t take the decline and fall away from him before he went out of the door. even that didn’t make it certain, because something to think about might pop into his head all of a sudden, and if it did he had to sit down and think about it then and there. he was a machinist complicated by inventions. every time he saw you doing anything he’d stop right there and invent a better way for you to do it; and mostly the new ways he invented wouldn’t work.
it was an invention that had brought all the tidds to wicksville. mark told us about it. it seems like mr. tidd had been inventing a new kind of machine or engine or something that he called a turbine. he’d been working on it a long time, making pictures of it and figuring it out in his head, but he never had a chance to get right down to business and actually invent it till a little while before they came to our town. then an aunt of his up and died and left him some money. he quit his job right off and came to wicksville, where it was quiet and cheap, to finish up doing the inventing. when he got it done he wouldn’t need a job any more because it would make him rich. we used to go out in the barn, where he was tinkering away, and watch him for hours at a time, and he never paid any more attention to us than as if we weren’t there at all. but he was careful about other folks and wouldn’t let them step a foot inside of the door. he was afraid somebody would see what he was up to and go do it first, which would have been a mean trick.
mr. tidd wasn’t what you call suspicious; he wasn’t always expecting somebody that he knew to do something to his engine, and i guess any man that had wanted to could have got into the workshop and looked it all over to his heart’s content by talking to mr. tidd for an hour or so and listening to him tell about the roman empire, and how it split down the middle and went all to smash. he was the kind-heartedest man in the world, i guess, and never could see any bad in any one—not in any one he really saw. he had a sort of far-away idea that there was bad folks, and that some of them might want to steal his invention, but if he had seen a man crawling through a window of the barn he’d have found some excuse for him. anybody could fool him—that is, they could have if mrs. tidd hadn’t been there; but she kept her eye on him pretty close and saw to it he didn’t let any strangers come fooling around. if everybody had been as careful as she was this story wouldn’t have happened.
the real beginning of things didn’t look like anything important at all. it happened one afternoon when mark tidd and plunk and binney and me were hanging around the depot platform waiting for the train to come in. we didn’t expect anybody we knew to come, and there wasn’t any reason for our being there except that there wasn’t any reason for our being anywhere else. plunk and i sat on one of those baggage-trucks that run along straight for a while and then turn up a hill at the end; binney sat on a trunk; and mark was on the platform, because that was the safest place for him and wouldn’t break down. it was hot and sleepy, and we wished we were somewheres else or that something exciting would happen. it didn’t, so we just sat there and talked, and finally we got to talking about mr. tidd’s engine. we’d seen him tinkering around it, and he’d told us about it, so we were interested.
“wouldn’t it be great,” says binney, “if it worked when he got it done! us fellers could say all the rest of our lives that we knew intimate a inventor that was as big as edison.”
we never had thought about that part of it before; but what binney said was so, and we got more anxious than ever for things to turn out right.
“if it does,” says plunk, “mark’ll be rich, and maybe live to the hotel. think of bein’ able to spend a dollar ’n’ a half every day for nothin’ but meals and a place to sleep.”
mark he didn’t say anything, because he was drowsy and his head was nodding.
“mr. tidd says it’ll reverlutionize the world,” binney put in. “he says if them romans had had one of his gas-turbines the empire never’d have fell.”
“if it goes, nothin’ else’ll be used to run automobiles. if mr. tidd sold a engine for ev’ry automobile in the united states i guess he could afford livin’ to the hotel. i’ll bet he could own a automobile himself.”
“and they’ll use ’em in fact’ries and steamboats, ’cause they kin be run with steam same as with gasolene.”
“and won’t be more’n a twentieth as big as engines is now.”
we kept on talking and describing what we thought mr. tidd’s turbine would do and guessing how long it would be before he was ready to try it to see if it went. we was so interested we never noticed a man sitting a little ways off on a trunk. pretty soon we did notice him, though, for he got up deliberate like and stretched himself and looked around as if he didn’t see anything, including us. then his eyes lit on mark, and he kind of grinned. he lighted a cigar and came walking over toward us.
“how about this train?” he asks, like he wasn’t much interested but wanted to talk to pass away the time. “is it generally much behind?”
“not much,” i says. “i ain’t known it to be over a hour late for two weeks.”
“live here?” he asks, with another grin.
i nodded, but didn’t say anything out loud.
“pretty quiet place for boys, isn’t it?”
“it ain’t what most folks’d call excitin’.”
after a minute he says: “i used to live in a little town like this when i was a boy, and i remember there wasn’t very much to do. i used to hang around the carpenter shop watching the carpenters work, and around the machine shop seeing how the machinists did things. it was pretty interesting. i suppose you do the same here.”
“we-ell, it ain’t exactly a machine shop we hang around.”
“oh,” he says, “what is it?”
“it’s a—a—”
just then mark seemed to wake up sudden he grunted and interrupted what i was going to say, and then did the saying himself. “it’s a b-barn,” he says.
“oh,” says the man, “a barn? what do you watch in the barn? the horses?”
“no. ain’t no h-h-horses.” then he half shut his eyes like he was going to take another nap.
the man didn’t say anything for a spell. “i was always interested in machines when i was a boy,” he says, at last. “any kind of a machine or engine got me all excited. but we didn’t have as fine machines then as you do now. they’re making improvements and inventing new things every day. some day they’re going to invent something to make locomotives better—something along the turbine line, i expect. know what a turbine is?”
i was just going to say yes, when mark woke up again. “yes,” he says, “a t-t-turbine is a climbin’ vine that grows over p-porches.”
the man kind of strangled and looked away. “no,” he says in a minute, “i guess you got it mixed up with woodbine.”
“maybe so,” says mark.
we heard the engine whistle, and the man hurried off to see about his baggage. the train pulled in and pulled out again and left us sitting on the platform wondering what to do next. mark stood up slow and tired and yawned till it seemed like his head would come off.
“fellers,” says he, “you gabble like a lot of geese. looked like that man was more’n ord’nary interested in engines.”
“’spose he heard what we was talking about?”
mark looked at me disgusted. “tallow,” says he, “don’t go layin’ down in no pastures, ’cause a muley cow ’thout horns’ll come and chaw a hunk out of your p-p-pants.”
“i guess i ain’t so green,” i told him, but he only grinned.
“let’s go swimmin’,” says binney.
mark shook his head and looked solemn. “go ahead if you want to. no swimmin’ for me; it’s friday, and i stepped on a spider this mornin’.”
plunk busted out laughing. “haw,” he says, “believin’ in signs. i ain’t superstitious.”
mark looked at him and blinked. “i ain’t superstitious, but i don’t b’lieve in takin’ extra chances. probably there ain’t nothin’ in it, but you can’t never tell.”
that illustrates better than i can tell what kind of a fellow mark tidd was—cautious, looking on all sides of a thing he was thinking of doing, always trying to figure plans out ahead so nothing disagreeable could happen. i don’t want you to think he was a coward, because he wasn’t, but he never ran his head into trouble that could be dodged ahead of time.
we all started for the river, because it would be cooler there even if we didn’t go in, but on the way mark found a four-leaf clover, and a white cat ran across the road in front of us, so he figured it out that if there was any bad luck about friday and killing a spider those two good-luck signs had knocked the spots off it.
