Next morning Mark got a telegram from Zadok Biggs. It’s quite a thing for a boy to get a real telegram, and he was puffed up over it considerable, showing it to me and Plunk and Binney as if it was a diamond stole out of an idol’s eye, or some such precious thing as that. It said:

Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus Tidd,—Coming. Hold the fort. Shoo ’em away. News. Friend for life.
Zadok Biggs.

We couldn’t make much out of it except that he was coming, so we waited for him to turn up, which he did late that afternoon. He drove up the alley whistling “Marching through Georgia,” and left his red wagon back of Mr. Tidd’s barn-workshop while he turned Rosinante loose in the back yard to eat the grass and Mrs. Tidd’s vegetable garden. We hustled out to meet him.

“Ah!” says he. “My friend, Marcus Aurelius, and his friends awaiting me, so to speak, with eagerness, eh? I telegraphed. Couldn’t wait.” He was fairly jumping up and down with excitement, and his long, lean face was almost glittering, he was so happy. “I said I would look after the business matters. I, Zadok Biggs, said so. And I have looked after them. I have news for you.”

“W-won’t you c-c-come in?” Mark asked, when he got a chance.

“Of course. Certainly. To meet your esteemed father, the man of genius, who bestowed upon—gave—you your name, and who, as a secondary example of his genius, invented the Tidd turbine.” He came trotting after Mark, and we followed him. It was a funny sight to see Mark waddling along, big as a hippopotamus, and Zadok trotting after with little short steps sort of like a playful puppy.

Mr. Tidd was sitting in the kitchen, with the Decline and Fall open on his lap, watching his wife thumb a pie around the edge. He looked up when we came in, and then got onto his feet.

“F-f-father,” says Mark, “here is Zadok B-b-biggs again.”

“Um!” says Mr. Tidd, looking at Zadok like he was some peculiar kind of a bug and he didn’t know whether to be afraid of him or not. “Um! Zadok Biggs. Howdy do, Mr. Biggs. Howdy do.”

Zadok grabbed hold of his hand and shook it like he was pumping water on a cold morning. “Mr. Tidd,” says he, “this is a proud minute. I, Zadok Biggs, swell with pride to clasp your hand, the hand that named Marcus Aurelius Fortunatus.”

“And,” Mrs. Tidd put in, “the hand that hain’t never spanked him in the way he deserved.”

“Mrs. Tidd,” says Zadok, “do you recall my promise? You do. Of course you do. I said I would look after the financial aspects—business side is perhaps the more usual expression—of the Tidd turbine. Did I not? Of course I did. Well, madam and sir, my friends, I have looked after it. Did Zadok Biggs let grass grow under his feet? No. Behold!”

He drew a letter out of his pocket and waved it in the air. “From William Abbott,” he said. “Yes, my friends, from William Abbott. Know him? No? Ah! We went to school together. Zadok Biggs and William Abbott, schoolmates. Now look at us. William, a millionaire; Zadok, a tin-peddler. Life is strange.”

Mrs. Tidd was wiping her hands on her apron, and Mr. Tidd was thumbing over the Decline and Fall with a bewildered look on his face. “Yes,” says she. “But what about it? What’s in the letter?”

“Of course. Natural question; and I, Zadok Biggs, will answer it. I communicated—wrote—on account of the Tidd turbine to him. I described it. I discussed the merits of the invention, not forgetting the genius of the inventor. And he has replied. He is interested. In short, my friends, through the instrumentality of Zadok Biggs he is coming to Wicksville, and for no other purpose than to look into this matter. Wonder............