- Uncle Martin: [government agents are persistently knocking on Tims' front door] Answer the door. You're making it worse!
- Tim O'Hara: Uh, uh, just this one second! Uncle Martin? Uncle Martin, what do they want?
- Uncle Martin: You.
- Tim O'Hara: Me? Who? Why?
- Uncle Martin: Russians are in season.
- Uncle Martin: You wrote a phony letter. The you scuffed it with your shoe to make it look mailed. Then you wrote this big story using the letters X minus Y-2 over.
- Tim O'Hara: How did you know about the shoe?
- Uncle Martin: I'm the Martian! I read the minds! I do not do what you do, which is pussyfooting around while innocent people sleep, kidnapping their mumblings!
- [first lines]
- Uncle Martin: [reading newspaper] Hmpf.
- Tim O'Hara: [looking up from his bank statement] Hmm?
- Uncle Martin: Did you say something?
- Tim O'Hara: No, you did.
- Uncle Martin: No, I distinctly heard you go "hmmm?"
- Tim O'Hara: Oh, yeah. Well, that was after you went "hmpf."
- Uncle Martin: Oh, did I?
- Tim O'Hara: [goes back to bank statement] Uh-huh.
- Uncle Martin: [goes back to newspaper] Hmpf.
- Tim O'Hara: Well, there! You did it again!
- Uncle Martin: Tim, did you see this article? Your goverenment is spending two-billion dollars on a space program that cannot possibly be successful.
- Tim O'Hara: [exasperated] Uncle Martin, I have in front of me, right here, my friendly bank statement. And over here I have my enemy checkbook. Now somewhere, between the two, a penny is lost, and the bank wants me to find it. Yes, Abraham Lincoln lost in a miasma of devious mathematics, and you talk to me about two-billion dollars? Please, Uncle Martin, can we keep it quiet? And no more "hmpf."
- Uncle Martin: [goes back to newspaper] Hmpf.