"Pa said he didn't care nothing about her lady's only, all he wanted was to converse with an acquaintance, and then one of the policemen came along and told Pa he had better go down to the saloon where he belonged.

Pa excused himself to the wax woman, and said he would see her later, and told the policeman if he would come out on the sidewalk he would knock leven kinds of stuffin out of him. The policeman told him that would be all right, and I led Pa away. He was offul mad. But it was the best fun when the lights went out. You see the electric light machine slipped a cog, or lost its cud, and all of a sudden the lights went out and it was as dark as a squaw's pocket. Pa wanted to know what made it so dark, and I told him it was not dark. He said boy don't you fool me. You see I thought it would be fun to make Pa believe he was struck blind, so I told him his eyes must be wrong. He said do you mean to say you can see, and I told him everything was as plain as day, and I pointed out the different things, and explained them, and walked Pa along, and acted just as though I could see, and Pa said it had come at last. He had felt for years as though he would some day lose his eyesight and now it had come and he said he laid it all to that cond.a.m.ned mineral water. After a little they lit some of the gas burners, and Pa said he could see a little, and wanted to go home, and I took him home. When we got out of the building he began to see things, and said his eyes were coming around all right. Pa is the easiest man to fool ever I saw."

"Well, I should think he would kill you," said the grocery man. "Don't he ever catch on, and find out you have deceived him?"

"O, sometimes. But about nine times in ten I can get away with him. Say, don't you want to hire me for a clerk?"

The grocery man said that he had rather have a spotted hyena, and the boy stole a melon and went away.

CHAPTER XIV.

HIS PA CATCHES OK--TWO DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE BATH ROOM-- RELIGION CAKES THE OLD MAN'S BREAST--THE BAD BOY'S CHUM-- DRESSED UP AS A GIRL--THE OLD MAN DELUDED--THE COUPLE START FOR THE COURT HOUSE PARK--HIS MA APPEARS ON THE SCENE--"IF YOU LOVE ME KISS ME"--MA TO THE RESCUE--"I AM DEAD AM I?"

HIS PA THROWS A CHAIR THROUGH THE TRANSOM.

"Where have you been for a week back," asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as the boy pulled the tail board out of the delivery wagon accidentally and let a couple of bushels of potatoes roll out into the gutter. "I haven't seen you around here, and you look pale. You haven't been sick, have you?"

"No, I have not been sick. Pa locked me up in the bath-room for two days and two nights, and didn't give me nothing to eat but bread and water.

Since he has got religious he seems to be harder than ever on me. Say, do you think religion softens a man's heart, or does it give him a caked breast? I 'spect Pa will burn me at the stake next."

The grocery man said that when a man had truly been converted his heart was softened, and he was always looking for a chance to do good and be kind to the poor, but if he only had this galvanized religion, this roll plate piety, or whitewashed reformation, he was liable to be a harder citizen than before. "What made your Pa lock you up in the bath-room on bread and water?" he asked.

"Well," says the boy, as he eat a couple of salt pickles out of a jar on the sidewalk, "Pa is not converted enough to hurt him, and I knowed it, and I thought it would be a good joke to try him and see if he was so confounded good, so I got my chum to dress up in a suit of his sister's summer clothes. Well, you wouldn't believe my chum would look so much like a girl. He would fool the oldest inhabitant. You know how fat he is. He had to sell his bicycle to a slim fellow that clerks in a store, cause he didn't want it any more. His neck is just as fat and there are dimples in it, and with a dress low in the neck, and long at the trail he looks as tall as my Ma. He busted one of his sister's slippers getting them on, and her stockings were a good deal too big for him, but he tucked his drawers down in them and tied a suspender around his leg above the knee, and they stayed on all right. Well, he looked killin', I should prevaricate, with his sister's muslin dress on, starched as stiff as a shirt, and her reception hat with a white feather as big as a Newfoundland dog's tail. Pa said he had got to go down town to see some of the old soldiers of his regiment, and I loafed along behind. My chum met Pa on the corner and asked him where the Lake Sh.o.r.e Park was. "She"

said she was a stranger from Chicago, that her husband had deserted her and she didn't know but she would jump into the lake. Pa looked in my chum's eye and sized her up, and said it would be a shame to commit suicide, and asked if she didn't want to take a walk, My chum said he should t.i.tter, and he took Pa's arm and they walked up to the lake and back. Well, you may talk about joining the church on probation all you please, but they get their arm around a girl all the same. Pa hugged my chum till he says he thought Pa would break his sister's corset all to pieces, and he squeezed my chum's hand till the ring cut right into his finger and he has to wear a piece of court plaster on it. They started for the Court House park, as I told my chum to do, and I went and got Ma. It was about time for the soldiers to go to the exposition for the evening bizness, and I told Ma we could go down and see them go by. Ma just throwed a shawl over her head and we started down through the park.

When we got near Pa and my chum I told Ma it was a shame for so many people to be sitting around lally-gagging right before folks, and she said it was disgustin', and then I pointed to my chum who had his head on Pa's bosom, and Pa was patting my chum on the cheek, while he held his other arm around his waist, They was on the iron seat, and we came right up behind them and when Ma saw Pa's bald head I thought she would bust. She knew his head as quick as she sot eyes on it."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Ma appears on the scene p066]

"My chum asked Pa if he was married, and he said he was a widower, He said his wife died fourteen years ago, of liver complaint. Well, Ma shook like a leaf, and I could hear her new teeth rattle just like chewing strawberries with sand in them. Then my chum put his arms around Pa's neck and said, "If you love me kiss me in the mouth." Pa was just leaning down to kiss my chum when Ma couldn't stand it any longer, and she went right around in front of them, and she grabbed my chum by the hair and it all came off, hat and all; and my chum jumped up and Ma scratched him in the face, and my chum tried to get his hands in his pants pocket to get his handkerchief to wipe off the blood on his nose, and Ma she turned on Pa and he turned pale, and then she was going for my chum again when he said, "O let up on a feller," and he see she was mad and he grabbed the hat and hair off the gravel walk and took the skirt of his sister's dress in his hand and sifted out for home on a gallop, and Ma took Pa by the elbow and said, "You are a nice old party, ain't you? I am dead, am I? Died of liver complaint fourteen years ago, did I? You will find an animated corpse on your hands. Around kissing spry wimmen out in the night, sir." When they started home Pa seemed to be as weak as a cat, and couldn't say a word, and I asked if I could go to the exposition, and they said I could, I don't know what happened after they got home, but Pa was setting up for me when I got back and he wanted to know what I brought Ma down there for, and how I knew he was there.

"I thought it would help Pa out of the sc.r.a.pe and so I told him it was not a girl he was hugging at all, but it was my chum, and he laffed at first, and told Ma it was not a girl, but Ma said she knew a darn sight better. She guessed she could tell a girl.

"Then Pa was mad and he said I was at the bottom of the whole bizness, and he locked me up, and said I was enough to paralyze a saint. I told him through the key-hole that a saint that had any sense ought to tell a boy from a girl, and then he throwed a chair at me through the transom.

The worst of the whole thing is my chum is mad at me cause Ma scratched him, and he says that lets him out. He don't go into any more schemes with me. Well, I must be going. Pa is going to have my measure taken for a raw hide, he says, and I have got to stay at home from the sparing match and learn my Sunday school lesson."

CHAPTER XV.

HIS PA AT THE REUNION. THE OLD MAN IN MILITARY SPLENDOR-- TELLS HOW HE MOWED DOWN THE REBELS--"I AND GRANT"--WHAT IS A SUTLER?--TEN DOLLARS FOR PICKELS!--"LET US HANG HIM!"--THE OLD MAN ON THE RUN--HE STANDS UP TO SUPPER--THE BAD BOY IS TO DIE AT SUNSET.

"I saw your Pa wearing a red, white, and blue badge, and a round red badge, and several other badges, last week, during the reunion," said the grocery man to the bad boy, as the youth asked for a piece of codfish skin to settle coffee with. "He looked like a hero, with his old black hat, with a gold cord around it."

"Yes, he wore all the badges he could get, the first day, but after he blundered into a place where there were a lot of fellows from his own regiment, he took off the badges, and he wasn't very numerous around the boys the rest of the week. But he was lightning on the sham battle,"

says the boy.

"What was the matter? Didn't the old soldiers treat him well? Didn't they seem to yearn for his society?" asked the grocery man, as the boy was making a lunch on some sweet crackers in a tin cannister.

"Well, they were not very much mashed on Pa. You see, Pa never gets tired telling us about how he fit in the army. For several years I didn't know what a sutler was, and when Pa would tell about taking a musket that a dead soldier had dropped, and going into the thickest of the light, and fairly mowing down the rebels in swaths the way they cut hay, I thought he was the greatest man that ever was. Until I was eleven years old I thought Pa had killed men enough to fill the Forest Home cemetery. I thought a sutler was something higher than a general, and Pa used to talk about "I and Grant," and what Sheridan told him, and how Sherman marched with him to the sea, and all that kind of rot, until I wondered why they didn't have pictures of Pa on a white horse, with epaulets on, and a sword. One day at school I told a boy that my Pa killed more men than Grant, and the boy said he didn't doubt it, but he killed them with commissary whiskey. The boy said his Pa was in the same regiment that my Pa was sutler of, and his Pa said my Pa charged him five dollars for a canteen of peppersauce and alcohol and called it whiskey. Then I began to enquire into it, and found out that a sutler was a sort of liquid peanut stand, and that his rank in the army was about the same as a chestnut roaster on the sidewalk here at home. It made me sick, and I never had the same respect for Pa after that. But Pa, don't care. He thinks he is a hero, and tried to get a pension on account of losing a piece of his thumb, but when the officers found he was wounded by the explosion of a can of baked beans, they couldn't give it to him. Pa was down town when the veterans were here, and I was with him, and I saw a lot of old soldiers looking at Pa, and I told him they acted as though they knew him, and he put on his gla.s.ses, and said to one of them, "How are you Bill?" The soldier looked at Pa and called the other soldiers, and one said, That's the old duffer that sold me the bottle of brandy peaches at Chickamauga, for three dollars, and they eat a hole through my stummick. Another said, 'He's the cuss that took ten dollars out of my pay for pickles that were put up in _aqua fortis_.

Look at the corps badges he has on.' Another said, 'The old whelp!

He charged me fifty cents a pound for onions when I had the scurvy at Atlanta.' Another said, 'He beat me out of my wages playing draw poker with a cold deck, and the aces up his sleeve. Let us hang him.' By this time Pa's nerves got unstrung and began to hurt him, and he said he wanted to go home, and when we got around the corner he tore off his badges and threw them in the sewer, and said it was all a man's life was worth to be a veteran now days. He didn't go down town again till next day, and when he heard a band playing he would go around a block. But at the sham battle where there were no veterans hardly, he was all right with the militia boys, and told them how he did when he was in the army.

I thought it would be fun to see Pa run, and so when one of the cavalry fellows lost his cap in the charge, and was looking for it, I told the dragoon that the p.u.s.s.y old man over by the fence had stolen his cap.

That was Pa. Then I told Pa that the soldier on the horse said he was a rebel, and he was going to kill him. The soldier started after Pa with his sabre drawn, and Pa started to run, and it was funny you bet."

[Ill.u.s.tration: Pa on the run p071]

"The soldier galloped his horse, and yelled, and Pa put in his best licks, and run up the track to where there was a board off the fence, and tried to get through, but he got stuck, and the soldier put the point of his sabre on Pa's pants and pushed, and Pa got through the fence and I guess he ran all the way home. At supper time Pa would not come to the table, but stood up and ate off the side board, and Ma said Pa's shirt was all b.l.o.o.d.y, and Pa said mor'n fifty of them cavalry men charged on him, and he held them at bay as long as he could, and then retired in good order. This morning a boy told him that I set the cavalry man onto him, and he made me wear two mouse traps on my ears all the forenoon, and he says he will kill me at sunset. I ain't going to be there at sunset, and don't you remember about it. Well, good bye. I have got to go down to the morgue and see them bring in the man that was found on the lake sh.o.r.e, and see if the morgue keeper is drunk this time."

CHAPTER XVI.

THE BAD BOY IN LOVE--ARE YOU A CHRISTIAN?--NO GETTING TO HEAVEN ON SMALL POTATOES!--THE BAD BOY HAS TO CHEW COBS--MA SAYS IT'S GOOD FOR A BOY TO BE IN LOVE--LOVE WEAKENS THE BAD BOY--HOW MUCH DOES IT COST TO GET MARRIED?--MAD DOG!--NEVER EAT ICE CREAM.

"Are you a christian?" asked the bad boy of the grocery man, as that gentleman was placing vegetables out in front of the grocery one morning.

"Well, I hope so," answered the grocery man, "I try to do what is right, and hope to wear the golden crown when the time comes to close my books."

"Then how is it that you put out a box of great big sweet potatoes, and when we order some, and they come to the table, they are little bits of things, not bigger than a radish? Do you expect to get to heaven on such small potatoes, when you use big ones for a sign?" asked the boy, as he took out a silk handkerchief and brushed a speck of dust off his nicely blacked shoes.

The grocery man blushed and said he did not mean to take any such advantage of his customers.

He said it must have been a mistake of the boy that delivers groceries.

"Then you must hire the boy to make mistakes, for it has been so every time we have had sweet potatoes for five years," said the boy. "And about green corn. You have a few ears stripped down to show how nice and plump it is, and if we order a dozen ears there are only two that have got any corn on at all, and Pa and Ma gets them, and the rest of us have to chew cobs. Do you hope to wear a crown of glory on that kind of corn?"

"O, such things will happen," said the grocery man with a laugh, "But don't let's talk about heaven. Let's talk about the other place. How's things over to your house? And say, what's the matter with you. You are all dressed up, and have got a clean shirt on, and your shoes blacked, and I notice your pants are not raveled out so at the bottoms of the legs behind. You are not in love are you?"

"Well, I should smile," said the boy, as he looked in a small mirror on the counter, covered with fly specks. "A girl got mashed on me, and Ma says it is good for a boy who hasn't got no sister, to be in love with a girl, and so I kind of tumbled to myself and she don't go no where without I go with her. I take her to dancing school, and everywhere, and she loves me like a house afire. Say, was you ever in love? Makes a fellow feel queer, don't it? Well sir, the first time I went home with her I put my arm around her, and honest it scared me. It was just like when you take hold of the handles of a lectric battery, and you can't let go till the man turns the k.n.o.b. Honest, I was just as weak as a cat.

I thought she had needles in her belt and was going to take my arm away, but it was just like it was glued on. I asked her if she felt that way too, and she said she used to, but it was nothing when you got used to it. That made me mad. But she is older than me and knows more about it.

When I was going to leave her at the gate, she kissed me, and that was worse than putting my arm around her. By gosh, I trembled all over just like I had chills, but I was as warm as toast. She wouldn't let go for much as a minute, and I was tired as though I had been carrying coal up stairs."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The Bad Boy and his Girl p071]

"I didn't want to go home at all, but she said it would be the best way for me to go home, and come again the next day, and the next morning I went to her house before any of them were up, and her Pa came out to let the cat in, and I asked him what time his girl got up, and he laffed and said I had got it bad, and that I had better go home and not be picked till I got ripe. Say, how much does it cost to get married?"

"Well, I should say you had got it bad," said the grocery man, as he set out a basket of beets. "Your getting in love will be a great thing for your Pa. You won't have any time to play any more jokes on him."

"O, I guess we can find time to keep Pa from being lonesome. Have you seen him this morning? You ought to have seen him last night. You see, my chum's Pa has got a setter dog stuffed. It is one that died two years ago, and he thought a great deal of it, and he had it stuffed, for a ornament.

"Well, my chum and me took the dog and put it on our front steps, and took some cotton and fastened it to the dog's mouth so it looked just like froth, and we got behind the door and waited for Pa to come home from the theatre. When Pa started to come up the steps I growled and Pa looked at the dog and said, "Mad dog, by crimus," and he started down the sidewalk, and my chum barked just like a dog, and I "Ki-yi'd" and growled like a dog that gets licked, and you ought to see Pa run. He went around in the alley and was going to get in the bas.e.m.e.nt window, and my chum had a revolver with some blank cartridges, and we went down in the bas.e.m.e.nt and when Pa was trying to open the window my chum began to fire towards Pa. Pa hollered that it was only him, and not a burglar, but after my chum fired four shots Pa run and climbed over the fence, and then we took the dog home and I stayed with my chum all night, and this morning Ma said Pa didn't get home till four o'clock and then a policeman came with him, and Pa talked about mad dogs and being taken for a burglar and nearly killed, and she said she was afraid Pa had took to drinking again, and she asked me if I heard any firing of guns, and I said no, and then she put a wet towel on Pa's head."

"You ought to be ashamed," said the grocery man "How does your Pa like your being in love with the girl? Does he seem to encourage you in it?"

"Oh, yes, she was up to our house to borry some tea, and Pa patted her on the cheek and hugged her and said she was a dear little daisy, and wanted her to sit in his lap, but when I wanted him to let me have fifty cents to buy her some ice cream he said that was all nonsense. He said: "Look at your Ma. Eating ice cream when she was a girl was what injured her health for life." I asked Ma about it, and she said Pa never laid out ten cents for ice cream or any luxury for her in all the five years he was sparking her. She says he took her to a circus once but he got free tickets for carrying water for the elephant. She says Pa was tighter than the bark to a tree. I tell you its going to be different with me. If there is anything that girl wants she is going to have it if I have to sell Ma's copper boiler to get the money, What is the use of having wealth if you h.o.a.rd it up and don't enjoy it? This family will be run on different principles after this, you bet. Say, how much are those yellow wooden pocket combs in the show case? I've a good notion to buy them for her. How would one of them round mirrors, with a zinc cover, do for a present for a girl? There's nothing too good for her."