“Look-a-here, boy, don’t you call this a disreputable place. Some of the best people in this town come here,” said the grocery man, as he held up the cheese-knife and grated his teeth as though he would like to jab it into, the youth.
“O, that’s all right, they come here ’cause you trust; but you make up what you lose by charging it to other people. Pa will make it hot for you the last of the week. He has been looking over your bill, and comparing it with the hired girl, and she says we haven’t ever had a prune, or a dried apple, or a raisin, or any cinnamon, or crackers and cheese out of your store, and he says you are worse than the James Brothers, and that you used to be a three card monte man; and he will have you arrested for highway robbery, but you can settle that with Pa. I like you, because you are no ordinary sneak thief. You are a high-toned, gentlemanly sort of a bilk, and wouldn’t take anything you couldn’t lift. O, keep your seat, and don’t get excited. It does a man good to hear the truth from one who has got the nerve to tell it.
“But about the parrot. Ma has been away from home for a week, having a high old time in Chicago, going to theatres and things, and while she was gone, I guess the hired girl or somebody learned the parrot some new things to say. A parrot that can only say ‘Polly wants a cracker,’ dont amount to anything—what we need is new style parrots that can converse on the topics of the day, and say things original. Well, when Ma got back, I guess her conscience hurt her for the way she had been carrying on in Chicago, and so when she heard the basement of the church was being frescoed, she invited the committee to hold the Wednesday evening prayer meeting at our house. First, there were four people came, and Ma asked Pa to stay to make up a quorum, and Pa said seeing he had two pair, he guessed he would stay in, and if Ma would deal him a queen he would have a full hand. I don’t know what Pa meant; but he plays draw poker sometimes. Anyway, there was eleven people came, including the minister, and after they had talked about the neighbors a spell, and Ma had showed the women a new tidy she had worked for the heathen, with a motto on it which Pa had taught her: ‘A contrite heart beats a bob-tailed flush,’—and Pa had talked to the men about a religious silver mine he was selling stock in, which he advised them as a friend to buy for the glory of the church, they all went in the back parlor, and the minister led in prayer. He got down on his knees right under the parrot’s cage, and you’d a dide to see Polly hang on to the wires of the cage with one foot, and drop an apple core on the minister’s head. Ma shook her handkerchief at Polly, and looked sassy, and Polly got up on the perch, and as the minister got warmed up, and began to raise the roof, Polly said, ‘O, dry up.’ The minister had his eyes shut, but he opened one of them a little and looked at Pa> Pa was tickled at the parrot, but when the minister looked at Pa as though it was him that was making irreverent remarks, Pa was mad.
“The minister got to the ‘Amen,’ and Polly shook hisself and said ‘What you giving us?’ and the minister got up and brushed the bird seed off his knees, and he looked mad. I thought Ma would sink with mortification, and I was sitting on a piano stool, looking as pious as a Sunday school superintendent the Sunday before he skips out with the bank’s funds; and Ma looked at me as though she thought it was me that had been tampering with the parrot. Gosh, I never said a word to that parrot, and I can prove it by my chum.
“Well, the minister asked one of the sisters if she wouldn’t pray, and she wasn’t engaged, so she said with pleasure, and she kneeled down, but she corked herself, ’cause she got one knee on a cast iron dumb bell that I had been practising with. She said ‘O my,’ in a disgusted sort of a way, and then she began to pray for the reformation of the youth of the land, and asked for the spirit to descend on the household, and particularly on the boy that was such a care and anxiety to his parents, and just then Polly said, ‘O, pull down your vest.’ Well, you’d a dide to see that woman look at me. The parrot cage was partly behind the window curtain, and they couldn’t see it, and she thought it was me. She looked at Ma as though she was wondering why she didn’t hit me with a poker, but she went on, and Polly said, ‘wipe off your chin,’ and then the lady got through and got up, and told Ma it must be a great trial to have an idiotic child, and then Ma she was mad and said it wasn’t half so bad as it was to be a kleptomaniac, and then the woman got up and said she wouldn’t stay no longer, and Pa said to me to take that parrot out doors, and that seemed to make them all good natured again. Ma said to take the parrot and give it to the poor. I took the cage and pointed my finger at the parrot and it looked at the woman and said ‘old catamaran,’ and the woman tried to look pious and resigned, but she couldn’t. As I was going out the door the parrot ruffed up his feathers and said ‘Dammit, set em up,’ and I hurried out with the cage for fear he would say something bad, and the folks all held up their hands and said it was scandalous. Say, I wonder if a parrot can go to hell with the rest of the community. Well, I put the parrot in the woodshed, and after they all had their innings, except Pa, who acted as umpire, the meeting broke up, and Ma says its the last time she will have that gang at her house.
“That must have been where your Pa got his black eye,” said the grocery man, as he charged the bunch of celery to the boy’s Pa. “Did the minister hit him, or was it one of the sisters?”
“O, he didn’t get his black eye at prayer meeting!” said the boy, as he took his mittens off the stove and rubbed them to take the stiffening out. “It was from boxing. Pa told my chum and me that it was no harm to learn to box, cause we could defend ourselves, and he said he used to be a holy terror with the boxing gloves when he was a boy, and he has been giving us lessons. Well, he is no slouch, now I tell you, and handles himself pretty well for a church member. I read in the paper how Zack Chandler played it on Conkling by getting Jem Mace, the prize fighter, to knock him silly, and I asked Pa if he wouldn’t let me bring a poor boy who had no father to teach him boxing, to our house to learn to box, and Pa said certainly, fetch him along. He said he would be glad to do anything for a poor orphan. So I went down in the Third ward and got an Irish boy by the name of Duffy, who can knock the socks off of any boy in the ward. He fit a prize fight once. It would have made you laugh to see Pa telling him how to hold his hands and how to guard his face. He told Duffy not to be afraid, but strike right out and hit for keeps. Duffy said he was afraid Pa would get mad if he hit him, and Pa said, ‘nonsense, boy, knock me down if you can, and I will laugh ha! ha!’ Well, Duffy he hauled back and gave Pa one in the nose and another in both eyes, and cuffed him on the ear and punched him in the stomach, and lammed him in the mouth and made his teeth bleed, and then he gave him a side-winder in both eyes, and Pa pulled off the boxing gloves and grabbed a chair, and we adjourned and went down stairs as though there was a panic. I haven’t seen Pa since. Was his eye very black?”
“Black, I should say so,” said the grocery man. “And his nose seemed to be trying to look into his left ear. He was at the market buying beefsteak to put on it.”
“O, beef steak is no account. I must go and see him and tell him that an oyster is the best thing for a black eye. Well, I must go. A boy has a pretty hard time running a house the way it should be run,” and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of the grocery: “Frowy Butter a Speshulty.”
THE GROCERY MAN AND PECK’S BAD BOY
CHAPTER I.
VARIEGATED DOGS—THE BAD BOY SLEEPS ON THE KOOP—A MAN DOESN’T KNOW EVERYTHING AT FORTY-EIGHT—THE OLD MAN WANTS SOME POLLYNURIOUS WATER—THE DYER’S DOGS—PROCESSION OP THE DOGS—PINK, BLUE, GREEN AND WHITE—“WELL I’M DEM’D—HIS PA DON’T APPRECIATE.
“How do you and your Pa get along now,” asked the grocery-man of the bad boy, as he leaned against the counter instead of sitting down on a stool while he bought a bottle of liniment.
“O, I don’t know. He don’t seem to appreciate me. What he ought to have is a deaf and dumb boy, with only one leg, and both arms broke—then he could enjoy a quiet life. But I am too gay for Pa, and you needn’t be surprised
if you never see me again. I talk of going off with a circus. Since I played the variegated dogs on Pa, there seems to have been a coldness in the family, and I sleep on the roof.
“Variegated dogs,” said the store keeper, “what kind of a game is that? You have not played another Daisy trick on your Pa, have you?”
“Oh, no, it was nothing of that kind. You know Pa thinks he is smart. He thinks because he is forty-eight years old he knows it all; but it don’t seem to me as though a man of his age, that had sense, would let a tailor palm off on him a pair of pants so tight that he would have to use a button-hook to button them; but they can catch him on everything, just as though he was a kid smoking cigarettes. Well, you know Pa drinks some. That night the new club opened he came home pretty fruitful, and next morning his head ached so he said he would buy me a dog if I would go down town and get a bottle of pollynurious water for him. You know that dye house on Grand avenue, where they have got the four white spitz dogs. When I went after the penurious water, I noticed they had been coloring their dogs with the dye stuff, and I put up a job with the dye man’s little boy to help me play it on Pa. They had one dog dyed pink, another blue, another red, and another green, and I told the boy I would treat him to ice cream if he would let one out at a time, when I came down with Pa, and call him in and let another out, and when we started to go away, to let them all out. What I wanted to do was to paralyze Pa, and make him think he had got ‘em, got dogs the worst way. So, about ten o’clock when his head got cleared off, and his stomach got settled, he changed ends with his cuffs, and we came down town, and I told him I knew where he could get a splendid white spitz dog for me, for five dollars; and if he would get it, I would never do anything disrespectful again, and would just sit up nights to please him, and help him up stairs and get seltzer for him. So we went by the dye house, and just as I told him I didn’t want anything but a white dog, the door opened, and the pink dog came out and barked at us, and I said ‘that’s him’ and the boy called him back. Pa looked as though he had the colic, and his eyes stuck out, and he said ‘Hennery, that is a pink dog?’ and I said ‘no, it is a white dog, Pa,’ and just then the green dog came out, and I asked Pa if it wasn’t a pretty white dog, and and he turned pale and said ‘hell, boy, that is a green dog—what’s got into the dogs?’ I told him he must be color blind, and was feeling in my pocket for a strap to tie the dog, and telling him he must be careful of his health or he would see something worse than green dogs, when the green dog went in, and the blue dog came rushing out and barked at Pa. Well, Pa leaned against a tree box, and his eyes stuck out like stops on an organ, and the sweat was all over his face in drops as big as kernels of hominy.
“I think a boy ought to do everything he can to make it pleasant for his Pa, don’t you. And yet some parents don’t realize what a comfort a boy is. The blue dog was called in, and just as Pa wiped the perspiration off his forehead, and rubbed his eyes and put on his specks, the red maroon dog came out. Pa acted as if he was tired, and sat down on a horse block. Dogs do make some people tired, don’t they? He took hold of my hand, and his hand trembled just as though he was putting a gun wad in the collection plate at church, and he said, ‘My son, tell me truly, is that a red dog?’”
“A fellow has got to lie a little if he is going to have any fun with his Pa, and I told him it was a white dog, and I could get it for five dol-dars. He straightened up just as the dog went into the house, and said ‘Well, I’m dem’d;’ and just then the boy let all the dogs out and sicked them on a cat, which ran up a shade tree right near Pa, and they rushed all around us—the blue dog going between his legs, and the green dog trying to climb the tree, and the pink dog barking, and the red dog standing on his hind feet.
“Pa was weak as a cat, and told me to go right home with him, and he would buy me a bicycle. He asked me how many dogs there were, and what was the color of them. I s’pose I did awful wrong, but I told him there was only one dog, and a cat, and the dog was white.
“Well, sir, Pa acted just as he did the night Hancock was beat, and he had to have the doctor to give him something to quiet him (the time he wanted me to go right down town and buy a hundred rat traps, but the doctor said never mind, I needn’t go). I took him home and Ma soaked his feet, and give him some ginger tea, and while I was gone after the doctor he asked Ma if she ever saw a green dog.
“That was what made all the trouble. If Ma had kept her mouth shut I would have been all right, but she up and told him that they had a green dog, and a blue dog, and all colors of spitz dogs down at the dyers. They dyed them just for an advertisement, and for him to be quiet and he would feel better when he got over it. Pa was all right when I got back and told him the doctor had gone to Wauwatosa, and I had left an order on his slate. Pa said he would leave an order on my slate. He took a harness tug and used it for breeching on me. I don’t think a boy’s Pa ought to wear a harness on his son, do you? He said he would learn me to play rainbow dogs on him. He said I was a liar, and he expected to see me wind up in Congress. Say, is Congress anything like Waupun or Sing Sing? No, I can’t stay, thank you, I must go down to the office and tell Pa I have reformed, and freeze him out of a circus ticket. He is a a good enough man, only he don’t appreciate a a boy that has got all the modern improvements. Pa and Ma are going to enter me in the Sunday school. I guess I’ll take first money, don’t you?”
And the bad boy went out with a visible limp, and a look of genius cramped for want of opportunity.
CHAPTER II.
HIS PA PLAYS JOKES—A MAN SHOULDN’T GET MAD AT A JOKE—THE MAGIC BOUQUET—THE GROCERY MAN TAKES A TURN—HIS PA TRIES THE BOUQUET AT CHURCH—ONE FOR THE OLD MAID—A FIGHT ENSUES— THE BAD BOY THREATENS THE GROCERY MAN—A COMPROMISE.
“Say, do you think a little practical joke does any hurt,” asked the bad boy of the grocery man, as he came in with his Sunday suit on, and a bouquet in his button-hole, and pried off a couple of figs from a new box that had been just opened.
“No sir,” said the groceryman, as he licked off the syrup that dripped from a quart measure, from which he had been filling a jug. “I hold that a man who gets mad at a practical joke, that is, one that does not injure him, is a fool, and he ought to be shunned by all decent people. That’s a nice bouquet you have in your coat. What is it, pansies? Let me smell of it,” and the grocery man bent over in front of the boy to take a whiff at the bouquet. As he did so a stream of water shot out of the innocent looking bouquet and struck him full in the face, and run down over his shirt, and the grocery man yelled murder, and fell over a barrel of axe helves and scythe snaths, and then groped around for a towel to wipe his face.
“You condemn skunk,” said the grocery man to the boy, as he took up an axe-helve and started for him, “what kind of a golblasted squirt gun have you got there. I will maul you, by thunder,” and he rolled up his shirt sleeves.
“There, keep your temper. I took a test vote of you on the subject of practical jokes, before the machine began to play upon the conflagration that was raging on your whiskey nose, and you said a man that would get mad at a joke was a fool, and now I know it. Here, let me show it to you. There is a rubber hose runs from the bouquet, inside my coat to my pants pocket, and there is a bulb of rubber, that holds about half a pint, and when a feller smells of the posey, I squeeze the bulb, and you see the result. It’s fun, where you don’t squirt it on a person that gets mad.”
The grocery man said he would give the boy half a pound of figs if he would lend the bouquet to him for half an hour, to play it on a customer, and the boy fixed it on the grocery man, and turned the nozzle so it would squirt right back into the grocery man’s face. He tried it on the first customer that come in, and got it right in his own face, and then the bulb in his pants pocket got to leaking, and the rest of the water ran down the grocery man’s trouser’s leg, and he gave it up in disgust, and handed it back to the boy.
“How was it your Pa had to be carried home from the sociable in a hack the othe
r night?” asked the grocery man, as he stood close to the stove so his pants leg would dry. “He has not got to drinking again, has he?”
“O, no,” said the boy, as he filled the bulb with vinegar, to practice on his chum, “It was this bouquet that got Pa into the trouble. You see I got Pa to smell of it, and I just filled him chuck full of water. He got mad and called me all kinds of names, and said I was no good on earth, and I would fetch up in state’s prison, and then he wanted to borrow it to wear to the sociable. He said he would have more fun than you could shake a stick at, and I asked him if he didn’t think he would fetch up in state’s prison, and he said it was different with a man. He said when a man played a joke there was a certain dignity about it that was lacking in a boy. So I lent it to him, and we all went to the sociable in the basement of the church. I never see Pa more kitteny than he was that night. He filled the bulb with ice water, and the first one he got to smell of his button-hole bouquet was an old maid who thinks Pa is a heathen, but she likes to be made something of by anybody that wears pants, and when Pa sidled up to her and began talking about what a great work the christian wimmen of the land were doing in educating the heathen, she felt real good, and then she noticed Pa’s posey in his button-hole and she touched it, and then she reached over her beak to smell of it. Pa he squeezed the bulb, and about half a teacupful of water struck her right in the nose, and some went into her strangle place, and O, my, didn’t she yell.”
The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack Page 14