“Yes, I s’pose we can listen to you scramble up and down the piano keys all night, but if I do anything it’s another story.”
“No quarreling now. Come, Clarence, do as your mother asks.”
Thus adjured by his father the elocutionist began in a loud dramatic voice:
“WILLIAM TELL.
“‘Place there the boy,’ the tyrant said
‘Fix me the apple on his head’.”
As Clarence depicted the terror of the father, lest his arrow miss the mark and kill his son, Moses rose from his chair in breathless suspense. However, the arrow cleft the apple and left the boy unscathed, and the relieved Moses, sinking back in his chair, recovered himself sufficiently to murmur “What an orful chanct fer anyone ter take!”
Mrs. Crump smiled kindly at the impressionable boy, and lest her son’s evident amusement should wound his feelings, she asked, “Do you like hearing of other countries and of other people?”
“Yeh, Mar says I’m a reglar jographer I like it so much.”
“In that case, Clarence must take you to the Sunday-school hall to-morrow afternoon to hear a talk on China. There will be all sorts of curious things shown and you are sure to enjoy it.”
In his anticipation of the Sunday afternoon treat in store for him, Moses dreamed all that night of little dark-skinned men running round after him with bowls of rice and jabbing him with chop-sticks.