“And he hates all boys worse than he does snakes!”
“Cuffed my ears more’n once, let me tell you, for some little thing I did in meeting.”
“Oh! my mother says Deacon Nocker believes every boy is as chock full of original sin as an egg is of meat; and that the only way to get it out is to keep on whaling the boy.”
“His pet saying is ‘spare the rod and spoil the child,’ I’ve heard people say.”
“Huh! all the same that kind of tactics didn’t keep the Deacon’s only boy from being wild,” chuckled Dan Fenwick, wickedly, as though it gave him considerable pleasure to remember that in this particular case guidance didn’t begin at home.
“Oh! they say Amos always was a bad egg, and that the old deacon wrestled with him day after day. Then something came up, and Amos ran away. The deacon scratched his name off his books, and refused to send along a dollar, even when he heard Amos was married, and had a little boy of his own.”
“Well, it was an oversight for us to let Jed Nocker off this Hallowe’en, when we always had him on our list,” admitted the boy the others had called Dick, and who, despite the fact that his clothes looked well worn, seemed to be something of a leader among his mates.
“Then you agree to listen to my big scheme for giving him the scare of his life, do you, Dick Horner?” demanded Nat, eagerly.
He very well knew that once Dick had stamped the idea O. K. the others would hasten to follow suit, because they had great faith in Dick’s ability as a pilot, whether in baseball, on the gridiron, or in such rough-and-tumble sports as all town boys pursue so strenuously.
“I want to hear it first,” replied Dick, cautiously, showing that he had a streak of discretion in his nature for all he was such a madcap. “Suppose we adjourn to the sand lot up the street. It’s more retired than this corner, and we can talk it over without any one running across us.”