“Well, you see,” he continued, “I’m one of the kind of fellows always on the lookout for a chance to get off a crackin’ good joke on people. That helps me a heap in doin’ my writin’. Right now I’ve been thinking up a little scheme to give old Limpy Peters, the shoemaker, the scare of his life.”
“How’s that, Nat?” asked Dit Hennesy, as he invariably did when the other showed signs of having conjured up some scheme that promised to give them the selfish enjoyment felt by the boy who was stoning the frogs.
“I’ll tell you,” chuckled Nat, who seemed to be feeling particularly jolly on this occasion. “You know Limpy Peters lost his wife some years ago. He always goes to the graveyard on nights when there’s a full moon, and sits there a long time like a silly old fool. Well, I’m thinking what fun it’d be to hide near that place and start to groaning when he comes. Say, just try to picture that cripple makin’ tracks for the gate, will you? It’d be enough to make a mummy grin to see him tumblin’ all over himself.”
Dit, of course, laughed as though he thought it a good idea. Several other boys being thoughtless, also chuckled, as they mentally pictured the poor cobbler stumbling and falling in his fright and mad desire to escape.
Others, however, frowned on the foolish scheme, and could be heard muttering the word “shame.” Nat stiffened up, and his cheeks flamed with anger. He looked at Dick, as though believing that he had been loudest in his condemnation.
“Seems you don’t like my little joke any too well, hey, Dick Horner?” he demanded, with a scowl. “Well, mebbe you can originate a better one yourself.”
“I don’t understand what it’s got to do with getting up a farce, and I’d like you to explain that part to me,” Dick told him, calmly.
“Oh!” exclaimed the other, with a scornful laugh, “that shows that you don’t appreciate the glorious possibilities a situation like that offers a real author of farces. I’m deep in it right now, and the conversation that is carried on between the poor scared chap in the graveyard and the supposed ghost would make you split your sides laughing, just to hear it.”
“Why,” spoke up the dutiful Dit, “I wanted him to read it to me, but he just wouldn’t. He said it’d make me so weak with laughin’ I never could walk home. Say, if it’s any better than what I did hear it sure must be a corker.”
“But why frighten poor Limpy Peters when you’re getting on so well as it is?” demanded Dick.