“What shall we do
With little Boy Blue?”
GHOSTS AND WATER-MELONS.
BY J. H. WOODBURY.
BOBBY TATMAN was a little Yankee fellow, but he looked like an Italian boy, with his tangly brown hair, and his soft, simple dark eyes. He was very fond of water-melons; but he was very much afraid of ghosts; and in his simple heart he believed everything that was told him, and thereby hangs a tale.
There was a man, whom all the neighbors knew as Uncle Ben, who had some very fine water-melons—which Bobby knew all about—for they were only about a mile from Bobby’s father’s house.
These were the nearest water-melons that Bobby knew of, and he used to go over occasionally, with his friend James Scott, to look at them, and see how they were coming on. Both Bobby and his friend grew much interested in the melons, as they were ripening, and Bobby wondered why his father did not raise water-melons, too. This was not a large patch, and it was in a sunny nook of Uncle Ben’s farm, out of sight from his house.
“It wouldn’t be stealing to take water-melons,” remarked Bobby’s friend one day, as the two were sitting on the fence alongside the little patch. “It wouldn’t be any more stealing than picking off corn to roast, when we go a-fishing, would be stealing, as I can see.”