CHAPTER II.
The Bad Boy and His Dad Ready for Their Travels—The Bad Boy
Labels the Old Man's Suit Case—How the Cowboys Made Him
Dance Once.
The old groceryman was in front of the grocery, bent oyer a box of rutabagas, turning the decayed sides down to make the possible customer think all was not as bad as it might be, when a shrill whistle down the street attracted his attention. He looked in the direction from which it came, and saw the bad boy coming with a suit case in one hand and a sole leather hat box in the other, and the old man went in the store to say a silent prayer, and to lay a hatchet and an ax handle where he could reach them if the worst came.
“Well, you want to get a good look at me now,” said the bad boy, as he dropped the valise on the floor, and put the hat box on the counter, “for it will be months and maybe years, before you see me again.”
“Oh, joy!” said the old groceryman, as he heaved a sigh, and tried to look sorry. “What is it, reform school, or have the police ordered you out of town? I have felt it coming for a long time. This is the only town you could have plied your vocation so long in and not been pulled. Where are you going with the dude suit case and the hat box?”
“Oh, dad has got a whole mess more diseases, and the doctors had a conversation over him Sunday, and they say he has got to go away again, right now, and that a sea voyage will brace him up and empty him out so medicine over in Europe can get in its work and strengthen him so he can start back after a while and probably die on the way home, and be buried at sea. Dad says he will go, for he had rather die at sea than on land, 'cause they don't have to have any trouble about a funeral, 'cause all they do is to sew a man up in a piece of cloth, tie a sack of coal to his feet, slide him off a board, and he goes kerplunk down into the salt water about a mile, and stands there on his feet and makes the whales and sharks think he is a new kind of fish.”
“Gee! but that is a programme that appeals to me as sort of uncanny,” said the old man. “Is your dad despondent over the outlook? What new disease has he got?”
“All of 'em,” said the boy, as he took a label off a tomato can and pasted it on the end of the suit case. “You take an almanac and read about all the diseases that the medicine advertised in the almanac cures, and dad has got the whole lot of them, nervous prostration, rheumatism, liver trouble, stomach busted, lungs congested, diaphragm turned over, heart disease, bronchitis, corns, bunions, every darn thing a man can catch without costing him anything. But he is not despondent. He just thinks it is an evidence of genius, and a certificate of standing in society and wealth. He argues that the poor people who have only one disease are not in it with statesmen and scholars. Oh, he is all right. He thinks if he goes to Europe all knocked out, he will class with emperors and dukes. Oh, since he had that operation and had his appendix chopped out, he thinks there is a bond of sympathy between him and King Edward that will cause him to be invited to be the guest of royalty. He is just daffy,” and the bad boy took a sapolio label out of a box and pasted it on the other end of the valise.