“When I got in there Pa had a sofa pillow trying to put the dog out, and in the meantime Pa’s linen pants were afire. I grabbed a pail of this indigo water that they had been rinsing clothes with and throwed it on Pa, or there wouldn’t have been a place on him biggern a sixpence that wasn’t burnt, and then he threw a camp chair at me and told me to go to Gehenna. Ma says that’s the new hell they have got up in the revised edition of the Bible for bad boys. When Pa’s pants were out his coat-tail blazed up and a Roman candle was firing blue and red balls at his legs, and a rocket got into his white vest. The scene beggared description, like the Racine fire. A nigger chaser got after Ma and treed her on top of the sofa, and another one took after a girl that Ma invited to dinner, and burnt one of her stockings so she had to wear one of Ma’s stockings, a good deal too big for her, home. After things got a little quiet, and we opened the doors and windows to let out the smoke and the smell of burnt dog hair, and Pa’s whiskers, the big fire crackers began to go off, and a policeman came to the door and asked what was the matter, and Pa told him to go along with me to Gehenna, but I don’t want to go with a policeman. It would give me dead away. Well, there was nobody hurt much but the dog and Pa. I felt awful sorry for the dog. He hasn’t got hair enough to cover hisself. Pa, didn’t have much hair anyway, except by the ears, but he thought a good deal of his whiskers, cause they wasn’t very gray. Say, couldn’t you send this anarchy up to the house? If I go up there Pa will say I am the damest fool on record. This is the last 4th of July you catch me celebrating. I am going to work in a glue factory, where nobody will ever come to see me.”
And the boy went out to pick up some squib firecrackers, that had failed to explode, in front of the drug store.
CHAPTER V.
THE BAD BOY’S MA COMES HOME—NO DEVILTRY ONLY A LITTLE FUN—
THE BAD BOY’S CHUM—A LADY’S WARDROBE IN THE OLD MAN’S ROOM—
MA’S UNEXPECTED ARRIVAL—WHERE IS THE HUZZY?—DAMFINO!—THE
BAD BOY WANTS TO TRAVEL WITH A CIRCUS.
“When is your ma coming back?” asked the grocery man, of the bad boy, as he found him standing on the sidewalk when the grocery was opened in the morning, taking some pieces of brick out of his coat tail pockets.
“O she got back at midnight, last night,” said the boy, as he eat a few blue berries out of a case. “That’s what makes me up so early, Pa has been kicking at these pieces of brick with his bare feet, and when I came away he had his toes in his hand and was trying to go back up stairs on one foot. Pa haint got no sense.”
“I am afraid you are a terror,” said the grocery man, as he looked at the innocent face of the boy, “You are always making your parents some trouble, and it is a wonder to me they don’t send you to some reform school. What deviltry were you up to last night to get kicked this morning?”