{Illustration: “Hennery, This Attempt on Your Part to Murder Me Was Not the Success You Expected."}
“If my chum comes around tell him I will write him from Hot Springs and give him the news.”
“If that don't beat anything I ever heard of,” said the old grocery man. “I have always been afraid of those automobiles, and when one of the horns blow I go in the first gate, say my prayers and wait for it to go by and run over some one farther down the block. Did your dad say anything about buying an automobile after he came to?”
“Yes, as I remember it, he said he would see me in h—— first, or something like that. He remarked, as he got in the milk wagon, that every man that owned an automobile ought to be examined by an insanity expert and sent to the penitentiary for letting concealed weapons carry him.
“Well, good-by, old man,” and the bad boy went limping out of the grocery to go home and tell his mother that he and dad had been scoring up for the good time they were going to have when they got out on the road for dad's health.
CHAPTER XII.
The Bad Boy Writes His Chum Not to Get So Gay—Dad's Experience with the Pecarries.
“Hot Springs, Ark.—My dear old chum: Dad and I got here three days ago, and have begun to enjoy life. We didn't leave home a minute too soon, as we would have been arrested for running over that banana peddler, and for arson in setting a load of hay on fire and destroying the farmer's pants in our automobile accident. Ma writes that a policeman and a deputy sheriff have camped on our front doorstep ever since we left, waiting for dad and I to show up. Dad wants me to tell you to notify the officers that they can go plum, as we shall never come back. Tell them we have gone to Panama, or Mexico, or any old place.