CHAPTER II.
Uncle Ike sat and smoked his pipe in silence for a few minutes, blew the smoke out in clouds, and looked at it as though searching for something, and there was a serious look on his face, as though he was trying to fathom some mystery, while the redheaded boy was looking at himself in a hand mirror to see if the freckles on his nose were any smaller since he had been using some of his mother's toilet powder to remove them. Finally Uncle Ike put the bowl of the pipe to his nose and smelled of the burning tobacco, turned up his nose and snuffed, and said:
“There is something the matter with this 'ere terbacker. I suppose the terbacker makers have got into a trust, and they don't care how the stuff smells. Condemned if I ain't half a mind to quit smoking and break up the trust.”
“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” said the red-headed boy, “that I fixed your tobacco for you so it would not smell so bad. I put some cinnamon bark and wiener skins in it.”
“Well, of all things!” said Uncle Ike, as he emptied the tobacco out of the pipe by rapping it on the heel of his boot, and looked sick. “What in the name of heaven is wiener skins?”
“Why, it is the envelope that goes around a wiener sausage. Us boys were smoking cigarettes one day made of paper and dried dandelion leaves, and the boy at the butcher shop said if we would dry some wiener skin and cut it up and put it in the cigarette and smoke it, it would make the finest flavor, and make us strong. I tried it, and the cigarette smelled just like camping out and cooking over a camp-fire, and the next day I was so strong ma noticed it. I thought you were getting old, and I would make you strong and young again. Don't you notice how different the smoke smells since I fixed the tobacco? I was going to put in some red pepper pods, but——”
“Here, hold on!” said Uncle Ike. “The butcher has got you mixed up. He was giving you a recipe for a Mexican pudding. But don't you ever try any experiments on your Uncle Ike any more. I don't want to be made strong any more on sausage skins. A gymnasium is good enough for me, and it don't smell like burning a negro at the stake. I know anything would help the flavor of this terbacker, but I have got used to it, after about sixty years burning it under my nose, and, if the trust will not water the stock with baled hay or cut cabbage, I will try and pull through as it is. So you experiment on yourself, condemn you! I knew it was you that had disturbed my terbacker. I can tell by the freckles on your face when you have done anything wrong. A boy that is freckled has got to be square, or I am right on to him. When you are guilty, the freckles on your nose are changeable; one will be yellow, like saffron, and another freckle seems pale, and little drops of perspiration appear between the freckles; and then several small freckles will combine into one, like a trust, and you are given completely away. So remember, as long as you wear freckles, if you do anything crooked, there is a sign right on your face that tells the tale.”