“Well, everything went just as we expected, except Ma. She had examined the foot-ball, and concluded it was not dangerous, and was just giving it a kick as the firecracker went off, and the glass fell, and the firecracker was so near her that it scared her, and when Pa looked around Ma was flying across the sidewalk, and Pa heard the noise and he thought the house was blown to atoms. O, you'd a died to see him go around the corner. You could play crokay on his coat-tail, and his face was as pale as Ma's when she goes to a party. But Ma didn't scare much. As quick as she stopped against the hitching post she knew it was us boys, and she came down there, and maybe she didn't maul me. I cried and tried to gain her sympathy by telling her the firecracker went off before it was due, and burned my eyebrows off, but she didn't let up until I promised to go and find Pa.
“I tell you, my Ma ought to be engaged by the British government to hunt out the dynamite fiends. She would corral them in two minutes. If Pa had as much sand as Ma has got, it would be warm weather for me. Well, me and my chum went and headed Pa off or I guess he would be running yet. We got him up by the lake shore, and he wanted to know if the house fell down. He said he would leave it to me if he ever said anything against the Fenians, and I told him he had always claimed that the Fenians were the nicest men in the world, and it seemed to relieve him very much. When he got home and found the house there he was tickled, and when Ma called him an old bald-headed coward, and said it was only a joke of the boys with a foot ball, he laughed right out, and said he knew it all the time, and he ran to see if Ma would be scared. And then he wanted to hug me, but it wasn't my night to hug and I went down to the theater. Pa don't amount to much when there is trouble. The time Ma had them cramps, you remember, when you got your cucumbers first last season, Pa came near fainting away, and Ma said ever since they had been married when anything ailed her, Pa has had pains just the same as she has, only he grunted more, and thought he was going to die. Gosh, if I was a man I wouldn't be sick every time one of the neighbors had a back ache, would you?
“Well you can't tell. When you have been married twenty or thirty years you will know a good deal more than you do now. You think you know it all, now, and you are pretty intelligent for a boy that has been brought up carelessly, but there are things that you will learn after a while that will astonish you. But what ails your Pa's teeth? The hired girl was over here to get some corn meal for gruel, and she said your Pa was gumming it, since he lost his teeth.”
“O, about the teeth. That was too bad. You see my chum has got a dog that is old, and his teeth have all come out in front, and this morning I borried Pa's teeth before he got up, to see if we couldn't fix them in the dog's mouth, so he could eat better. Pa says it is an evidence of a kind heart for a boy to be good to dumb animals, but it is a darn mean dog that will go back on a friend. We tied the teeth in the dog's mouth with a string that went around his upper jaw, and another around his under jaw, and you'd a dide to see how funny he looked when he laffed.
“He looked just like Pa when he tried to smile so as to get me to come up to him so he can lick me. The dog pawed his mouth a spell to get the teeth out, and then we gave him a bone with some meat on, and he began to gnaw the bone, and the teeth come off the plate, and he thought it was pieces of the bone, and he swallowed the teeth. My chum noticed it first, and he said we had got to get in our work pretty quick to save the plates, and I think we were in luck to save them. I held the dog, and my chum, who was better acquainted with him, untied the strings and got the gold plates out, but there were only two teeth left, and the dog was happy. He woggled his tail for more teeth, but we hadn't any more. I am going to give him Ma's teeth some day. My chum says when a dog gets an appetite for anything you have got to keep giving it to him or he goes back on you. But I think my chum played dirt on me. We sold the gold plates to a jewelry man, and my chum kept the money. I think, as long as I furnished the goods, he ought to have given me something besides the experience, don't you? After this I don't have no more partners, you bet.” All this time the boy was marking on a piece of paper, and soon after he went out the grocery man noticed a crowd outside, and on he found a sign hanging up which read:
WORMY FIGS
FOR PARTIES.
CHAPTER VI.
HIS PA AN ORANGEMAN—THE GROCERY MAN SHAMEFULLY ABUSED—-HE
GETS HOT—BUTTER, OLEOMARGARINE AND AXLE GREASE—THE OLD MAN
WEARS ORANGE ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY—HE HAS TO RUN FOR HIS
LIFE—THE BAD BOY AT SUNDAY SCHOOL—INGERSOLL AND BEECHER
VOTED OUT—“MARY HAD A LITTLE LAM.”