He took the dead rooster and threw it out in the street, and looked up and down the street for the bad boy, and went in and hid a raw hide where he could reach it handy.
CHAPTER XIX.
ONE MORE JOKE ON THE OLD MAN. UNCLE EZRA RETURNS—THE BASKET
ON THE STEPS—THE ANONYMOUS LETTER—“O BROTHER THAT I SHOULD
LIVE TO SEE THIS DAY!”—AN UGLY DUTCH BABY—THE OLD MAN
WHEELS THE BABY NOW—A FROG IN THE OLD MAN'S BED.
“I see your Pa wheeling the baby around a good deal lately,” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in the store one evening to buy a stick of striped pepperment candy for the baby, while his Pa stopped the baby wagon out on the sidewalk and waited for the boy, with an expression of resignation on his face.
“What's got into your Pa to be nurse girl this hot weather?”
“O, we have had a circus at our house,” said the boy, as he came in after putting the candy in the baby's hand. “You see, Uncle Ezra came back from Chicago, where he had been to sell some cheese, and he stopped over a couple of days with us, and he said we must play one more joke on Pa before he went home. We played it, and it is a wonder I am alive, because I never saw Pa so mad in all my life. Now this is the last time I go into any joke on shares. If I play any more jokes I don't want any old Uncle to give me away.”
“What is it?” said the grocery man, as he took a stool and sat out by the front door beside the boy who was trying to eat a box of red raspberries on the sly.
“Well Uncle Ezra and me bribed the nurse girl to dress the baby up one evening in some old, dirty baby clothes, belonging to our wash woman's baby, and we put it in a basket and placed the basket on the front door step, and put a note in the basket and addressed it to Pa. We had the nurse girl stay out in front, by the basement stairs, so the baby couldn't get away and she rung the bell and got behind something. Ma and Pa, and Uncle Ezra and me were in the back parlor when the bell rung, and Ma told me to go to the door, and I brought in the basket, and set it down, and told Pa there was a note in it for him. Ma, she came up and looked at the note as Pa tore it open, and Uncle Ezra looked in the basket and sighed. Pa read part of the note and stopped and turned pale, and sat down then Ma read some of it, and she didn't feel very well, and she leaned against the piano and grated her teeth. The note was in a girl's hand writing, and was like this:
“Old Bald Headed Pet:—
“You will have to take care of your child, because I cannot.
Bring it up tenderly, and don't, for heaven's sake, send it
to the Foundling Asylum. I shall go drown myself.
“Your loving,
“Almira.”