“Pa was weak as a cat, and told me to go right home with him, and he would buy me a bicycle. He asked me how many dogs there were, and what was the color of them. I s'pose I did awful wrong, but I told him there was only one dog, and a cat, and the dog was white.
“Well, sir, Pa acted just as he did the night Hancock was beat, and he had to have the doctor to give him something to quiet him (the time he wanted me to go right down town and buy a hundred rat traps, but the doctor said never mind, I needn't go). I took him home and Ma soaked his feet, and give him some ginger tea, and while I was gone after the doctor he asked Ma if she ever saw a green dog.
“That was what made all the trouble. If Ma had kept her mouth shut I would have been all right, but she up and told him that they had a green dog, and a blue dog, and all colors of spitz dogs down at the dyers. They dyed them just for an advertisement, and for him to be quiet and he would feel better when he got over it. Pa was all right when I got back and told him the doctor had gone to Wauwatosa, and I had left an order on his slate. Pa said he would leave an order on my slate. He took a harness tug and used it for breeching on me. I don't think a boy's Pa ought to wear a harness on his son, do you? He said he would learn me to play rainbow dogs on him. He said I was a liar, and he expected to see me wind up in Congress. Say, is Congress anything like Waupun or Sing Sing? No, I can't stay, thank you, I must go down to the office and tell Pa I have reformed, and freeze him out of a circus ticket. He is a a good enough man, only he don't appreciate a a boy that has got all the modern improvements. Pa and Ma are going to enter me in the Sunday school. I guess I'll take first money, don't you?”
And the bad boy went out with a visible limp, and a look of genius cramped for want of opportunity.
CHAPTER II.
HIS PA PLAYS JOKES—A MAN SHOULDN'T GET MAD AT A JOKE—THE
MAGIC BOUQUET—THE GROCERY MAN TAKES A TURN—HIS PA TRIES
THE BOUQUET AT CHURCH—ONE FOR THE OLD MAID—A FIGHT ENSUES—
THE BAD BOY THREATENS THE GROCERY MAN—A COMPROMISE.
“Say, do you think a little practical joke does any hurt,” asked the bad boy of the grocery man, as he came in with his Sunday suit on, and a bouquet in his button-hole, and pried off a couple of figs from a new box that had been just opened.
“No sir,” said the groceryman, as he licked off the syrup that dripped from a quart measure, from which he had been filling a jug. “I hold that a man who gets mad at a practical joke, that is, one that does not injure him, is a fool, and he ought to be shunned by all decent people. That's a nice bouquet you have in your coat. What is it, pansies? Let me smell of it,” and the grocery man bent over in front of the boy to take a whiff at the bouquet. As he did so a stream of water shot out of the innocent looking bouquet and struck him full in the face, and run down over his shirt, and the grocery man yelled murder, and fell over a barrel of axe helves and scythe snaths, and then groped around for a towel to wipe his face.
“You condemn skunk,” said the grocery man to the boy, as he took up an axe-helve and started for him, “what kind of a golblasted squirt gun have you got there. I will maul you, by thunder,” and he rolled up his shirt sleeves.