“So you could soar into the circumambient ether and leave all mundane things below?” queried Jess Morse, with a chuckle.
“No,” said Bobby, in disgust. “So I wouldn’t have a toothache. I was up with one of my old grinders half the night.”
“Have it pulled,” suggested Laura.
“Say!” cried Bobby. “That’s the easiest thing in the world to say and the hardest to do. And you know it, Mother Wit! You can have an old toothache that will make you feel like committing suicide; and when you get to the dentist shop you wish you had committed suicide before you got there,” and jolly little Bobby began to grin again. 13
“Suicide is a serious matter,” said Nellie, gravely.
“Surely, surely,” the cut-up replied, dropping her voice to a gruesome pitch. “Listen!
|
“‘Beside a sewer a man lay dead, A dagger in his side; The coroner’s decision read: ”He died of suicide.“ ‘Now if this man at home in bed, Had in this manner died, Then could the coroner have said: “He died of homicide”?’ |
“Never joke about serious things, Nell.”
“Hush, Bobby!” commanded Laura Belding. “Tell us, do, if your father has agreed to let us go camping on Acorn Island?”
“Of course,” replied the younger girl. “And he says there is a cabin there that can be made tight for ten dollars. It’s all right to camp under canvas; but if a big storm should come up he says we’d be glad of that cabin.”