THE JUDKINS PAPERS
FATHER AND SON
Mr. Judkins' boy came home yesterday with a bottle of bugs in his pocket, and as the quiet little fellow sat on the back porch in his favorite position, his legs elbowed and flattened out beneath him like a letter "W," his genial and eccentric father came suddenly upon him.
"And what's the blame' boy up to now?" said Mr. Judkins, in an assumed tone of querulous displeasure, as he bent over the boy from behind and gently tweaked his ear.
"Oh, here, mister!" said the boy, without looking up; "you thist let up on that, will you!"
"What you got there, I tell you!" continued the smiling Mr. Judkins, in a still gruffer tone, relinquishing the boy's ear, and gazing down upon the fluffy towhead with more than ordinary admiration. "What you got there?"
"Bugs," said the boy—"you know!"
"Dead, are they?" said Mr. Judkins.
"Some of 'em's dead," said the boy, carefully running a needle through the back of a large bumblebee. "All these uns is, you kin bet! You don't think a feller 'ud try to string a live bumblebee, I reckon?"
"Well, no, 'Squire," said Mr. Judkins, airily, addressing the boy by one of the dozen nicknames he had given him; "not a live bumblebee—a real stem-winder, of course not. But what in the name o' limpin' Lazarus air you stringin' 'em fer?"