The screaming of the children had been heard farther than Mrs. Burton imagined it could be, for a sound of heavy and rapid footsteps increased behind her and, turning, she beheld the faithful Mike, Mr. Lawrence’ gardener-coachman.
“Fhot is it, dharlin’?” asked Mike, looking sharply at each boy, and picking a red speck from the front of Toddie’s dress. “Murther alive! red peppers!”
Mike dashed across the street, vaulted a fence, and into an inclosed bit of woodland, ran frantically about among the trees, stopped in front of one and attacked it with his knife, to the astonishment of Mrs. Burton, who imagined the man had lost his senses. A few seconds later he returned with a strip of bark, which he cut into small pieces as he ran.
“Here, ye dharlin’ little divils,” said he, cramming a piece of the bark into each boy’ mouth, “chew that. It’s slippery elm; it’ll sthop the burnin’. Don’t the byes play that trick on the other byes at school often an’ often, an’ hasn’t me sister’s childher been nearly murthered by it? An’ fhot ought your father do to yees for throyin’ to shwally such thrash? Oh, but wouldn’t I loike to foind the dhivils that put yees up to it! Who was they? Tell me, so I can sind them afther their father, where it’s hotter than pepper.”
“How did you come to eat red peppers?” asked Mrs. Burton, as the children escaped slowly from their pain.
A RED PEPPER EXPERIENCE
“Why, a boy once told us they was strawberries,” cried Budge, “an’ to-day we saw a lot where men was spoilin’ a garden to build a house, an’ we asked ’em if we could have ’em, an’ they said yes, an’ we brought ’em all back in a piece of paper, an’ didn’t bite one of ’em, ’cause we wanted to eat ’em all in a littel tea-party like gentlemen, and the first one I chewed—ow! That poor rich man in the fire—I know just how he felt when he begged Abraham to have his tongue cooled with a drop of water.”
“Poor old rich man didn’t have all de fire in hizh mouf, ’pectin’ dat ’twazh goin’ to be strawbewwies,” sobbed Toddie.
“There wasn’t no dear old Mike to go an’ get him slippery elm, either,” said Budge. “Soon’s we come back home to stay, Mike, I’m goin’ to put dirt in the stable-pump, just to be real good about stoppin’ when you tell me to.”