“Why, he wanted to go home when he couldn’t hook enough from the pigs to fill his stomach, an’ my papa says little boys that can’t be found when their mamma wants ’em always start for home when they get hungry. That’s what this boy off in another country did—papa says the Bible don’t tell whether he told the man to get another pig-feeder, or whether he just skooted in a hurry. But, anyhow, he got pretty near home, an’ I guess he felt awful ashamed of himself an’ went along the back road; for, in the picture of our big Bible-book, his clothes are awful ragged an’ mussy, an’ he must have been sure he was goin’ to get scolded an’ wish he could get in the back door an’ go up to his room without anybody seein’ him.”
“Oh, Harry!” exclaimed Mrs. Burton. “This is growing perfectly dreadful. It’ positively sacrilegious.”
“The application is the only sacred part of the original, my dear,” said Mr. Burton, “and you may trust that boy to discover the point of anything. I wish doctors of divinity were like him. Go ahead, Budge.”
“Well, he was sneakin’ along, an’ gettin’ behind trees an’ fences whenever he saw anybody comin’ that he knew, when all at once his papa saw him. Papas always can see farther than anybody else, I believe, an’ they always kind o’s know when their boys are comin’, an’ they just look as if they’d always been standin’ right there waitin’ for ’em. An’ that pig-feeder’s papa ran right out of the house without his hat on—that’s the way he is in the picture in the big Bible-book, an’ grabbed him, an’ kissed him, an’ hugged him so hard that he had to grunt, an’——”
“An’ he didn’t say ‘Why, how did you get your clozhezh so dyty,’s eiver?” said Toddie.
“No, indeed! An’ the pig-feeder said he’d been a bad boy, an’ he guessed he’d better eat his dinner in the kitchen after that, but his papa wouldn’t let him. He put clean clothes on him, an’ gave him a new pair of shoes, an’ put a ring on his finger.”
“Ringsh ain’t good to eat,” said Toddie. “I fwallowed one once, I did, an’ it didn’t taste nohow at all. And den I had to take some nashty medshin, an’ de ring came unfwallowed again.”
“He didn’t give him the ring to eat, you silly boy,” said Budge. “Rings squeeze fingers all the time, an’ let folks know how the folks that give ’em the rings want to squeeze ’em all the time. Then they killed a whole calf—’cause the pig-feeder was awful empty, you know, an’ they had a jolly old time. An’ the pig-feeder’s big brother heard ’em all cuttin’ up, an’ he was real cross about it, ’cause he’d always been good, an’ there hadn’t ever been any tea-parties made for him. But his papa said, ‘Oh, don’t say a word—we’ve got your brother back again—just think of that, my boy.’s I’m awful sorry for that big brother, though; I know how he felt, for when Tod’s bad, an’ I’m good papa just takes Tod in his lap an’ talks to him, an’ hugs him, an’ I feel awful lonesome an’ wish I wasn’t good a bit.”
“And what do you suppose the bad boy’ mamma did when she saw him?” asked Mr. Burton.
