“Let’s see the hole he came out of?” said Budge, starting across the floor.
“It all growded up again right away,” said Toddie, in haste, “an’ you’s a bad boy to get out of your chair when Aunt Alice told you not to, and you’s got to tell annuvver story ’bout naughty folks to pay for it. Gwon!”
Budge returned to his chair, and continued:
“An’ old Pharaoh went down to Moses’s house an’ said, ‘Ask the Lord to make the frogs hop away, an’ you can have your old Izzyrelites—I don’t want ’em.’ So the Lord done it, an’ all the glad old Pharaoh was, was only ’cause he got rid of ’em; an’ he kept the Izzyrelites some more. Then the Lord thought he’d fix ’em sure, so he turned all the dirt into nasty bugs.”
“What did little boys do den, dat wanted dyte to make mud-pies of?” asked Toddie.
“Well, the bugs was only made out of dry dirt,” exclaimed Budge; “just dust like we kick up in the street, you know.”
“Oh,” said Toddie. “I wonder if any of dem bugs was ’tato-bugs?”
“I dunno, but some of ’em was the kind that mammas catch with fine combs after their little boys have been playin’ with dirty children. An’ Pharaoh’s smart men, that thought they could do everythin’, found they couldn’t make them bugs.”
“Why-y-y,” drawled Toddie, “did Pharaoh want some more of ’em?”
“No, I s’pose not, but he stayed bad, so he had to catch it again. The Lord sent whole swarms of flies to Egypt, an’ there wasn’t any mosquito-nets in that country either. An’ then Pharaoh got good again, an’ the Lord took the flies away, an Pharaoh got bad again, so the Lord made all the horses an’ cows awful sick, an’ they all died.”