There was Aunty Edith holding on to the grape-arbor while George pulled at the can, and the paint flowing around pretty free. Well, George couldn't pull it off, and finally he had to take a can-opener and cut Aunty Edith's foot out, just as though she were salmon, or something.
When we got to that part, Aunty May and I forgot ourselves and laughed out loud, and then Aunty Edith looked at us, and looked at her foot, and at George's black face all daubed with green paint, and his clothes, too, as he carefully cut her out, and she laughed, too. But it spoiled her shoe, and it took several days to wear the green off George.
That was the too bad part of it. George was so fine for singing and telling stories and he just couldn't remember to do anything else.
When he went for the mail and the groceries, unless I went with him, he'd forget everything, and come home just as smiling as ever.
And he was brave, too, for he used to chase the village boys when they ran after him and called names, and besides that he and I built a lovely Filipino house up in the biggest willow tree, and had lots of fun, escaping from two boys at the farm across Rabbit Run Bridge, who chased us and tried to catch us. We got up in our tree-house and shot at them with bows and arrows, and they couldn't reach us. I liked having George. If he'd only stayed funny, without getting dangerous. But George got dangerous.
It was this way: George and the two boys on the farm, Samuel and Charlie Crosscup, were having a talk on the middle of Rabbit Run Bridge, about fire engines. Samuel said the East Penniwell fire engine could get up steam and run to a fire, with Sol Achers's old white horse hitched to her, quicker than a New York fire engine could. George and me said it couldn't. He said, "It could, because why? The East Penniwell horse and engine were used to the roads and the New York horses and engine would have to be showed."
I couldn't think of anything to say, but George said, "No, sah. Dat ain't noways so. For de New York fire engines and horses is so trained that they goes over any road and anywhere according as the Fire Chief he directs, and it doan mek no difference whether they've been up dataways befo' or not They jist naturally eats up all distances."
Well, that made the Crosscup boys mad, and they kept telling all about the East Penniwell engine house, and my! it must be a lovely place, if all they say is true. George he told them then about the New York engine houses, and my! they must be splendid if George really knew. He said he did. He said his mother's cousin washed for three firemen and she'd oughter know. I guess she ought to, but George did remember so much about those things, and forgot so quick about others, that sometimes I really didn't know what to be sure about.
Well, it began to rain, and George was going to take me home, when one of the boys said, "Aw, don't go home, yet. Come on into the old barn and let's play knife until the rain stops."