“I’ll risk her any way,” he said, while Jack rejoined: “Don’t bring me into the scrape. She’ll never forget it, for she hates me like pizen now.”
Paul promised not to implicate his friend, and as soon as he thought the fresh melons were in market he bought the finest one he could find and took it to Miss Hansford, feeling glad now that he had done so. She had thrown neither hot water, nor red pepper, nor fire crackers at him. Her face was not half as vinegary as it had been at first, and when she spoke of his conscience there was a roguish smile around his mouth as he replied: “I s’pose it ought to have troubled me, and it did some, but what kept me awake was the awful stomach-ache, which nearly bent me up double. I ate too much melon, and it wasn’t very good,—wasn’t ripe, nor half so sweet as this one I’ve brought you. I told ’em I wanted the very best, and made ’em plug it to be sure. It’s first rate. Cut it, and see.”
Miss Hansford was not one to capitulate at once, and she answered, rather stiffly: “You ought to have had stomach-ache. ’Twill teach you a lesson, maybe. Do you go to Sunday-school?”
“Yes’m,” Paul replied, and Miss Hansford continued: “’Piscopal, I s’pose?”
“Yes’m.”
“What do you learn?”
“Oh! my duty to my neighbor, and things,” Paul said, wondering if he was to be put through his catechism, and how he would come out of the ordeal.
He believed he would rather take his chance with fire crackers. Miss Hansford’s next remark reassured him.
“Umph! I know all about that catechism. A deal of good your duty to your neighbor has done you. What’s the eighth commandment?”
Paul repeated the seventh; then, seeing the look of disgust in Miss Hansford’s face, and realizing his mistake, he involuntarily began the response: “Lord have mercy upon us!” but got no farther, for the ludicrousness of the whole affair overcame every other feeling, and he burst into a peal of laughter, so merry and so boyish that Miss Hansford laughed with him in spite of herself.