We had travelled perhaps half a mile farther, and Holman had ground something like forty pairs of scissors in all, when we were joined by Phaeton, who watched him as he ground the next pair.
"Is that the way you've ground them all?" said he, when it was finished.
"Yes, of course—why?" said Holman.
"Because if you have, you've ruined every pair you've touched," said Phaeton. "Don't you know that scissors must be ground on the edge of the blade, not on the side, like a knife? If you grind away the sides, the blades can't touch each other, and so can't cut at all."
"I declare, I believe that's so," said Holman. "I thought it was kind of queer that none of the scissors would really cut anything; but I was sure I had made them sharp, and so supposed they were all old, worn-out things that wouldn't cut, any way. I guess you'd better take my place, Fay."
Phaeton declined to do this, but went along as confidential adviser.
We wound about through a great number of streets, the accompanying crowd of boys being sometimes larger and sometimes smaller, and ground a great many knives and scissors.
On turning a corner into a by-street that bore the proud name of Fairfax, we came suddenly upon Jimmy the Rhymer. He was sitting on a bowlder, with a quantity of printed bills over his left arm, a paste-brush in his right hand, and a small bucket of paste on the ground beside him. He looked tired and melancholy.
The outward situation was soon explained. A man who had kept a cobbler's shop for many years, but had recently enlarged it into something like a shoe-store, had employed us to print some bills to be posted up on the fences and dead-walls, announcing the event. They began with the startling legend, printed in our largest type,
GO IT BOOTS!