HOW MANY GIRLS DID IT TAKE TO LAND HIM?
“How many girls did it take to land him?” “Was he gamey, Flossie?” “Did ye bait him with a clam-shell, or an old boot? they’ll snap at any thing.”
“Oh! I’d given away my dinner to have been there!” and then Regy would stir him up with a stick, and turn him on his back, all of which caused me to scream every time, and sent tremors all over me.
“What-cher goin’ to do with him?” inquired Willie.
“I shall study his habitudes, and improve my knowledge of the crustacea,” said I, giving him a sentence directly out of my text-book. “I shall look at him every day.”
“Yes, and he’ll look at you every night. I have read a book that told about a traveler that offended a crab once, and he informed the other crabs, and they all made for him at night, and twenty thousand of them came that night and crept under his tent, and sat there and looked at him. And there he was in the middle of them, and you know their eyes are fastened in their heads by a string, and they can throw them out of their heads and draw them back again; and, at a signal, they all threw their eyes at him. He was so horrified that night, that he got insane and had to be sent to a lunatic asylum.”
“I’ve heard your stories before, Regy, and I simply don’t credit them. We girls are going to hunt up a pond to put him in, where we can pet him, and educate him.”
“You’d best hunt up a frying pan to put him in; he’s capital eating for breakfast, well browned, with hard-boiled eggs and parsley round him,” said Reginald.
I told him if he couldn’t do any better than to lie there and make an exhibition of his bad taste and ignorance, he’d better get up and work off the fit. I insisted upon his helping me to fill the pail with salt water, and hang him upon the rocks until we could make a future, permanent disposal of him.