This was why father said that my conduct was such, and that his friend Martin didn't seem to be able to come into his house without being insulted and injured by me. I never insulted him. It isn't my fault if he can't slide down a hill without coming apart. However, I've had my last suffering on account of him. The next time he comes apart where I am I shall not wait to be punished for it, but shall start straight for the North-pole, and if I discover it the British government will pay me mornamillion dollars. I'm able to sit down this morning, but my spirits are crushed, and I shall never enjoy life any more.
[SCREW-HEADS.]
I'm in an awful situation that a boy by the name of Bellew got me into. He is one of the boys that writes stories and makes pictures for Harper's Young People, and I think people ought to know what kind of a boy he is. A little while ago he had a story in the Young People about imitation screw-heads, and how he used to make them, and what fun he had pasting them on his aunt's bureau. I thought it was a very nice story, and I got some tin-foil and made a whole lot of screw-heads, and last Saturday I thought I'd have some fun with them.
Father has a dreadfully ugly old chair in his study, that General Washington brought over with him in the Mayflower, and Mr. Travers says it is stiffer and uglier than any of the Pilgrim fathers. But father thinks everything of that chair, and never lets anybody sit in it except the minister. I took a piece of soap, just as that Bellew used to, and if his name is Billy why don't he learn how to spell it that's what I'd like to know, and made what looked like a tremendous crack in the chair. Then I pasted the screw-heads on the chair, and it looked exactly as if somebody had broken it and tried to mend it.
I couldn't help laughing all day when I thought how astonished father would be when he saw his chair all full of screws, and how he would laugh when he found out it was all a joke. As soon as he came home I asked him to please come into the study, and showed him the chair and said "Father I cannot tell a lie I did it but I won't do it any more."
