The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy Part 2

"Well, the teacher at school says you are a hardened infidel," said the grocery man, as he charged the crackers to the boy's Pa. "He says he had to turn you out to keep you from ruining the morals of the other scholars. How was that?"

"It was about speaking a piece. When I asked him what I should speak, he told me to learn some speech of some great man, some lawyer or statesman, so I learned one of Bob Ingersoll's speeches. Well, you'd a dide to see the teacher and the school committee, when I started in on Bob Ingersoll's lecture, the one that was in the papers when Bob was here. You see I thought if a newspaper that all the pious folks takes in their families, could publish Ingersoll's speech, it wouldn't do any hurt for a poor little boy, who ain't knee high to a giraffe, to speak it in school, but they made me dry up. The teacher is a republican, and when Ingersoll was speaking around here on politix, the time of the election, the teacher said Bob was the smartest man this country ever produced. I heard him say that in a corcus, when he went b.u.mming around the ward settin' 'em up nights specting to be superintendent of schools.

He said Bob Ingersoll just took the cake, and I think it was darn mean in him to go back on Bob and me too, just cause there was no 'lection.

The school committee made the teacher stop me, and they asked me if I didn't know any other piece to speak, and I told them I knew one of Beecher's, and they let me go ahead, but it was one of Beecher's new ones where he said he didn't believe in any h.e.l.l, and afore I got warmed up they said that was enough of that, and I had to wind up on "Mary had a Little Lam." None of them didn't kick on Mary's Lam and I went through it, and they let me go home. That's about the safest thing a boy can speak in school, now days, either "Mary had a Little Lam," or "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star." That's about up to the average intelleck of the committee. But if a boy tries to branch out as a statesman, they choke him off. Well, I am going down to the river, and I will leave my coat and hat by the wood yard, and get behind the wood, and you steer Pa down there and you will see some tall weeping over them clothes, and maybe Pa will jump in after me, and then I will come out from behind the wood and throw in a board for him to swim ash.o.r.e on. Good bye. Give my pocket comb to my chum," and the boy went out and hung up a sign in front of the grocery, as follows:

POP CORN THAT THE CAT

HAS SLEPT IN, CHEAP FOR

POP CORN b.a.l.l.s FOR SOCIABLES.

CHAPTER VII.

HIS MA DECEIVES HIM--THE BAD BOY IN SEARCH OF SAFFRON-- "WELL, IT'S A GIRL IF YOU MUST KNOW"--THE BAD BOY IS GRIEVED AT HIS MA'S DECEPTION--"S-H-H TOOTSY GO TO SLEEP"--"BY LOW, BABY"--THAT SETTLED IT WITH THE CAT--A BABY! BAH! IT MAKES ME TIRED.

"Give me ten cents worth of saffron, quick," said the bad boy to the grocery man, as he came in the grocery on a gallop, early one morning, with no collar on and no vest. He looked as though he had been routed out of bed in a hurry and had jumped into his pants and boots, and put on his coat and hat on the run.

"I don't keep saffron," said the grocery man as he picked up a barrel of ax-handles the boy had tipped over in his hurry. "You want to go over to the drug store on the corner, if you want saffron. But what on earth is the mat--"

At this point the boy shot out of the door, tipping over a basket of white beans, and disappeared in the drug store. The grocery man got down on his knees on the sidewalk, and scooped up the beans, occasionally looking over to the drug store, and just as he got them picked up, the boy came out of the drug store and walked deliberately towards his home as though there was no particular hurry. The grocery man looked after him, took up an ax-handle, spit on his hands, and shouted to the boy to come over pretty soon, as he wanted to talk with him. The boy did not come to the grocery till towards night; but the grocery man had seen him running down town a dozen times during the day and once he rode up to the house with the doctor, and the grocer surmised what was the trouble.

Along towards night the boy came in in a dejected sort of a tired way, sat down on a barrel of sugar, and never spoke.

"What is it, a boy or girl," said the grocery man, winking at an old lady with a shawl over her head, who was trying to hold a paper over a pitcher of yeast with her thumb.

"How in blazes did you know anything about it?" said the boy, as he looked around in astonishment, and with some indignation. "Well, it's a girl, if you must know, and that's enough," and he looked down at the cat playing on the floor with a potato, his face a picture of dejection.

"O, don't feel bad about it," said the grocery man, as he opened the door for the old lady. "Such things are bound to occur; but you take my word for it, that young one is going to have a hard life unless you mend your ways. You will be using it for a cork to a jug, or to wad a gun with, the first thing your Ma knows."

"I wouldn't touch the darn thing with the tongs," said the boy, as he rallied enough to eat some crackers and cheese. "Gosh, this cheese tastes good. I hain't had noth-to eat since morning. I have been all over this town trolling for nurses. They think a boy hasn't got any feelings. But I wouldn't care a goldarn, if Ma hadn't been sending me for neuralgia medicine, and hay fever stuff all winter, when she wanted to get rid of me. I have come into the room lots of times when Ma and the sewing girl were at work on some flannel things, and Ma would hide them in a basket and send me off after medicine. I was deceived up to about four o clock this morning, when Pa come to my room and pulled me out of bed to go over on the West Side after some old woman that knew Ma, and they have kept me whooping ever since. What does a boy want of a sister, unless it is a big sister. I don't want no sister that I have got to hold, and rock, and hold a bottle for. This affair breaks me all up," and the boy picked the cheese out of his teeth with a sliver he cut from the counter.

"Well, how does your Pa take it?" asked the grocery man, as he charged the boy's Pa with cheese, and saffron, and a number of such things.

"O, Pa will pull through. He wanted to boss the whole concern until Ma's chum, an old woman that takes snuff, fired him out into the hall. Pa sat there on my hand-sled, a perfect picture of dispair, and I thought it would be a kindness to play in on him. I found the cat asleep in the bath-room, and I rolled the cat up in a shawl and brought it out to Pa and told him the nurse wanted him to hold the baby. It seemed to do Pa good to feel that he was indispensible around the house, and he took the cat on his lap as tenderly as you ever saw a mother hold her infant.

Well, I got in the back hall, where he couldn't see me, and pretty soon the cat began to wake up and stretch himself, and Pa said 's-h-h-tootsy, go to sleep now, and let its Pa hold it,' and Pa he rocked back and forth on the hand sled and began to sing 'by, low, baby.' That settled it with the cat."

[Ill.u.s.tration: By low baby 066]

"Well, some cats can't stand music, anyway, and the more the cat wanted to get out of the shawl, the louder Pa sung, and bimeby I heard something-rip, and Pa yelled, 'scat you brute,' and when I looked around the corner of the hall the cat was bracing hisself against Pa's vest with his toe nails, and yowling, and Pa fell over the sled and began to talk about the hereafter like the minister does when he gets excited in church, and then Pa picked up the sled and seemed to be looking for me or the cat, but both of us was offul scarce. Don't you think there are times when boys and cats are kind of few around their accustomed haunts? Pa don't look as though he was very smart, but he can hold a cat about as well as the next man. But I am sorry for Ma. She was just getting ready to go to Florida for her neuralgia, and this will put a stop to it, cause she has to stay and take care of that young one. Pa says I will have a nice time this summer pushing the baby wagon. By the great horn spoons, there has got to be a dividing line somewhere, between business and pleasure, and I strike the line at wheeling a baby. I had rather catch a string of perch than to wheel all the babies ever was. They needn't procure no baby on my account, if it is to amuse me. I don't see why babies can't be sawed off onto people that need them in their business. Our folks don't need a baby any more than you need a safe, and there are people just suffering for babies. Say, how would it be to take the baby some night and leave it on some old batchelor's door step. If it had been a bicycle, or a breech loading shot-gun, I wouldn't have cared, but a baby! Bah! It makes me tired. I'd druther have a prize package. Well, I am sorry Pa allowed me to come home, after he drove me away last week. I guess all he wanted me to come back for was to humiliate me, and send me on errands. Well, I must go and see if he and the cat have made up."

And the boy went out and put a paper sign in front of the store:

LEAVE YOUR MEASURE

FOR SAFFRON TEA.

CHAPTER VIII.

THE BABY AND THE GOAT--THE BAD BOY THINKS HIS SISTER WILL BE A FIRE ENGINE--"OLD NUMBER TWO "--BABY REQUIRES GOAT MILK-- THE GOAT IS FRISKY--TAKES TO EATING ROMAN CANDLES--THE OLD MAN, THE HIRED GIRL AND THE GOAT--THE BAD BOY BECOMES TELLER IN A LIVERY STABLE.

"Well, how is the baby?" asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as he came into the grocery smelling very "horsey," and sat down on the chair with the back gone, and looked very tired.

"O, darn the baby. Everybody asks me about the baby as though it was mine. I don't pay no attention to the darn thing, except to notice the foolishness going on around the house. Say, I guess that baby will grow up to be a fire engine. The nurse coupled the baby onto a section of rubber hose that runs down into a bottle of milk, and it began to get up steam and pretty soon the milk began to disappear, just like the water does when a fire engine couples on to a hydrant. Pa calls the baby "Old Number Two." I am "Number One," and if Pa had a hook and ladder truck and a hose cart, and a fire gong he would imagine he was chief engineer of the fire department. But the baby kicks on this milk wagon milk, and howls like a dog that's got lost. The doctor told Pa the best thing he could do was to get a goat, but Pa said since we 'nishiated him into the Masons with the goat he wouldn't have a goat around no how. The doc told Pa the other kind of a goat, I think it was a Samantha goat he said, wouldn't kick with its head, and Pa sent me up into the Polack settlement to see if I couldn't borrow a milk goat for a few weeks. I got a woman to lend us her goat till the baby got big enough to chew beef, for a dollar a week, and paid a dollar in advance, and Pa went up in the evening to help me get the goat. Well it was the darndest mistake you ever see. There was two goats so near alike you could not tell which was the goat we leased, and the other goat was the chum of our goat, but it belonged to a Nirish woman. We got a bed cord hitched around the Irish goat, and that goat didn't recognize the lease, and when we tried to jerk it along it rared right up, and made things real quick for Pa.

I don't know what there is about a goat that makes it get so s.p.u.n.ky, but that goat seemed to have a grudge against Pa from the first. If there were any places on Pa's manly form that the goat did not explore, with his head, Pa don't know where the places are. O, it lammed him, and when I laffed Pa got mad. I told him every man ought to furnish his own goats, when he had a baby, and I let go the rope and started off, and Pa said he knew how it was, I wanted him to get killed. It wasn't that, but I saw the Irish woman that owned the goat coming around the corner of the house with a cistern pole. Just as Pa was getting the goat out of the gate the goat got cross ways of the gate, and Pa yanked, and doubled the goat right up, and I thought he had broke the goats neck, and the woman thought so too, for she jabbed Pa with the cistern pole just below the belt, and she tried to get a hold on Pa's hair, but he had her there. No woman can get the advantage of Pa that way 'cause Ma has tried it. Well, Pa explained it to the woman, and she let Pa off if he would pay her two dollars for damages to her goat, and he paid it, and then we took the nanny goat, and it went right along with us. But I have got my opinion of a baby that will drink goat's milk. Gosh, it is like this stuff that comes in a spoiled cocoanut. The baby hasn't done anything but blat since the nurse coupled it onto the goat hydrant. I had to take all my playthings out of the bas.e.m.e.nt to keep the goat from eating them.

I guess the milk will taste of powder and singed hair now. The goat got to eating some Roman candles me and my chum had laid away in the coal bin, and chewed them around the furnace, and the powder leaked out and a coal fell out of the furnace on the hearth, and you'd a dide to see Pa and the hired girl and the goat. You see Pa can't milk nothing but a milk wagon, and he got the hired girl to milk the goat, and they were just hunting around the bas.e.m.e.nt for the goat, with a tin cup, when the fireworks went off."

[Ill.u.s.tration: The old man, the hired girl and the goat 074]

"Well, there was b.a.l.l.s of green, and red and blue fire, and spilled powder blazed up, and the goat just looked astonished, and looked on as though it was sorry so much good fodder was spoiled, but when its hair began to burn, the goat gave one snort and went between Pa and the hired girl like it was shot out of a cannon, and it knocked Pa over a wash boiler into the coal bin, and the hired girl in amongst the kindling wood, and she crossed herself and repeated the catekism, and the goat jumped up on the brick furnace, and they couldn't get it down. I heard the celebration and went down and took Pa by the pants and pulled him out of the coal bin, and he said he would surrender, and plead guilty of being the biggest fool in Milwaukee. I pulled the kindling wood off the hired girl, and then she got mad, and said she would milk the goat or die. O, that girl has got sand. She used to work in the gla.s.s factory.

Well, sir, it was a sight worth two shillings admission, to see that hired girl get upon a step ladder to milk that goat on top of the furnace, with Pa sitting on a barrel of potatoes, bossing the job. They are going to fix a gang plank to get the goat down off the furnace. The baby kicked on the milk last night. I guess besides tasting of powder and burnt hair, the milk was too warm on account of the furnace. Pa has got to grow a new lot of hair on that goat, or the woman won't take it back. She don't want no bald goat. Well, they can run the baby and goat to suit themselves, 'cause I have resigned. I have gone into business.

Don't you smell anything that would lead you to surmise that I had gone into business? No drugstore this time," and the boy got up and put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, and looked proud.

"O, I don't know as I smell anything except the faint odor of a horse blanket. What you gone into anyway?" and the grocery man put the wrapping paper under the counter, and put the red chalk in his pocket, so the boy couldn't write any sign to hang up outside.

"You hit it the first time I have accepted a situation of teller in a livery stable," said the boy, as he searched around for the barrel of cut sugar, which had been removed.

"Teller in a livery stable! Well that is a new one on me. What is a teller in a livery stable?" and the grocery man looked pleased, and pointed the boy to a barrel of seven cent sugar.

"Don't you know what a teller is in a livery stable? It is the same as a teller in a bank. I have to grease the harness, oil the buggies, and curry off the horses, and when a man comes in to hire a horse I have to go down to the saloon and tell the livery man. That's what a teller is.

I like the teller part of it; but greasing harness is a little too rich for my blood, but the livery man says if I stick to it I will be governor some day, 'cause most all the great men have begun life taking care of horses. It all depends on my girl whether I stick or not. If she likes the smell of horses I shall be a statesman, but if she objects to it and sticks up her nose, I shall not yearn to be governor, at the expense of my girl. It beats all, don't it, that wimmen settle every great question. Everybody does everything to please wimmen, and if they kick on anything that settles it. But I must go and umpire that game between Pa, and the hired girl, and the goat. Say, can't you come over and see the baby? 'Taint bigger than a small satchel," and the boy waited till the grocery man went to draw some vinegar, when he slipped out and put up a sign written on a shingle with white chalk:

YELLOW SAND WANTED

FOR MAPLE SUGAR.

CHAPTER IX.

A FUNERAL PROCESSION--THE BAD BOY ON CRUTCHES--"YOU OUGHT TO SEE THE MINISTER!"--AN ELEVEN DOLLAR FUNERAL--THE MINISTER TAKES THE LINES--AN EARTHQUAKE--AFTER THE EARTHQUAKE WAS OVER--THE POLICEMAN FANS THE MINISTER--A MINISTER SHOULD HAVE SENSE.

"Well, great Julius Caesar's bald-headed ghost, what's the matter with you?" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came into the grocery on crutches, with one arm in a sling, one eye blackened, and a strip of court plaster across his face "Where was the explosion, or have you been in a fight, or has your Pa been giving you what you deserve, with a club? Here, let me help you; there, sit down on that keg of apple-jack.

Well, by the great guns, you look as though you had called somebody a liar. What's the matter?" and the grocery man took the crutches and stood them up against the show case.

"O, there's not much the matter with me," said the boy, in a voice that sounded all broke up, as he took a big apple off a basket, and began peeling it with his upper front teeth. "If you think I am a wreck, you ought to see the minister. They had to carry him home in installments, the way they buy sewing machines. I am all right; but they have got to stop him up with oak.u.m and tar, before he will hold water again!"

"Good gracious, you have not had a fight with the minister, have you?

Well, I have said all the time, and I stick to it, that you would commit a crime yet, and go to state prison. What was the fuss about?" and the grocery man laid the hatchet out of the boy's reach for fear he would get excited and kill him.

"O, I want no fuss, it was in the way of business. You see the livery man that I was working for promoted me. He let me drive a horse to haul sawdust for bedding, first, and when he found I was real careful he let me drive an express wagon to haul trunks. Day before yesterday, I think it was--yes, I was in bed all day yesterday--day before yesterday there was a funeral, and our stable furnished the outfit. It was only a common, eleven dollar funeral, so they let me go to drive the horse for the minister--you know, the buggy that goes ahead of the hea.r.s.e. They gave me an old horse that is thirty years old, that has not been off of a walk since nine years ago, and they told me to give him a loose rein, and he would go along all right. It's the same old horse that used to pace so fast on the avenue, years ago, but I didn't know it. Well, I wan't to blame. I just let him walk along as though he was hauling sawdust, and gave him a loose rein. When we got off of the pavement, the fellow that drives the hea.r.s.e, he was in a hurry, 'cause his folks was going to have ducks for dinner, and he wanted to get back, so he kept driving along side of my buggy, and telling me to hurry up. I wouldn't do it, 'cause the livery man told me to walk the horse. Then the minister, he got nervous, and said he didn't know as there was any use of going so slow, because he wanted to get back in time to get his lunch and go to a minister's meeting in the afternoon, but I told him we would all get to the cemetery soon enough if we took it cool, and as for me I wasn't in no sweat. Then one of the drivers that was driving the mourners, he came up and said he had to get back in time to run a wedding down to the one o'clock train, and for me to pull out a little.

I have seen enough of disobeying orders, and I told him a funeral in the hand was worth two weddings in the bush, and as far as I was concerned, this funeral was going to be conducted in a decorous manner, if we didn't get back till the next day. Well, the minister said, in his regular Sunday school way, 'My little man, let me take hold of the lines,' and like a darn fool I gave them to him. He slapped the old horse on the crupper with the lines, and then jerked up, and the old horse stuck up his off ear, and then the hea.r.s.e driver told the minister to pull hard and saw on the bit a little, and the old horse would wake up. The hea.r.s.e driver used to drive the old pacer on the track, and he knew what he wanted. The minister took off his black kid gloves and put his umbrella down between us, and pulled his hat down tight on his head, and began to pull and saw on the bit. The old cripple began to move along sort of sideways, like a hog going to war, and the minister pulled some more, and the hea.r.s.e driver, who was right behind, he said, so you could hear him clear to Waukesha, 'Ye-e-up,' and the old horse kept going faster, then the minister thought the procession was getting too quick, and he pulled harder, and yelled 'who-a' and that made the old horse worse, and I looked through the little window in the buggy top.

behind, and the hea.r.s.e was about two blocks behind, and the driver was laughing, and the minister he got pale and said, 'My little man I guess you better drive,' and I said 'Not much Mary Ann, you wouldn't let me run this funeral the way I wanted to, and now you can boss it, if you will let me get out,' but there was a street car ahead and all of a sudden there was an earthquake, and when I come to there were about six hundred people pouring water down my neck, and the hea.r.s.e was. .h.i.tched to the fence, and the hea.r.s.e driver was asking if my leg was broke, and a policeman was fanning the minister with a plug hat that looked as though it had been struck by a pile driver, and some people were hauling our buggy into the gutter, and some men were trying to take old pacer out of the windows of the street-car, and then I guess I fainted away agin. O, it was worse than telescoping a train loaded with cattle."