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.”
[Illustration: 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.