"Whew! What is that smells so about this store? It seems as though
everything had turned frowy," said the grocery man to his clerk in the
presence of the bad boy, who was standing with his back to the stove, his
coat-tails parted with his hands, and a cigarette in his mouth.
"May be it is me that smells frowy," said the boy as he put his thumbs in
the armholes of his vest, and spit at the keyhole in the door. "I have
gone into business."
"By thunder, I believe it is you," said the grocery man, as he went up to
the boy and snuffed a couple of times and then held his hand to his nose.
"The board of health will kerosene you if they ever smell that smell, and
send you to the glue factory. What business have you gone into to make you
smell so rank?"
"Well, you see Pa began to think it was time I learned a trade, or a
profession, and he saw a sign in a drug store window 'boy wanted,' and as
he had a boy he didn't want, he went to the druggist and got a job for me.
This smell on me will go off in a few weeks. You know I wanted to try all
the perfumery in the store, and after I had got about forty different
extracts on my clothes, another boy that worked there he fixed up a bottle
of benzine and assafety and brimstone, and a whole lot of other horrid
stuff, and labeled it 'rose geranium,' and I guess I just wallered in it.
It _is_ awful, aint it? It kerflummixed Ma when I went into the
dining-room the first night that I got home from the store, and broke Pa
all up. He said I reminded him of the time they had a litter of skunks
under the barn. The air seemed fixed around where I am, and everybody
seems to know who fixed it. A girl came into the store yesterday to buy a
satchet, and there wasn't anybody there but me, and I didn't know what it
was, and I took down everything in the store pretty near before I found
it, and then I wouldn't have found it only the proprietor came in. The
girl asked the proprietor if there wasn't a good deal of sewer gas in the
store, and he told me to go out and shake myself. I think the girl was mad
at me because I got a nursing bottle out of the show case with a rubber
muzzle, and asked her if that was what she wanted. Well, she told me a
sachet was something for the stummick, and I thought a nursing bottle was
the nearest thing to it."
[Illustration: NEW WAY OF TAKING SEIDLITZ POWDERS]
"I should think you would drive all the customers away from the store,"
said the groceryman as he opened the door to let the fresh air in.
"I don't know but I will, but I am hired for a month on trial, and I shall
stay. You see, I sha'n't practice on anybody but Pa for a spell. I made up
my mind to that when I gave a woman some salts instead of powdered borax,
and she came back mad. Pa seems to want to encourage me, and is willing to
take anything that I ask him to. He had a sore throat and wanted something
for it, and the boss drugger told me to put some tannin and chlorate of
potash in a mortar and grind it, and I let Pa pound it with the mortar,
and while he was pounding I dropped in a couple of drops of sulphuric
acid, and it exploded and blowed Pa's hat clear across the store, and Pa
was whiter than a sheet. He said he guessed his throat was all right, and
he wouldn't come near me again that day. The next day Pa came in, and I
was laying for him. I took a white seidletz powder and a blue one, and
dissolved them in separate glasses, and when Pa came in I asked him if he
didn't want some lemonade, and he said he did, and I gave him the sour one
and he drank it. He said it was too sour, and then I gave him the other
glass that looked like water, to take the taste out of his mouth, and he
drank it. Well, sir, when those two powders got together in Pa's
stummick, and began to siz and steam and foam, Pa pretty near choked to
death, and the suds came out of his nostrils, and his eyes stuck out, and
as soon as he could get his breath he yelled 'fire,' and said he was
poisoned, and called for a doctor, but I thought as long as we had a
doctor right in the family there was no use of hiring one, so I got a
stomach pump and would have baled him out in no time, only the proprietor
came in and told me to go and wash some bottles, and he gave Pa a drink of
brandy, and Pa said he felt better. Pa has learned where we keep the
liquor, and he comes in two or three times a day with a pain in his
stomach. They play awful mean tricks on a boy in a drug store. The first
day they put a chunk of something blue into a mortar, and told me to
pulverize it and then make it up into two grain pills. Well, sir, I
pounded that chunk all the forenoon, and it never pulverized at all, and
the boss told me to hurry up as the woman was waiting for the pills, and I
mauled it till I was nearly dead, and when it was time to go to supper the
boss came and looked in the mortar, and took out the chunk and said, 'You
dum fool, you have been pounding all day on a chunk of India rubber,
instead of blue mass!' Well, how did I know? But I will get even with them
if I stay there long enough, and don't you forget it. If you have a
prescription you want filled you can come down to the store and I will put
it up for you myself, and then you will be sure to get what you pay for."
"Yes," said the grocery man, as he cut off a piece of limberg cheese and
put it on the stove to purify the air in the room, "I should laugh to see
myself taking any medicine you put up. You will kill some one yet, by
giving them poison instead of quinine. But what has your Pa got his nose
tied up for? He looks as though he had had a fight."
"O, that was from my treatment. He had a wart on his nose. You
know that wart. You remember how the minister told him if other peoples'
business had a button hole in it, Pa could button the wart in the
button-hole, as he always had his nose there. Well, I told Pa I could cure
that wart with caustic, and he said he would give five dollars if I could
cure it, so I took a stick of caustic and burned the wart off, but I guess
I burned down into the nose a little, for it swelled up as big as a
lobster. Pa says he would rather have a whole nest of warts than such a
nose, but it will be all right in a year or two."