"For heaven's sake dry up that whistling," said the grocery man to the bad
boy, as he sat on a bag of peanuts, whistling and filling his pockets.
"There is no sense in such whistling. What do you whistle for, anyway?"
"I am practicing my profession," said the boy, as he got up and stretched
himself, and cut off a slice of cheese, and took a few crackers. "I have
always been a good whistler, and I have decided to turn my talent to
account. I am going to hire an office and put out a sign, 'Boy furnished
to whistle for lost dogs.' You see there are dogs lost every day, and any
man would give half a dollar to a boy to find his dog. I can hire out to
whistle for dogs, and can go around whistling and enjoy myself, and make
money. Don't you think it is a good scheme?" asked the boy of the grocery
man.
"Naw," said the grocery man, as he charged the cheese to the boy's father,
and picked up his cigar stub, which he had left on the counter, and which
the boy had rubbed on the kerosene barrel, "No, sir, that whistle would
scare any dog that heard it. Say, what was your Pa running after the
doctor in his shirt sleeves for last Sunday morning? He looked scared. Was
your Ma sick again?"
"O, no; Ma is healthy enough, now she has got a new fur lined cloak. She
played consumption on Pa, and coughed so she liked to raise her lights and
liver, and made Pa believe she couldn't live, and got the doctor to
prescribe a fur lined circular, and Pa went and got one, and Ma has
improved awfully. Her cough is all gone, and she can walk ten miles. I was
the one that was sick. You see, I wanted to get Pa into the church again,
and get him to stop drinking, so I got a boy to write a letter to
him, in a female hand, and sign the name of a choir singer Pa was mashed
on, and tell him she was yearning for him to come back to the church, and
that the church seemed a blank without his smiling face, and benevolent
heart, and to please come back for her sake. Pa got the letters Saturday
night and he seemed tickled, but I guess he dreamed about it all night,
and Sunday morning he was mad, and he took me by the ear and said I
couldn't come no 'Daisy' business on him the second time. He said he knew
I wrote the letter, and for me to go up to the store room and prepare for
the almightiest licking a boy ever had, and he went down stairs and broke
up an apple barrel and got a stave to whip me with. Well, I had to think
mighty quick, but I was enough for him. I got a dried bladder in my room,
one that me and my chum got to the slotter house, and I blowed it partly
up, so it would be sort of flat like, and I put it down inside the back
part of my pants, right about where Pa hits when he punishes me. I knowed
when the barrel stave hit the bladder it would explode. Well, Pa came up
and found me crying. I can cry just as easy as you can turn on the water
at a faucet, and Pa took off his coat and looked sorry. I was afraid he
would give up whipping me when he saw me cry, and I wanted the bladder
experiment to go on, so I looked kind of hard, as if I was defying him to
do his worst, and then he took me by the neck and laid me across a trunk.
I didn't dare struggle much for fear the bladder would loose itself, and
Pa said, 'Now, Hennery, I am going to break you of this damfoolishness, or
I will break your back,' and he spit on his hands and brought the barrel
stave down on my best pants. Well, you'd a dide if you had heard the
explosion. It almost knocked me off the trunk. It sounded like firing a
firecracker away down cellar in a barrel, and Pa looked scared. I rolled
off the trunk, on the floor, and put some flour on my face, to make me
look pale, and then I kind of kicked my legs like a fellow who is dying on
the stage, after being stabbed with a piece of lath, and groaned, and
said, 'Pa you have killed me, but I forgive you,' and then rolled around,
and frothed at the mouth, cause I had a piece of soap in my mouth to make
foam. Well, Pa was all broke up. He said, 'Great God, what have I done? I
have broke his spinal column. O, my poor boy, do not die!' I kept chewing
the soap and foaming at the mouth, and I drew my legs up and kicked them
out, and clutched my hair, and rolled my eyes, and then kicked Pa in the
stummick as he bent over me, and knocked his breath out of him, and then
my limbs began to get rigid, and I said, 'Too late, Pa, I die at the hand
of an assassin. Go for a doctor.' Pa throwed his coat over me, and started
down stairs on a run, 'I have murdered my brave boy,' and he told Ma to go
up stairs and stay with me, cause I had fallen off a trunk and ruptured a
blood vessel, and he went after a doctor. When he went out the front door,
I sat up and lit a cigarette, and Ma came up and I told her all about how
I fooled Pa, and if she would take on and cry, when Pa got back, I would
get him to go to church again, and swear off drinking, and she said she
would.
[Illustration: "TOO LATE, PA, I DIE AT THE HAND OF AN ASSASSIN!"]
"So when Pa and the doc. came back, Ma was sitting on a velocipede I used
to ride, which was in the store-room, and she had her apron over her face,
and she just more than bellowed. Pa he was pale, and he told the doc. he
was just playing with me with a little piece of board, and he heard
something crack, and he guessed my spine got broke falling off the trunk.
The doctor wanted to feel where my spine got broke, but I opened my eyes
and had a vacant kind of stare, like a woman who leads a dog by a string,
and looked as though my mind was wandering, and I told the doctor there
was no use setting my spine, as it was broke in several places,
and I wouldn't let him feel of the dried bladder. I told Pa I was going to
die, and I wanted him to promise me two things on my dying bed. He cried
and said he would, and I told him to promise me he would quit drinking,
and attend church regular, and he said he would never drink another drop,
and would go to church every Sunday. I made him get down on his knees
beside me and swear it, and the doc. witnessed it, and Ma said she was so
glad, and Ma called the doctor out in the hall and told him the joke, and
the doc. came in and told Pa he was afraid Pa's presence would excite the
patient, and for him to put on his coat and go out and walk around the
block, or go to church, and Ma and he would remove me to another room, and
do all that was possible to make my last hours pleasant. Pa he cried, and
said he would put on his plug hat and go to church, and he kissed me, and
got flour on his nose, and I came near laughing right out, to see the
white flour on his red nose, when I thought how the people in church would
laugh at Pa. But he went out feeling mighty bad, and then I got up and
pulled the bladder out of my pants, and Ma and the doc. laughed awful.
When Pa got back from church and asked for me, Ma said that I had gone
down town. She said the doctor found my spine was only uncoupled and he
coupled it together, and I was all right. Pa was nervous all the
afternoon, and Ma thinks he suspects that we played it on him. Say, you
don't think there is any harm in playing it on an old man a little for a
good cause, do you?"
The grocery man said he supposed, in the interest of reform it was all
right, but if it was his boy that played such tricks he would take an ax
to him, and the boy went out, apparently encouraged, saying he hadn't seen
the old man since the day before, and he was almost afraid to meet him.