"I was down to the drug store this morning and saw your Ma buying a lot of
court-plaster, enough to make a shirt I should think. What's she doing
with so much court-plaster?" asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as he
came in and pulled off his boots by the stove and emptied out a lot of
snow that had collected as he walked through a drift, which melted and
made a bad smell.
"O, I guess she was going to patch Pa up so he will hold water. Pa's
temper got him into the worst muss you ever see, last night. If that
museum was here now they would hire Pa and exhibit him as the tattooed
man. I tell you, I have got too old to be mauled as though I was a kid,
and any man who attacks me from this out, wants to have his peace made
with the insurance companies, and know that his calling and election is
sure, because I am a bad man and don't you forget it." And the boy pulled
on his boots and looked so cross and desperate that the grocer-man asked
him if he wouldn't try a little new cider.
"Good heavens!" said the grocery man, as the boy swallowed the cider, and
his face resumed its natural look, and the piratical frown disappeared
with the cider. "You have not stabbed your father have you? I have feared
that one thing would bring on another, with you, and that you would yet be
hung."
"Naw, I haven't stabbed him. It was another cat that stabbed him. You see,
Pa wants me to do all the work around the house. The other day he bought a
load of kindling wood, and told me to carry it into the basement. I had
not been educated up to kindling wood, and I didn't do it. When supper
time came, and Pa found that I had not carried in the kindling wood, he
had a hot box, and told me if that wood was not in when he came
back from the lodge, that he would warm my jacket. Well, I tried to hire
some one to carry it in, and got a man to promise to come in the morning
and carry it in and take his pay in groceries, and I was going to buy the
groceries here and have them charged to Pa. But that wouldn't help me out
that night. I knew when Pa came home he would search for me. So I slept in
the back hall on a cot. But I didn't want Pa to have all his trouble for
nothing, so I borrowed an old torn cat that my chum's old maid aunt owns,
and put the cat in my bed. I thought if Pa came into my room after me, and
found that by his unkindness I had changed to a torn cat, he would be
sorry. That is the biggest cat you ever see, and the worst fighter in our
ward. It isn't afraid of anything, and can whip a New Foundland dog
quicker than you could put sand in a barrel of sugar. Well, about eleven
o'clock I heard Pa tumbing over the kindling wood, and I knew by the
remark he made as the wood slid around under him, that there was going to
be a cat fight real quick. He came up to Ma's room, and sounded Ma as to
whether Hennery had retired to his virtuous couch. Pa is awful sarcastic
when he tries to be. I could hear him take off his clothes, and hear him
say, as he picked up a trunk strap, 'I guess I will go up to his room and
watch the smile on his face, as he dreams of angels. I yearn to press him
to my aching bosom.' I thought to myself, mebbe you won't yearn so much
directly. He come up stairs, and I could hear him breathing hard. I looked
around the corner and could see he just had on his shirt and pants, and
his suspenders were hanging down, and his bald head shown like a calcium
light just before it explodes. Pa went into my room, and up to the bed,
and I could hear him say, 'Come out here and bring in that kindling wood
or I will start a fire on your base burner with this strap.' And then
there was a yowling such as I never heard before, and Pa said,
'Helen Blazes,' and the furniture in my room began to fall around and
break. O, _my_! I think Pa took the torn cat right by the neck, the way he
does me, and that left the cat's feet free to get in their work. By the
way the cat squawled as though it was being choked I know Pa had him by
the neck. I suppose the cat thought Pa was a whole flock of New Foundland
dogs, and the cat had a record on dogs, and it kicked awful. Pa's shirt
was no protection at all in a cat fight, and the cat just walked all
around Pa's stomach, and Pa yelled 'police,' and 'fire,' and 'turn on the
hose,' and he called Ma, and the cat yowled. If Pa had had presence of
mind enough to have dropped the cat, or rolled it up in the mattrass, it
would have been all right, but a man always gets rattled in time of
danger, and he held on to the cat and started down stairs yelling murder,
and he met Ma coming up.
"I guess Ma's night cap or something frightened the cat more, cause he
stabbed Ma on the night-shirt with one hind foot, and Ma said 'mercy on
us,' and she went back, and Pa stumbled on a hand-sled that was on the
stairs, and they all fell down, and the cat got away and went down in the
coal bin and yowled all night. Pa and Ma went into their room, and I guess
they annointed themselves with vasaline, and Pond's extract, and I went
and got into my bed, cause it was cold out in the hall, and the cat had
warmed my bed as well as it had warmed Pa. It was all I could do to go to
sleep, with Pa and Ma talking all night, and this morning I came down the
back stairs, and haven't been to breakfast, cause I don't want to see Pa
when he is vexed. You let the man that carries in the kindling wood have
six shillings worth of groceries, and charge them to Pa. I have passed the
kindling wood period in a boy's life, and have arrived at the coal period.
I will carry in coal, but I draw the line at kindling wood."
"Well, you are a cruel, bad boy," said the grocery man, as he
went to the book and charged the six shillings.
"O, I don't know. I think Pa is cruel. A man who will take a poor kitty by
the neck, that hasn't done any harm, and tries to chastise the poor thing
with a trunk strap, ought to be looked after by the humane society. And if
it is cruel to take a cat by the neck, how much more cruel is it to take a
boy by the neck, that had diphtheria only a few years ago, and whose
throat is tender? Say, I guess I will accept your invitation to take
breakfast with you," and the boy cut off a piece of bologna and helped
himself to the crackers, and while the grocery man was out shoveling off
the snow from the sidewalk, the boy filled his pockets with raisins and
loaf sugar, and then went out to watch the man carry in his kindling wood.