We've been staying at the sea-shore for a week, and having a beautiful
time. I love the sea-shore, only it would be a great deal nicer if there
wasn't any sea; then you wouldn't have to go in bathing. I don't like to
go in bathing, for you get so awfully wet, and the water chokes you.
Then there are ticks on the sea-shore in the grass. A tick is an insect
that begins and bites you, and never stops till you're all ettup, and
then you die, and the tick keeps on growing bigger all the time.
There was once a boy and a tick got on him and bit him, and kept on
biting for three or four days, and it ettup the boy till the tick was
almost as big as the boy had been, and the boy wasn't any bigger than a
marble, and he died, and his folks felt dreadfully about it. I never saw
a tick, but I know that there are lots of them on the sea-shore, and
that's reason enough not to like it.
We stayed at a boarding-house while we were at the sea-shore. A
boarding-house is a place where they give you pure country air and a few
vegetables and a little meat, and I say give me a jail where they feed
you if they do keep you shut up in the dark. There were a good many
people in our boarding-house, and I slept up-stairs on the third story
with three other boys, and there were two more boys on the second story,
and that's the way all the trouble happened.
There is nothing that is better fun than a pillow fight; that is, when
you're home and have got your own pillows, and know they're not loaded,
as Mr. Travers says. He was real good about it, too, and I sha'n't
forget it, for 'most any man would have been awfully mad, but he just
made as if he didn't care, only Sue went on about it as if I was the
worst boy that ever lived.
You see, we four boys on the third story thought it would be fun to have
a pillow fight with the two boys on the second story. We waited till
everybody had gone to bed, and then we took our pillows and went out
into the hall just as quiet as could be, only Charley Thompson he fell
over a trunk in the hall and made a tremendous noise. One of the
boarders opened his door and said who's there, but we didn't answer, and
presently he said "I suppose it's that cat people ought to be ashamed of
themselves to keep such animals," and shut his door again.
After a little while Charley was able to walk, though his legs were
dreadfully rough where he'd scraped them against the trunk. So we crept
down-stairs and went into the boys' room, and began to pound them with
the pillows.
They knew what was the matter, and jumped right up and got their
pillows, and went at us so fierce that they drove us out into the hall.
Of course this made a good deal of noise, for we knocked over the
wash-stand in the room, and upset a lot of lamps that were on the table
in the hall, and every time I hit one of the boys he would say "Ouch!"
so loud that anybody that was awake could hear him. We fought all over
the hall, and as we began to get excited we made so much noise that Mr.
Travers got up and came out to make us keep quiet.
It was pretty dark in the hall, and though I knew Mr. Travers, I thought
he couldn't tell me from the other boys, and I thought I would just give
him one good whack on the head, and then we'd all run up-stairs. He
wouldn't know who hit him, and, besides, who ever heard of a fellow
being hurt with a pillow?
So I stood close up by the wall till he came near me, and then I gave
him a splendid bang over the head. It sounded as if you had hit a fellow
with a club, and Mr. Travers dropped to the floor with an awful crash,
and never spoke a word.
[Illustration: I NEVER WAS SO FRIGHTENED IN MY LIFE.]
I never was so frightened in my life, for I thought Mr. Travers was
killed. I called murder help fire, and every body ran out of their
rooms, and fell over trunks, and there was the most awful time you ever
dreamed of. At last somebody got a lamp, and somebody else got some
water and picked Mr. Travers up and carried him into his room, and then
he came to and said, "Where am I Susan what is the matter O now I know."
He was all right, only he had a big bump on one side of his head, and he
said that it was all an accident, and that he wouldn't have Sue scold
me, and that it served him right for not remembering that boarding-house
pillows are apt to be loaded.
The next morning he made me bring him my pillow, and then he found out
how it came to hurt him. All the chicken bones, and the gravel-stones,
and the chunks of wood that were in the pillow had got down into one end
of it while we were having the fight, and when I hit Mr. Travers they
happened to strike him on his head where it was thin, and knocked him
senseless. Nobody can tell how glad I am that he wasn't killed, and it's
a warning to me never to have pillow fights except with pillows that I
know are not loaded with chicken bones and things.
I forgot to say that after that night my mother and all the boys'
mothers took all the pillows away from us, for they said they were too
dangerous to be left where boys could get at them.