The Peck's Bad Boy Megapack

by George W. Peck

  COLIC OR CHOLERA INFANTUM

  YOU PAYS YOUR MONEY

  AND TAKES YOUR CHOICE.

  CHAPTER XXIII.

  GHOSTS DON’T STEAL WORMY FIGS—A GRAND REHERSAL—THE MINISTER MURDERS HAMLET—THE WATER-MELON KNIFE—THE OLD MAN WANTED TO REHERSE THE DRUNKEN SCENE IN RIP VAN WINKLE—NO HUGGING ALLOWED—HAMLET WOULDN’T HAVE TWO GHOSTS-”HOW WOULD YOU LIKE TO BE AN IDIOT.”

  “I am thy father’s ghost,” said a sheeted form in the doorway of the grocery, one evening, and the grocery man got behind the cheese box, while the ghost continued in a sepulchral voice, “doomed for a certain time to walk the night,” and, waving a chair round, the ghost strode up to the grocery man, and with the other ghostly hand reached into a box of figs.

  “No you ain’t no ghost,” said the grocery man, recognizing the bad boy. “Ghosts do not go prowling around groceries stealing wormy figs. What do you mean by this sinful masquerade business? My father never had no ghost!”

  “O, we have struck it now,” said the bad boy as he pulled off his mask and rolled up the sheet he had worn around him. “We are going to have amateur theatricals, to raise money to have the church carpeted, and I am going to boss the job.”

  “You don’t say,” answered the grocery man, as he thought how much he could sell to the church people for a strawberry and ice cream festival, and how little he could sell for amateur theatricals. “Who is going into it and what are you going to play?”

  “Pa and Ma, and me, and the minister, and three choir singers, and my chum, and the minister’s wife, and two deacons, and an old maid are rehersing, but we have not decided what to play yet. They all want to play a different play, and I am fixing it so they can all be satisfied. The minister wants to play Hamlet, Pa wants to play Rip Van Winkle, Ma wants to play Mary Anderson, the old maid wants to play a boarding school play, and the choir singers want an opera, and the minister’s wife wants to play Lady Macbeth, and my chum and me want to play a double song and dance, and I am going to give them all a show. We had a rehersal last night, and I am the only one able to be around to-day. You see they have all been studying different plays, and they all wanted to talk at once. We let the minister sail in first. He had on a pair of his wife’s black stockings, and a mantle made of a linen buggy lap blanket and he wore a mason’s cheese knife such as these fellows with poke bonnets and white feathers wear when they get an invitation to a funeral or an excursion. Well, you never saw Hamlet murdered the way he did it. His interpretation of the character was that Hamlet was a Dude that talked through his nose, and while he was repeating Hamlet’s soliloquy, Pa, who had come in with an old hunting suit on, as Rip Van Winkle, went to sleep, and he didn’t wake up till Lady Macbeth came in, in the sleep-walking scene. She couldn’t find a knife, so I took a slice of watermelon and sharpened it for her, and she made a mistake in the one she was to stab, and she stabbed Hamlet in the neck with a slice of watermelon, and the core of the melon fell on Pa’s face, as he lay asleep as Rip, and when Lady Macbeth said, ‘Out damned spot,’ Pa woke up and felt the gob of watermelon on his face and he thought he had been murdered, and Ma came in on a hop, skip and jump as ‘Parthenia,’ and threw her arms around a deacon who was going to play the grave digger, and began to call him pet names, and Pa was mad, and the choir singers they began to sing, ‘In the North Sea lived a whale,’ and then they quit acting. You’d a dide to see Hamlet. The piece of watermelon went down his neck, and Lady Macbeth went off and left it in the wound under his collar, and Ma had to pull it out, and Hamlet said the seeds and the juice was running down inside his shirt, and he said he wouldn’t play if he was going to be stabbed with a slice of melon, so while his wife was getting the melon seeds out of his neck, and drying the juice on his shirt, I sharpened a cucumber for Lady Macbeth to use as a dagger, but Hamlet kicked on cucumbers, too, and I had more trouble than any stage manager ever had. Then Pa wanted to rehearse the drunken scene in Rip Van Winkle, where he hugs Grechten and drinks out of a flask behind her back, and he got one of the choir singers to act as Grechten, and I guess he would have been hugging till this time, and have swallowed the flask if Ma had not taken him by the ear, and said a little of that would go a good ways in an entertainment for the church. Pa said he didn’t know as it was any worse than her prancing up to a grave digger and hugging him till the filling came out of his teeth, and then the minister decided that we wouldn’t have any hugging at all in the play, and the choir girls said they wouldn’t play, and the old maids struck, and the play come to a stand still.”

  “Well, that beats anything I ever heard tell of. It’s a shame for people outside the profession to do play acting, and I won’t go to the entertainment unless I get a pass,” said the grocery man. “Did you rehearse any more?”

  “Yes, the minister wanted to try the ghost scene,” said the boy, “and he wanted me to be the ghost. Well, they have two ‘Markses’ and two ‘Topsies’ in Uncle Tom’s cabin, and I thought two ghosts in Hamlet would about fill the bill for amateurs, so I got my chum to act as one ghost. We broke them all up. I wanted to have something new in ghosts, so my chum and me got two pair of Ma’s long stockings, one pair red and one pair blue, and I put on a red one and a blue one, and my chum did the same. Then we got some ruffled clothes belonging to Ma, with flounces and things on, and put them on so they came most down to our knees, and we put sheets over us, clear to our feet, and when Hamlet got to yearning for his father’s ghost, I came in out of the bath room with the sheet over me, and said I was the huckleberry he was looking for, and my chum followed me out and said he was a twin ghost, also, and then Hamlet got on his ear and said he wouldn’t play with two ghosts, and he went off pouting, and then my chum and me pulled off the sheets and danced a clog dance. Well, when the rest of the troop saw our make up, it nearly killed them. Most of them had seen ballet dancers, but they never saw them with different colored socks. The minister said the benefit was rapidly becoming a farce, and before we had danced half a minute Ma she recognized her socks, and she came for me with a hot box, and made me take them off, and Pa was mad and said the dancing was the only thing that was worth the price of admission, and he scolded Ma, and the choir girls sided with Pa, and just then my chum caught his toe in the carpet and fell down, and that loosened the plaster overhead and about a bushel fell on the crowd. Pa thought lightning had struck the house, the minister thought it was a judgment on them all for play acting, and he began to shed his Hamlet costume with one hand and pick the plaster out of his hair with the other. The women screamed and tried to get the plaster out of their necks, and while Pa was brushing off the choir singers Ma said the rehearsal was adjourned, and they all went home, but we are going to rehearse again on Friday night. The play cannot be considered a success, but we will bring it out all right by the time the entertainment is to come off.”

  “By gum,” said the grocery man, “I would like to have seen that minister as Hamlet. Didn’t he look funny?”

  “Funny! Well, I should remark. He seemed to predominate. That is, he was too fresh, too numerous, as it were. But at the next rehearsal I am going to work in an act from Richard the Third, and my chum is going to play the Chinaman of the Danites, and I guess we will take the cake. Say, I want to work in an idiot somewhere. How would you like to play the idiot. You wouldn’t have to rehearse or anything—”

  At this point the bad boy was seen to go out of the grocery store real spry, followed by a box of wooden clothes-pins that the grocery man had thrown after him.

  CHAPTER XXIV.

  THE CRUEL WOMAN AND THE LUCKLESS DOG—THE BAD BOY WITH A DOG AND A BLACK EYE-WHERE DID YOU STEAL HIM?—ANGELS DON’T BREAK DOGS’ LEGS—A WOMAN WHO BREAKS DOGS’ LEGS HAS NO SHOW WITH ST. PETER—ANOTHER BURGLAR SCARE—THE GROCERY DELIVERY MAN SCARED.

  “Hello!” said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in with a black eye, leading a hungry looking dog that was walking on three legs, and had one leg tied up with a red silk handkerchief. “What is this—a part o
f your amateur theater? Now you get out of here with that dog, mighty quick. A boy that hurts dogs so they have to have their legs tied up, is no friend of mine,” and the grocery man took up a broom to drive the dog out doors.

  “There, you calm, yourself,” says the boy to the grocery man, as the dog got behind the boy and looked up at the grocery man as though he was not afraid as long as the bad boy was around. “Set up the crackers and cheese, sausage, and pickles, and everything this dog wants to eat—he is a friend of mine—that dog is my guest, and those are my splints on his broken leg, and that is my handkerchief that my girl gave me, wound around it, and you touch that dog except in the way of kindness, and down comes your house.” And the boy doubled up his fists as though he meant business.

  “Poor doggie,” said the grocery man, as he cut off a piece of sausage and offered it to the dog, which was declined with thanks, expressed by the wagging tail. “Where did you steal him?”

  “I didn’t steal him, and he is no cannibal. He won’t eat your sausage!” and the boy put up his elbow as though to ward off on imaginary blow. “You see, this dog was following off a pet dog that belonged to a woman, and she tried to shoo him away, but he wouldn’t shoo. This dog did not know that he was a low born, miserable dog, and had no right to move in the society of an aristocratic pet dog, and he followed right along. He thought this was a free country, and one dog was as good as another, and he followed that woman and her pet dog right into her door yard. The pet dog encouraged this dog, and he went in the yard, and when the woman got up on the steps she threw a velocipede at this dog and broke his leg, and then she took up her pet and went in the house so she wouldn’t hear this dog howl. She is a nice woman, and I see her go to meeting every Sunday with a lot of morocco books in her hands, and once I pumped the organ in the church where she goes, and she was so pious I thought she was an angel—but angels don’t break dogs’ legs. I’ll bet when she goes up to the gate and sees St. Peter open the book and look for the charges against her, she will tremble as though she had fits. And when St. Peter runs his finger down the ledger, and stops at the dog column, and turns and looks at her over his spectacles, and says, “Madam, how about your stabbing a poor dog with a velocipede, and breaking its leg?” she will claim it was an accident; but she can’t fool Pete. He is on to everybody’s racket, and if they get in there, they have got to have a clean record.”

  “Say, look-a-here,” said the grocery man, as he looked at the boy in astonishment as he unwound the handkerchief to dress the dog’s broken leg, while the dog looked up in the boy’s face with an expression of thankfulness and confidence that he was an able practitioner in dog bone-setting, “what kind of talk is that? You talk of heaven as though its books were kept like the books of a grocery and you speak too familiarly of St. Peter.”

  “Well, I didn’t mean any disrespect,” said the boy, as he fixed the splint on the dog’s leg, and tied it with a string, while the dog licked his hand, “but I learned in Sunday school that up there they watch even the sparrow’s fail, and they wouldn’t be apt to get left on a dog bigger than a whole flock of sparrows, ‘specially when the dog’s fall was accompanied with such noise as a velocipede makes when it falls down stairs. No sir, a woman who throws a velocipede at a poor, homeless dog, and breaks its leg, may carry a car load of prayer books, and she may attend to all the sociables, but according to what I have been told, if she goes sailing up to the gate of New Jerusalem, as though she owned the whole place, and expects to be ushered into a private box, she will get left. The man in the box office will tell her she is not on the list, and that there is a variety show below, where the devil is a star, and fallen angels are dancing the cancan with sheet-iron tights, on brimstone lakes, and she can probably crawl under the canvas, but she can’t get in among the angelic hosts until she can satisfactorily explain that dog story that is told on her. Possibly I have got a raw way of expressing myself, but I had rather take my chances, if I should apply for admission up there, with this lame dog under my arm than to take hers with a pug that hain’t got any legs broke. A lame dog and a clear conscience beats a pet dog, when your conscience feels nervous. Now I am going to lay this dog in the barrel of dried apples, where your cat sleeps, and give him a little rest, and I will give you four minutes to tell me all you know, and you will have three minutes on your hands with nothing to say. Unbutton your lip and give your teeth a vacation.”

  “Well, you have got gall. However, I don’t know but you are right that woman that hurt the dog. Still, it may have been her way of petting a strange dog. We should try to look upon the charitable side of peoples’ eccentricities. But say, I want to ask you if you have seen anything of my man that delivers groceries. Saturday night I sent him over to your house to deliver some things, about ten o’clock, and he has not showed up since. What do you think has become of him?”

  “Well, by gum, that accounts for it. Saturday night, about ten o’clock we heard somebody in the back yard, around the kitchen door, just as we were going to bed, and Pa was afraid it was a burglar after the church money he had collected last Sunday. He had got to turn it over the next day, to pay the minister’s expenses on his vacation, and it made him nervous to have it around. I peeked out of the window and saw the man, and I told Pa, and Pa got a revolver and began shooting through the wire screen to the kitchen window, and I saw the man drop the basket and begin to climb over the fence real sudden, and I went out and began to groan, as though somebody was dying in the alley, and I brought in the basket with the mackerel and green corn, and told Pa that from the groaning out there I guess he had killed the grocery delivery man, and I wanted Pa to go out and help me hunt for the body, but he said he was going to take the midnight train to go out west on some business, and Pa lit out. I guess your man was scared and went one way and Pa was scared and went the other. Won’t they be astonished when they meet each other on the other side of the world? Pa will shoot him again when they meet, if he gives Pa any sass. Pa says when he gets mad he had just as soon eat as to kill a man.”

  “Well, I guess my man has gone off to a Sunday pic-nic or something, and will come back when he gets sober, but how are your theatricals getting along?” asked the grocery man.

  “O, that scheme is all busted,” said the boy. “At least until the minister gets back from his vacation. The congregation has noticed a red spot on his hand for some time, and the ladies said what he needed was rest. They said if that spot was allowed to go on it might develope into a pimple, and the minister might die of blood poison, superinduced by overwork, and they took up a collection, and he has gone. The night they bid him good bye, the spot on his hand was the subject of much comment. The wimmen sighed, and said it was lucky they noticed the spot on his hand before it had sapped his young life away. Pa said Job had more than four hundred boils worse than that, and he never took a vacation, and then Ma dried Pa up. She told Pa he had never suffered from blood poison, and Pa said he could raise cat boils for the market, and never squeal. Ma see the only way to shut Pa up was to let him go home with the choir singer. So she bounced him off with her, and he didn’t get home till most ‘leven o’clock, but Ma she set up for him. Maybe what she said to Pa made him go west after peppering your burglar. Well, I must go home now, ’cause I run the family, since Pa lit out. Say, send some of your most expensive canned fruit and things over to the house. Darn the expense.” And the bad boy took the lame dog under his arm and walked out.

  CHAPTER XXV.

  THE BAD BOY GROWS THOUGHTFUL—WHY IS LETTUCE LIKE A GIRL?— KING SOLOMON A FOOL—THINK OF ANY SANE MAN HAVING A THOUSAND WIVES—HE WOULD HAVE TO HAVE TWO HOTELS DURING VACATION—300 BLONDES—600 BRUNETTES, ETC—A THOUSAND WIVES TAKING ICE CREAM—I DON’T ENVY SOLOMON HIS THOUSAND.

  “What you sitting there like a bump on a log for?” asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as the youth had sat on a box for half an hour, with his hands in his pockets, looking at a hole in the floor, until his eyes were set like a dying horse. “What
you thinking of, anyway? It seems to me boys set around and think more than they used to when I was a boy,” and the groceryman brushed the wilted lettuce and shook it, and tried to make it stand up stiff and crisp, before he put it out doors; but the contrary lettuce which had been picked the day before, looked so tired that the boy noticed it.

  “That lettuce reminds me of a girl. Yesterday I was in here when it was new, like the girl going to the picnic, and it was as fresh and proud, and starched up, and kitteny, and full of life, and as sassy as a girl starting out for a picnic. To-day it has got back from the picnic, and, like the girl, the starch is all taken out, and it is limber, and languid, and tired, and can’t stand up alone, and it looks as though it wanted to be laid at rest beside the rotten apples in the alley, rather than be set out in front of a store to be sold to honest people, and give them the gangrene of the liver,” and the boy put on a health commissioner air that frightened the grocery man, and he threw the lettuce out the back door.

  “You never mind about my lettuce,” said the grocery man, “I can attend to my affairs. But now tell me what you were thinking about here all the morning?”

  “I was thinking what a fool King Solomon was,” said the boy, with the air of one who has made a statement that has got to be argued pretty strong to make it hold water.