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The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy, a novel by George W. Peck |
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Chapter 4 |
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_ CHAPTER IV HIS PA BUSTED--THE CRAZE FOR MINING STOCK--WHAT'S A BILK?-- THE PIOUS BILK--THE OLD MAN INVESTS--THE DEACONS AND EVEN THE HIRED GIRLS INVEST--HOT MAPLE SYRUP FOR ONE--GETTING A MAN'S MIND OFF HIS TROUBLES. "Say, can't I sell you some stock in a silver mine," asked the bad boy of the grocery man, as he came in the store and pulled from his breast pocket a document printed on parchment paper, and representing several thousand dollars stock in a silver mine. "Lookahere," says the grocery man, as he turned pale, and thought of telephoning to the police station for a detective, "you haven't been stealing your father's mining stock, have you? Great heavens, it has come at last! I have known, all the time that you would turn out to be a burglar, or a defaulter or robber of some kind. Your father has the reputation of having a bonanza in a silver mine, but if you go lugging his silver stock around he will soon be ruined. Now you go right back home and put that stock in your Pa's safe, like a good boy." "Put it in the safe! O, no, we keep it in a box stall now, in the barn. I will trade you this thousand dollars in stock for two heads of lettuce, and get Pa to sign it over to you, if you say so. Pa told me I could have the whole trunk full if I wanted it, and the hired girls are using the silver stock to clean the windows, and to kindle fires, and Pa has quit the church, and says he won't belong to any concern that harbors bilks. What's a bilk?" said the boy, as he opened a candy jar and took out four sticks of hoarhound candy. "A bilk," said the grocery man, as he watched the boy, "is a fellow that plays a man for candy, or money, or anything, and don't intend to return an equivalent. You are a small sized bilk. But what's the matter with your Pa and the church, and what has the silver mine stock got to do with it?" "Well, you remember that exhorter that was here last fall, that used to board around with the church people all the week, and talk about Zion and laying up treasures where the moths wouldn't gnaw them, and they wouldn't get rusty, and where thieves wouldn't pry off the hinges. He was the one that used to go home with Ma from prayer meetings, when Pa was down town, and who wanted to pay off the church debt in solid silver bricks. He's the bilk. I guess if Pa should get him by the neck he would jerk nine kinds of revealed religion out of him. O, Pa is hotter than he was when the hornets took the lunch off of him. When you strike a pious man on the pocket-book it hurts him. That fellow prayed and sang like an angel, and boarded around like a tramp. He stopped at our house over a week, and he had specimens of rock that were chuck full of silver and gold, and he and Pa used to sit up nights and look at it. You could pick pieces of silver out of the rock as big as buck shot, and he had some silver bricks that were beautiful. He had been out in Colorado and found a hill full of the silver rock, and he wanted to form a stock company and dig out millions of dollars. He didn't want anybody but pious men that belonged to the church, in the company, and I think that was one thing that caused Pa to unite with the church so suddenly. I know he was as wicked as could be a few days before he joined the church; but this revivalist, with his words about the beautiful beyond where all shall dwell together in peace, and sing praises; and his description of that Colorado mountain where the silver stuck out so you could hang your hat on it, converted Pa. That man's scheme was to let all the church people who were in good standing, and who had plenty of money, into the company, and when the mine begun to return dividends by the car load, they could give largely to the church and pay the debts of all the churches, and put down carpets and fresco the ceiling. The man said he felt that he had been steered on to that silver mine by a higher power, and his idea was to work it for the glory of the cause. He said he liked Pa, and would make him vice president of the company. Pa, he bit like a bass, and I guess he invested five thousand dollars in stock, and Ma, she wanted to come in, and she put in a thousand dollars that she had laid up to buy some diamond ear-rings, and the man gave Pa a lot of stock to sell to other members of the church. They all went into it, even the minister. He drew his salary ahead, and all of the deacons they come in, and the man went back to Colorado with about thirty thousand dollars of good, pious money. Yesterday Pa got a paper from Colorado, giving the whole snap away, and the pious man has been spending the money in Denver, and whooping it up. Pa suspected something was wrong two weeks ago, when he heard that the pious man had been on a toot in Chicago, and he wrote to a man in Denver, who used to get full with Pa years ago when they were both on the turf; and Pa's friend said the man that sold the stock was a fraud, and that he didn't own no mine, and that he borrowed the samples of ore and silver bricks from a pawnbroker in Denver. I guess it will break Pa up for a while, though he is well enough fixed with mortgages and things; but it hurts him to be took in. He lays it all to Ma--he says if she hadn't let that exhorter for the silver mine go home with her this would not have occurred, and Ma says she believes Pa was in partnership with the man to beat her out of her thousand dollars that she was going to buy a pair of diamond ear-rings with. O, it is a terror over to the house now. Both the hired girls put in all the money they had, and took stock, and they threaten to sue Pa for arson, and they are going to leave to-night, and Ma will have to do the work. Don't you never try to get rich quick," said the boy as he peeled a herring, and took a couple of crackers. "Never you mind me," said the grocery man, "they don't catch me on any of their silver mines; but I hope this will have some influence on you, and teach you to respect your Pa's feelings, and not play jokes on him while he is feeling so bad over his being swindled." "O, I don't know about that, I think when a man is in trouble, if he has a good little boy to take his mind from his troubles and get him mad at something else, it rests him. Last night we had hot maple syrup and biscuit for supper, and Pa had a saucer full in front of him, just a steaming. I could see he was thinking too much about his mining stock, and I thought if there was anything I could do to take his mind off of it and place it on something else, I would be doing a kindness that would be appreciated. I sat on the right of Pa, and when he wasn't looking I pulled the table cloth so the saucer of red hot maple syrup dropped off in his lap." [Illustration: Maple syrup for one 042] "Well, you'd a dide to see how quick his thoughts turned from his financial troubles to his physical misfortunes. There was about a pint of hot syrup, and it went all over his lap, and you know how hot melted maple sugar is, and how it sort of clings to anything. Pa jumped up and grabbed hold of his pants legs to pull them away from hisself, and he danced around and told Ma to turn the hose on him, and then he took a pitcher of ice water and poured it down his pants, and he said the condemned old table was getting so ricketty that a saucer wouldn't stay on it, and I told Pa if he would put some tar on his legs, the same kind that he told me to put on my lip to make my moustache grow, the syrup wouldn't burn so; and then he cuffed me, and I think he felt better It is a great thing to get a man's mind off of his troubles, but where a man hasn't got any mind like you, for instance--" At this point the grocery man picked up a fire poker, and the boy went out in a hurry and hung up a sign in front of the grocery: CASH PAID FOR FAT DOGS. _ |
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