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The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy, a novel by George W. Peck |
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Chapter 24 |
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_ 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 of 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. _ |
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