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Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, a fiction by George W. Peck |
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Chapter 14. His Pa Catches Ok... |
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_ CHAPTER XIV. HIS PA CATCHES OK--TWO DAYS AND NIGHTS IN THE BATH ROOM-- RELIGION CAKES THE OLD MAN'S BREAST--THE BAD BOY'S CHUM-- DRESSED UP AS A GIRL--THE OLD MAN DELUDED--THE COUPLE START FOR THE COURT HOUSE PARK--HIS MA APPEARS ON THE SCENE--"IF YOU LOVE ME KISS ME"--MA TO THE RESCUE--"I AM DEAD AM I?" HIS PA THROWS A CHAIR THROUGH THE TRANSOM
"No, I have not been sick. Pa locked me up in the bath-room for two days and two nights, and didn't give me nothing to eat but bread and water. Since he has got religious he seems to be harder than ever on me. Say, do you think religion softens a man's heart, or does it give him a caked breast? I 'spect Pa will burn me at the stake next." The grocery man said that when a man had truly been converted his heart was softened, and he was always looking for a chance to do good and be kind to the poor, but if he only had this galvanized religion, this roll plate piety, or whitewashed reformation, he was liable to be a harder citizen than before. "What made your Pa lock you up in the bath-room on bread and water?" he asked. "Well," says the boy, as he eat a couple of salt pickles out of a jar on the sidewalk, "Pa is not converted enough to hurt him, and I knowed it, and I thought it would be a good joke to try him and see if he was so confounded good, so I got my chum to dress up in a suit of his sister's summer clothes. Well, you wouldn't believe my chum would look so much like a girl. He would fool the oldest inhabitant. You know how fat he is. He had to sell his bicycle to a slim fellow that clerks in a store, cause he didn't want it any more. His neck is just as fat and there are dimples in it, and with a dress low in the neck, and long at the trail he looks as tall as my Ma. He busted one of his sister's slippers getting them on, and her stockings were a good deal too big for him, but he tucked his drawers down in them and tied a suspender around his leg above the knee, and they stayed on all right. Well, he looked killin', I should prevaricate, with his sister's muslin dress on, starched as stiff as a shirt, and her reception hat with a white feather as big as a Newfoundland dog's tail. Pa said he had got to go down town to see some of the old soldiers of his regiment, and I loafed along behind. My chum met Pa on the corner and asked him where the Lake Shore Park was. "She" said she was a stranger from Chicago, that her husband had deserted her and she didn't know but she would jump into the lake. Pa looked in my chum's eye and sized her up, and said it would be a shame to commit suicide, and asked if she didn't want to take a walk, My chum said he should titter, and he took Pa's arm and they walked up to the lake and back. Well, you may talk about joining the church on probation all you please, but they get their arm around a girl all the same. Pa hugged my chum till he says he thought Pa would break his sister's corset all to pieces, and he squeezed my chum's hand till the ring cut right into his finger and he has to wear a piece of court plaster on it. They started for the Court House park, as I told my chum to do, and I went and got Ma. It was about time for the soldiers to go to the exposition for the evening bizness, and I told Ma we could go down and see them go by. Ma just throwed a shawl over her head and we started down through the park. When we got near Pa and my chum I told Ma it was a shame for so many people to be sitting around lally-gagging right before folks, and she said it was disgustin', and then I pointed to my chum who had his head on Pa's bosom, and Pa was patting my chum on the cheek, while he held his other arm around his waist, They was on the iron seat, and we came right up behind them and when Ma saw Pa's bald head I thought she would bust. She knew his head as quick as she sot eyes on it." "My chum asked Pa if he was married, and he said he was a widower, He said his wife died fourteen years ago, of liver complaint. Well, Ma shook like a leaf, and I could hear her new teeth rattle just like chewing strawberries with sand in them. Then my chum put his arms around Pa's neck and said, "If you love me kiss me in the mouth." Pa was just leaning down to kiss my chum when Ma couldn't stand it any longer, and she went right around in front of them, and she grabbed my chum by the hair and it all came off, hat and all; and my chum jumped up and Ma scratched him in the face, and my chum tried to get his hands in his pants pocket to get his handkerchief to wipe off the blood on his nose, and Ma she turned on Pa and he turned pale, and then she was going for my chum again when he said, "O let up on a feller," and he see she was mad and he grabbed the hat and hair off the gravel walk and took the skirt of his sister's dress in his hand and sifted out for home on a gallop, and Ma took Pa by the elbow and said, "You are a nice old party, ain't you? I am dead, am I? Died of liver complaint fourteen years ago, did I? You will find an animated corpse on your hands. Around kissing spry wimmen out in the night, sir." When they started home Pa seemed to be as weak as a cat, and couldn't say a word, and I asked if I could go to the exposition, and they said I could, I don't know what happened after they got home, but Pa was setting up for me when I got back and he wanted to know what I brought Ma down there for, and how I knew he was there. "I thought it would help Pa out of the scrape and so I told him it was not a girl he was hugging at all, but it was my chum, and he laffed at first, and told Ma it was not a girl, but Ma said she knew a darn sight better. She guessed she could tell a girl. "Then Pa was mad and he said I was at the bottom of the whole bizness, and he locked me up, and said I was enough to paralyze a saint. I told him through the key-hole that a saint that had any sense ought to tell a boy from a girl, and then he throwed a chair at me through the transom. The worst of the whole thing is my chum is mad at me cause Ma scratched him, and he says that lets him out. He don't go into any more schemes with me. Well, I must be going. Pa is going to have my measure taken for a raw hide, he says, and I have got to stay at home from the sparing match and learn my Sunday school lesson." _ |
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