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Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, a fiction by George W. Peck |
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Chapter 20. His Girl Goes Back On Him... |
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_ CHAPTER XX. HIS GIRL GOES BACK ON HIM--THE GROCERY MAN IS AFRAID--BUT THE BAD BOY IS A WRECK!--"MY GIRL, HAS SHOOK ME!"--THE BAD BOY'S HEART IS BROKEN--STILL HE ENJOYS A BIT OF FUN--COD- LIVER OIL ON THE PANCAKES--THE HIRED GIRLS MADE VICTIMS--THE BAD BOY VOWS VENGEANCE ON HIS GIRL AND THE TELEGRAPH MESSENGER
"O, I am a wreck," said the boy, as he grated his teeth, and looked wicked. "You see before you a shadow. I have drank of the sweets of life, and now only the dregs remain. I look back at the happiness of the past two weeks, during which I have been permitted to gaze into the fond blue eyes of my loved one, and carry her rubbers to school for her to wear home when it rained, to hear the sweet words that fell from her lips as she lovingly told me I was a terror, and as I think it is all over, and that I shall never again place my arm around her waist, I feel as if the world had been kicked off its base and was whirling through space, liable to be knocked into a cocked hat, and I don't care a darn. My girl has shook me." "Sho! You don't say so," says the grocery man as he threw a rotten potato into a basket of good ones that were going to the orphan asylum. "Well, she showed sense. You would have blown her up, or broken her neck, or something. But don't feel bad. You will soon find another girl that will discount her, and you will forget this one." "Never!" said the the boy, as he nibbled at a piece of codfish that he had picked off. "I shall never allow my affections to become entwined about another piece of calico. It unmans me, sir. Henceforth I am a hater of the whole girl race. From this out I shall harbor revenge in my heart, and no girl can cross my path and live. I want to grow up to become a he school ma'am, or a he milliner, or something, where I can. grind girls into the dust under the heel of a terrible despotism, and make them sue for mercy. To think that girl, on whom I have lavished my heart's best love and over thirty cents, in the past two weeks, could let the smell of a goat on my clothes come between us, and break off, an acquaintance that seemed to be the forerunner of a happy future, and say "ta-ta" to me, and go off to dancing school with a telegraph messenger boy who wears a sleeping car porter uniform, is too much, and my heart is broken. I will lay for that messenger some night, when he is delivering a message in our ward, and I will make him think lightning has struck the wire and run in on his bench. O, you don't know anything about the woe there is in this world. You never loved many people, did you?" The grocery man admitted he never loved very hard, but he knew a little something about it from-an aunt of his, who got mashed on a Chicago drummer. "But your father must be having a rest while your whole mind is occupied with your love affair," said he. "Yes," says the boy, with a vacant look, "I take no interest in the pleasure of the chase any more, though I did have a little quiet fun this morning at the breakfast table. You see Pa is the contrariest man ever was. If I complain that anything at the table don't taste good, Pa says it is all right. This morning I took the syrup pitcher and emptied out the white syrup and put in some cod liver oil that Ma is taking for her cough. I put some on my pancakes and pretended to taste of it, and I told Pa the syrup was sour and not fit to eat. Pa was mad in a second, and he poured out some on his pancakes, and said I was getting too confounded particular. He said the syrup was good enough for him, and he sopped his pancakes in it and fired some down his neck. He is a gaul durned hypocrite, that's what he is. I could see by his face that the cod liver oil was nearly killing him, but he said that syrup was all right, and if I didn't eat mine he would break my back, and by gosh, I had to eat it, and Pa said he guessed he hadn't got much appetite, and he would just drink a cup of coffee and eat a donut. "I like to dide, and that is one thing, I think, that makes this disappointment in love harder to bear. But I felt sorry for Ma. Ma ain't got a very strong stummick, and when she got some of that cod liver oil in her mouth she went right up stairs, sicker'n a horse, and Pa had to help her, and she had noo-ralgia all the morning. I eat pickles to take the taste out of my mouth, and then I laid for the hired girls. They eat too much syrup, anyway, and when they got on to that cod liver oil, and swallowed a lot of it, one of them, a nirish girl, she got up from the table and put her hand on her corset, and said, "howly Jaysus," and went out in the kitchen, as pale as Ma is when she has powder on her face, and the other girl who is Dutch, she swallowed a pancake and said, "Mine Gott, vas de matter from me," and she went out and leaned on the coal bin, then they talked Irish and Dutch, and got clubs, and started to look for me, and I thought I would come over here. "The whole family is sick, but it is not from love, like my illness, and they will get over it, while I shall fill an early grave, but not till I have made that girl and the telegraph messenger wish they were dead. Pa and I are going to Chicago next week, and I'll bet we'll have some fun. Pa says I need a change of air, and I think he is going to try and lose me. It's a cold day when I get left anywhere that I can't find my way back, Well, good bye, old rotten potatoes." _ |
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