PECK’S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

Ashburton Guardian, Volume IV, Issue 1004, 20 November 1883, Page 2

PECK’S BAD BOY AND HIS PA.

“ fVhat is this I hear about your father creating a panic in a dry goods store?’’ said the grocery man to the bad boy as he took a butterrtryer and ran it into a pumpkin a few times. “ They tell me that he had about a hundred female clerks treed on the shelves and on the counters, and all of them screaming bloody murder; and that a floor walker hit him over the head with a roll of paper cambric, and somebody turned in a fire alarm. How was it ?” f

“ Well, if you will keep watch for pa at the doer, I will tell you all about it,” said the boy. “ Somebody has told pa that I was at the bottom of the whole business; and when a man loses confidence in his boy, and rolls up a trunk strap and.carries it habitually, it stands a boy in hand to keep his eye peeled. “ You see, pa has been in the habit lately of going to the store a good deal and lally-gagging with the girl clerks. Any girl that will smile on pa and look sweet catches him, and he would sit on a stool in front of the counter ten hours a day, pretending to want to buy some kind of fringe or corsets, or something, and he would fairly talk the arms off the ghls. Ma don’t like it at all, and she told pa he ought to be ashamed of himself, ’cause the girls was only making a fool of him, and all -the people in the store were laffing at him; but pa said for her to shut her yawp, and he kept on trying to find excuses to go to the store. Ma told me about it, and she felt real sorry, and, by jinks, it made me mad to see an old man—old enough to have gout or paralysis—going around mashing clerks in a store, and I told ma if she would let me I would break pa up in that sort of business, and she told me to go ahead and make him jump like a box-car. So t’other day ma gave pa a piece of ribbon to match and a corset to change for a larger size, and a pair of gloves to return because the thumb of one of ’em was ripped off, and told him to buy four yards of baby flannel, and see how much it would cost to have her sealskin coat re-lined, and to see if her new hat was done. Pa acted as though he didn’t want to go to the store, but ma and me knew that he looked upon it as a picnic, and he blacked his boots and changed ends with his cuffs, and put on his new red necktie, and shaved himself, and fixed up as though he was going to be married. I asked him to let me go along to carry the packages, and he said he didn’t mind ifl did go. “You have seen these injy-rubber rats they have at the rubber stores, hav’n’t you ? They look so near like a natural rat that you can’t tell the difference unless you offer the rubber rat some cheese, I got one of those rats and tied a fine thread to it, with a slippoose on the end, and when pa got into the store I put the slipnoose over the hind button of his coat tail and. put/the rat on the floor, and it followed him along and I swow it looked so natural I wanted to kick it. Pa walked along smiling, and stooped at the ribbon counter and winked at a girl, and she bent over to see what he wanted, and then she saw the rat, and she i screamed and crawled up on to the <

shelf where the boxes were, and put her feet under her and said, * Take it away, kill it,’ and she trembled all over. Pa thought she had gone into a fit ’cause i she was paralysed on his shape, and he turned blue, and went on, ’cause he didn’t want to kill her dead; and as he walked along the rat followed him, and just as he bowed to four girls who were standing together, talking about the fun they had at the Exposition the night before, they saw the rat, and they began to yell and to climb up thingi One of them got on a stool and pulled her clothes tight around her ankles, so a live rat couldn’t have got in her stocking, let alone a rubber rat, and the girls all squealed just like when ,you tickle them in the ribs.

“ Pa, he looked scared, as though he was afraid he was breaking them all op with his shape, and he kept on, and another dock of girls saw the rat, and they jumped upon the counter and;sat down on their feet, and yelled ‘rat* Then the others yelled ‘ rat,’ and in a minute about a hundred girls were getting up on things and saying ‘ shoo,’ and one of them got on a pile of blankets and the pile fell on the floor with her, and the men had to dig her out. Pa’s face was a study. He looked at one girl and then another, and wondered what was the matter, and finally the floor-walker came along and see what it was, and he took pa by the collar and led him out of doors, and told him if he ever came in there again he would send the police after him. 1 had gone by the time pa got out on the sidewalk, and he picked up; rat and found it was hitched to his coat, and he weht right home. Ma says he was so mad that he stuttered, and she thinks I had better board around for a day or two. She tried to ceason (frith pa that it was intended for his good, to show him that he was making a fool of himself; but he does not look at it in that light,”— Peck's Sun.