THE BAD BOY AGAIN.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3719, 16 June 1883, Page 4

THE BAD BOY AGAIN.

Ilia Pα Borrows a Goat,

"Well, how is the baby," asked the grocery man of the bud boy, as he came into the grocery smelling' very "horsey," and sat down on the chair with the back gone, and looked very tired. " 0 darn the baby. Everybody asks me about the baby, as though it was mine. f don't pay no attention to the darn thing, except to notice the foolishness going ou around the house. I guess that baby will grow up to be a fire engine. The nurse coupled the baby on to a section of rubber hose that runs down into a bottle of milk, and ib began to get up steam, and pretty soon the milk began to disappear, just like the water docs when a fire engino couples on to a hydrant. la calls the baby*" Old Number Two." lam "Number One," mid if pa had a hook and ladder truck and a hose cart and a fire gong, he would imagine ho was chief engineer of the tire department. But she kicks on this milkwagon milk, and howls like a dog , that's got lost. The doctor told pa the best thing ho could do was to get a goat, but pa said since we 'nishiated him into the Masons ■with the goat lie wouldn't have one around no how. The doctor told pa the other kind of a goat, I think it was a Hamantha goat he said, wouldn't kick with its head, and pa sent me up into the Polack settlement to see if I couldn't borrow a milk goat for a few weeks. I got a woman to lend us her goat till the baby got big enough to chow beef, for a dollar a week, and paid a dollar in advance. -But I have got my opinion of a baby that will drink goat's milk. Gosh, it is like this stuff that comes in a spoiled coeoamit. The baby hasn't done anything but blat since the nurse coupled it on to the goat hydrant. I had to take all my play things out of the basement to keep the goat from eating them. I guess the milk will taste of powder and singed hair now. The goat got to eating some Romau candles me and my chum had laid away in the coal bin, and chewed them around the furnace, and the powder leaked out and a coal fell out of the furnace on the hearth, and you'd a dido to see pa and the hired girl and the goat. You sec pa can't milk nothing but a" milk waggon, and lie got the hired girl to milk the goat, and they were just hunting around the basement for tlio goat, with a tin cup, when the lire-works went off. Well, there was balls of green, and red and blue fire, and spilled powder blazed up, and the goat just looked astonished, and looked on as though it was sorry so much good fodder had been spoiled, but when its hair began to burn the goat gave one snort and went between pa and the hired girl like it was shot out of a cannon, and it knocked pa over a wash boiler into the coal bin, and the hired girl in amongst the kindling wood, and she crossed herself and repealed the catekism, and the goat jumped up on top of the brick furnace, and they couldn't get it down. I heard the celebration and went down and took pa by the pants and pulled him out of the coal bin, and he said he would surrender, and plead guilty of being the biggest fool in Milwaukee. I pulled the kindling wood off the hired girl, and then she got mad, and said she would milk that goat or die. 0, that girl has got sand. She used to work in the glass factory. Well, sir, it was a sight worth two shillings admission to see that hired girl get up on a step ladder to milk that goat on top of the furnace, with pa sitting on a barrel of potatoes, bossing the job. They are going to fix a gang plank to get the goat down oil' the furnace. The baby kicked on the milk last night. I guess besides testing of powder and burnt hair, the milk was too warm on account of the furnace. Pa has got to grow a now lot of hair on that goat, or the woman won't take it back. She don't want no bald goat. Well, they can run the baby and goat to suit themselves, 'cause I have resigned. I have gone into business. Don't you smell anything that would lead you to surmise that I had gone into business ? No drugstore this time," and the boy got up and put his thumbs in the armholes of his vest, and looked proud. "0, I don't know as I smell anything, except the faint odor of a horse blanket. What havcyou gone into, anyway," and the grocery man put the wrapping paper under the counter, and put the red chalk in his pocket, so the boy couldn't write any sign to hang up outside. "You hit it the first time. I have accepted a situation of teller in a livery stable," said the boy, as he searched around for the barrel of cut sugar, which had been removed.

'' Teller in a livery stable. Well, that is a new one on me. What is a teller in a lively stable r" and the grocery man looked pleased, and pointed the boy to a barrel of seven cent, sugar. " Don't 3'ou know what a teller is in a Jiverly stable '; It is the same as a teller in a bank. I. have to grease the harnesses, oil the tho buggies and curry of the horses, and when a man comes in to hire a horse I have to go dii>wn to the saloon and tell the livery man. That's what a feller is. I like "the teller part of it, but greasing harnesses is a little too much for my blood, but the livery man says if I stick to it I Avill be governor sonic day, 'cause most all the great men have begun life taking care of horses. It all depends on my girl whether I stick or not. If she likes the smell of horses I shall be a statesman, but it' she objects to it and sticks up her hose I shall not yearn to be governor, at the exjien.so of my girl. It beats all, don't it, that wimmen settle every great education ': Everybody does everything to please winiinen, and if they kick on anything that settles it. But I must go and umpire that game between pa and the hired girl and the gout. Say, ciin't you come over and see the baby? 'Tain 1 1 bigger than a small satchel," and the boy waited till the grocery man went to draw some vinegar, when he slipped out and put up a sign written on a .shingle with white chalk, " yellow moid wanted fur maple sugar. ,, — Peck's Sun.