THAT BAD BOY.

Temuka Leader, Issue 1122, 5 January 1884, Page 3

THAT BAD BOY.

' Ah, ah ( you've got your desertw at last,' said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came in with one eye black and his nose peeled on one side, and sat down on a board across the coa! scuttle, and began whistling as unconcerned as possible. ' W hat's the matter with your eye V 'Boy tried to gouge it out without asking my consent,' and the bad boy took a dried herring out of the box, and began peeling it. 'He is in bed now and his ma is poulticing him, and she says he will be out about the last of next week. Say, did I tell you about pa and ma having trouble V

' No ; what's the row V 'Well, you see, ma wants to economise all she can, and pa has been getting thinner since he quit drinking and reformed, and I have kept on growing until lam bigger than he is. -Funny, ain't it, that a boy should be bigger than hi* pa 1 Pa wanted a new suit of clothes, and ma said she would fix him, and she took one of my old suits and made it over for pn, and he wore it a week before he knew it was an old suit made over. But one day he found a handful of dried-up angleworms in the pistol pocket that I had forgot when I was fishing, and pa laid the angle-worms to ma, and ma had to explain that she made over one of my old suits for pa. He was mad and took them off, threw them out of the back window ami swore he would never humiliate himself by wearing his son's old clothes. Ma tried to reason with him, but he was awful worked up, and said he was an old charity hospital, and he stormed around to find his old suit of clothes, but ma had sold them to a plaPter-of-Paris image peddler, and pa hadn't anything to wear, and he wanted ma to go out in the alley and pick up the suit he threw out of the window, but a rag-man had picked them up and was g jing away, and pa he grabbed a linen duster and put it on and went after the rag-picker, and he run and pa run after him, and the rag-man told a policeman there was an escaped lunatic from the asylum, and he was chasing people all over the city, and the policeman took pa by the linen duster and pulled it off, and he was a sight when they took him to the police station. Ma and me had to go down aud bail him out, and the police lent us a tarpaulin to put over pa, and we got him home, and he is wearing his summer pants while the tailor makes h ; m a new suit of clothes. 1 think pa is toe excitable and too particular. I never kicked on wearing pa's old clothes, and I think he ought to wear mine now.'— Peck's Sun.