Peck's Bad Boy and Bis Pa.

Thames Star, Volume XV, Issue 4757, 5 April 1884, Page 4

Peck's Bad Boy and Bis Pa.

" What is this I hear about your father creating a panic in a dry goods store?" said the grocery man to the bad boy, as lie took a butter-tryer and ran it into a pumpkin a few times. "They tell me that he had about a hundred female clerks treed on the shelres, 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?" " Well, if you will keep watch for pa at the door, 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 a habit lately ' of going to the store a good deal and lallygagging 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 girls. Ma don't like it at ali, and she told pa he ought to be ashamed of himself, 'cause the girls was only making a fool of bim, 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 enongh to have gout or paralysis, going round mashing clerks in a store, aiad 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 gare 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 hare her sealskin cloak reclined, 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 bis new red necktie, and shaved himself, and fixed up as though be was going to be married. I asked him to let me go along to carry the packages, and he said he didn't mind if I did go. " You have seen these injy rubber rats they bare at the rubber stores, haven't you ? They look so near like a 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 slipnoose on the end, and when pa got into the store I put the slipnoose orer 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 stopped 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 screamed and crawled up on the shelf where the boxes were, and put her feet under her, and said 'take it away, kill if,' and she trembled all orer. Pa thought she had gone into a fit, 'cause she was paralyzed on his shape, and be 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 climb up things. One of them got on a stool and pulled her clothes tight around her ankles, so a live rat couldn't bare got in her stockings, 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 up with his shape, and he kept on, and another ' flock of girls saw the rat, and they jumped up on 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, aod saying ' shoo/ and one of them got ou a pile of blankets and the pile fell off 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 floorwalker came along and see what it was, and he took pa by the collar and led him out doors, and told him if he ever came in there again he would send the police after him. I had gone by the time pa got out on the side walk, and he picked up the rubber rat and found it was hitched to his coat,, and he went right home. Ma says he was so mad that he stuttered, and she thinks I better board around for a day or two. She tried to reason-^ith pa that it was intended for his good, to show him that he was making a fool of himself, but be does apt look it it iv tb&t light, '