That Bad Boy.

Waikato Times, Volume XXII, Issue 1815, 23 February 1884, Page 2 (Supplement)

That Bad Boy.

" Say, do you think a little joke does any hurt ? " asked the bad boy of the grocery man a8 he came in with his Sunday suit on, and a bouquet in his button-hole. " No, sir," said the grocery man, aa he licked off the syrup that dripped from a quart measure, from which he had been filling a jug. "I hold that a man that gets mad at a practical joke is a fool. That's a nice bouquet you have in your coat. What is it —pansies ? Let me smell of it," and the grocery man bent over in front of the boy to take a whiff at the bouquet. As he did so a stream of water shot out of the innocent-looking bouquet and struck him full in the face. " You young reprobate," said the grocery man to the boy, as he took up an axe-helve and started for him, " what kind of a golblasted squirt-gun have you got there ? I'll maul you, by thunder," and ho rolled up his shirt-sleeves. "Here, let me show it to you," said the bad boy. " There is a rubber hose runs from the bouquet, inside my coat, to my pants pocket, and there is a bulb of rubber that hold 3 about half a pint, and when a feller smells of the posy, I squeeze the bulb. It's fun, where you don't squirt it on a man that gets mad." The grocery man said he would give the boy half a pound of figs if he would lend the bouquet to him for half an hour to play it on a customer, and the boy fixed it on the grocery man, and turned the nozzle 30 it would squirt right back into the grocery man's face. He tried it on the first customer that came in, and got it right in his own face, and then the bulb in his pants pocket got to leaking, and the rest of the water ran down the grocery man's trousers leg, and he gave it up in disguat, and handed it back to the boy. " How was it that your pa had to be carried home from the sociable in a hack the other night? " asked the grocery man, as he stood close to the stove so his pants leg would dry. "He has net got to drinking again, has he? " " Oh, no," said the boy, as he filled the bulb with vinegar, to practice on his chum; "it was this bouquet that got pa into the trouble. You see 1 got pa to smell of it, and I just filled him chuck full of water. He got mad, and called me all kinds of names, and said I was no good on earth, and I would fetch up in State's prison, and then he wanted to borrow it to wear to the sociable. He said he would have more fun than you could shake a stick at, and I asked him if he didn't think he would fetch up in State's prison, and he said it was different with a man. He said when a man played a joke there wag a certain dignity about it that was lacking in a boy. So I lent it to him, aud we all went to the sociable in the basement of the church. I never see pa more kitteny than he was that night. He filled the bulb with ipe-water, and the first one he got to smell of his button-hole bouquet was an old maid. He began talking about what a great work the Christian wimmen of theland were doing in educating the heathen; she felt real good, and then she noticed pa's posy in his button-hole, and she touched it, and then reached over her beak to smell of it. Pa he squeezed the bulb, and about half a tea- / cupful of water struck her right in the nose,' and some of it went into her mouth ; and, o^ myl didn't she yell? The sisters gatherdii" around her, and they said her face was all perspiration, and the paint was coming off, and they took her in the kitchen, and the wimmen told the minister and the deacons, and they went to pa for an explanation, and he told them it was not so, and the minister got interested, and got near pa, and pa let the water go at him, and hit him in the eye, and the deacon got a dose, and pa laughed, and then the minister, who used to go to college and be a hazer and box, he got mad, and squared off and hit pa three times right by the eye; and one of the deacons he kicked pa, and pa got mad, and said he could clean out the whole shebang, and began to pull' off his coat, when they bundled him out of doors, and ma got mad to see pa abused, and she left the sociable, and I had to stay and eat icecream and things for the whole family. Pa says that settles it with him. He says they haven't got any more Christian charity in that church than they have got in a tannery. His eyes was just getting over being black from the sparring lessons, and now he has got to go through the oysters and beef-steak euro ' again. He says its all owing to me." —PecWt ' Sun.