ay about and lost a couple of good customers. It was a hot, drowsy
afternoon, and by-and-bye I began to feel dull and sleepy. So I looked
round the corner and saw a Chinaman coming. I got a big tin garden
syringe and filled it full of brine from the butter keg, and, when he
came opposite the door, I let him have the full force of it in the ear.

"That Chinaman put down his baskets and came for me. I was strong for my
age, and thought I could fight, but he gave me a proper mauling.

"It was like running up against a thrashing machine, and it wouldn't
have been well for me if the boss of the shop next door hadn't
interfered. He told my boss, and my boss gave me the sack at once.

"I took a spell of eighteen months or so after that, and was growing
up happy and contented when a married sister of mine must needs come
to live in town and interfere. I didn't like married sisters, though I
always got on grand with my brothers-in-law, and wished there were more
of them. The married sister comes round and cleans up the place and
pulls your things about and finds your pipe and tobacco and things, and
cigarette portraits, and "Deadwood Dicks", that you've got put away all
right, so's your mother and aunt wouldn't find them in a generation of
cats, and says:

"'Mother, why don't you make that boy go to work. It's a scandalous
shame to see a big boy like that growing up idle. He's going to the bad
before your eyes.' And she's always trying to make out that you're a
liar, and trying to make mother believe it, too. My married sister got
me a job with a chemist, whose missus she knew.

"I got on pretty well there, and by-and-bye I was put upstairs in the
grinding and mixing department; but, after a while, they put another
boy that I was chummy with up there with me, and that was a mistake.
I didn't think so at the time, but I can see it now. We got up to all
sorts of tricks. We'd get mixing together chemicals that weren't related
to see how they'd agree, and we nearly blew up the shop several times,
and set it on fire once. But all the chaps liked us, and fixed things up
for us. One day we got a big black dog--that we meant to take home that
evening--and sneaked him upstairs and put him on a flat roof outside the
laboratory. He had a touch of the mange and didn't look well, so we gave
him a dose of something; and he scrambled over the parapet and slipped
down a steep iron roof in front, and fell on a respected townsman that
knew my