ll of lump sugar.

CHAPTER XXVIII.

HIS PA GOES SKATING--THE BAD BOY CARVES A TURKEY--HIS PA'S
FAME AS A SKATER--THE OLD MAN ESSAYS TO SKATE ON ROLLERS--
HIS WILD CAPERS--HE SPREADS HIMSELF--HOLIDAYS A CONDEMNED
NUISANCE--THE BAY BOY'S CHRISTMAS PRESENTS.

"What is that stuff on your shirt bosom, that looks like soap grease?"
said the grocery man to the bad boy, as he came into the grocery the
morning after Christmas.

The boy looked at his shirt front, put his fingers on the stuff and
smelled of his fingers, and then said, "O, that is nothing but a little
of the turkey dressing and gravy. You see after Pa and I got back from
the roller skating rink yesterday, Pa was all broke up and he couldn't
carve the turkey, and I had to do it, and Pa sat in a stuffed chair with
his head tied up, and a pillow amongst his legs, and he kept complaining
that I didn't do it right. Gol darn a turkey any way. I should think
they would make a turkey flat on the back, so he would lay on a greasy
platter without skating all around the table. It looks easy to see Pa
carve a turkey, but when I speared into the bosom of that turkey,
and began to saw on it, the turkey rolled-around as though it was on
castors, and it was all I could do to keep it out of Ma's lap. But I
rasseled with it till I got off enough white meat for Pa and Ma and dark
meat enough for me, and I dug out the dressing, but most of it flew
into my shirt bosom, cause the string that tied up the place where
the dressing was concealed about the person of the turkey, broke
prematurely, and one oyster hit Pa in the eye, and he said I was as
awkward as a cross-eyed girl trying to kiss a man with a hair lip. If
I ever get to be the head of a family I shall carve turkeys with a corn
sheller."

"But what broke your Pa up at the roller skating rink," asked the
grocery man.

"O, everything broke him up. He is, split up so Ma buttons the top
of his pants to his collar button, like a by cycle rider. Well, he no
business to have told me and my chum that he used to be the best skater
in North America, when he was a boy. He said he skated once from Albany
to New York in an hour and eighty minutes. Me and my chum thought if Pa
was such a terror on skates we would get him to put on a pair of roller
skates and enter him as the "great unknown," and clean out the whole
gang. We told Pa that he must remember that roller skates were different
from ice skates, and th