your Ma down to the police station for so late last
night?" asked the grocery man of the bad boy, as he kicked a dog away
from a basket of peaches standing on the sidewalk "Your Ma seemed to be
much affected."

"That's a family secret. But if you will give me some of those rotton
peaches I will tell you, if you won't ever ask Pa how he came to be
pulled by the police."

The grocery man told him to help himself out of the basket that the dog
had been smelling of, and he filled his pockets, and the bosom of his
flannel shirt, and his hat, and said:

"Well, you know Pa is studying up on the Bible, and he is trying to get
me interested, and he wants me to ask him questions, but if I ask him
any questions that he can't answer, he gets mad. When I asked him about
Daniel in the den of lions, and if he didn't think Dan was traveling
with a show, and had the lions chloroformed, he said I was a scoffer,
and would go to Gehenna. Now I don't want to go to Gehenna just for
wanting to get posted in the show business of old times, do you? When
Pa said Dan was saved from the jaws of the lions because he prayed three
times every day, and had faith, I told him that was just what the duffer
that goes into the lions den in Coup's circus did because I saw him in
the dressing room, when me and my chum got in for carrying water for the
elephant, and he was exhorting with a girl in tights who was going to
ride two horses. Pa said I was mistaken, cause they never prayed in
circus, 'cept the lemonade butchers. I guess I know when I hear a man
pray. Coup's Daniel talked just like a deacon at class meeting, and told
the girl to go to the place where the minister says we will all go if we
don't do different. Pa says it is wicked to speak of Daniel in the same
breath that you speak of a circus, so I am wicked I 'spose. Well, I
couldn't help it and when he wanted me to ask him questions about Elijah
going up in a chariot of fire, I asked him if he believed a chariot like
the ones in the circus, with eight horses, could carry a man right up to
the clouds, and Pa said of course it could. Then I asked him what they
did with the horses after they got up there, or if the chariot kept
running back and forth like a bust to a pic-nic, and whether they
had stalls for the horses and harness-makers to repair harnesses,
and wagon-makers, cause a chariot is liable to run off a wheel, if it
strikes a cloud in turning a corner. Pa said I made him tired. He said