let him figure away, until all of a sudden
he puts up his pencil and lugs out that bucket again.

"It's quit raining," says I.

"What do you know about it?" says he. "It's pouring decimals, just
pouring 'em. But I've got to get my report in." With that he claps on
the bucket, grabs a bag and starts for the car door.

It was up to me to make a quick play; for he was just ripe to go buttin'
around those tracks and run afoul of a switch-engine. And I hated to
collar him. Just then I spots the tennis-ball.

"Whoop-ee!" says I, grabbin' it up and slammin' it at his head. I made a
bull's-eye on the pail, too. "That's a cigar you owe me," says I, "and I
gets two more cracks for my nickel." He tried to dodge; but I slammed it
at him a couple more times. "Your turn now," says I. "Gimme the bucket."

Sounds foolish, don't it? I'll bet it looked a heap foolisher than it
sounds; but I'd just thought of something a feller told me once. He was
a young doctor in the bat ward at Bellevue. "They're a good deal like
kids," says he, "and if you remember that, you can handle 'em easy."

And say, Sir Peter seemed to look tickled and interested. The first
thing I knew he'd chucked the bucket on my head and was doin' a
war-dance, lambastin' that tennis-ball at me to beat the cars. It was
working, all right.

When he got tired of that I organized a shinny game, with an umbrella
and a cane for sticks, and a couple of wicker chairs for goals. He took
to that, too. First he shed his frock-coat, then his vest, and after a
while we got down to our undershirts. It was a hot game from the word
go. There wa'n't any half-way business about Sir Peter. When he started
out to drive a goal through my legs he whacked good and strong and
often. My shins looked like a barber's pole afterwards; but I couldn't
squeal then. There was no way to duck punishment but to get the ball
into his territory and make him guard goal. It wa'n't such a cinch to
do, either, for he was a lively old gent on his pins.

After about half an hour of that, you can bet I wished I'd stuck to the
bucket game. But Sir Peter was as excited over it as a boy with a new
pair of roller-skates. He wouldn't stand for any change of program, and
he wouldn't stop for breathin'-spells. Rufus Rastus came out of his coop
once to see what the row was all about; but when he saw us mixed up in a
scrimmage for goal he says: "Good Lawd ermighty!" lets out one yell, and
shuts himself up with his c