b for a
minute, and when it comes to, and she has almost gone behind the scenes,
everybody cheers, and waves handkerchiefs, and stands up and yells until
she comes back and does it over again, that is technique."

"Well, sir, my girl has got a technique just like that. She can sing the
socks right off of----"

"Oh, hold on; don't work any of your slang into this musical discussion.
When you want to know anything about music, or falling in love, or
farming, come to your Uncle Ike. Office hours from 9 a. m. to 4 p. m.
No cure no pay. If you are not satisfied your money will be cheerfully
refunded," and the old man got an oil can and begun to oil the old
shotgun, while the boy started to sing "Killarney" in a bass voice, and
Uncle Ike drew the gun on him and said: "If you are looking for trouble,
sing in that buzz-saw voice in my presence. I could murder a person that
sang like that."

CHAPTER XIX.

Uncle Ike was leaning over the gate late in the afternoon, waiting for
the red-headed boy and some of his chums to come back from the State
fair. He had gone to the fair with them, and gone around to look at
the stock with them, and had staked them for admission to all the
side shows, and when they had come out of the last side show, and were
hungry, he had bought a mess of hot wiener sausages for them, and while
they were eating them somebody yelled that the balloon was going to go
up, and the boys grabbed their wieners and run across the fair grounds,
losing Uncle Ike; and being tired, and not caring to see a young girl
go up a mile in the air, and come down with a parachute, with a good
prospect of flattening herself on the hard ground, he had concluded to
go home before the crowd rushed for the cars, and here he was at the
gate waiting for the boys, saddened because a pickpocket had taken his
watch and a big seal fob that had been in the family almost a hundred
years. As he waited for the boys to come back he smoked hard, and
wondered what a pickpocket wanted to fool an old man for, a man who
would divide his money with any one out of luck, and he wondered what
they could get on that poor old silver watch, that never kept time that
could be relied on, and a tear came to his eye as he thought of some
jeweler melting up that old fob that his father and grandfather used to
wear before him, and he wondered if the boys would guy him for having
his pocket picked, he, who had mixed up with the world for half a
century a