about it, do you
hear?"

"Every word?" echoed Tommy Candy.

"Every word."

Their eyes met; and, if twinkle met twinkle, still her brows were
severe, and her cap simply awful. Tommy Candy chuckled again. "I tell
ye!" he said.

He reflected a moment, nibbling an almond absently, then leaned forward,
and, clasping his hands over both knees, began his tale.

"Old Booby's ben pickin' on me ever sence I can remember. I don't git no
comfort goin' to meetin', he picks on me so. Ever anybody sneezes, or
drops a hymn-book, or throws a lozenger, he lays it to me, and he
ketches me after meetin' and pulls my ears. Last Sunday he took away
every lozenger I had, five cents' wuth, jest because I stuck one on
Doctor Pottle's co't in the pew front of our'n. So then I swowed I'd
have revenge, like that feller in the poetry-book you lent me. So next
day after school I seed him--well, _saw_ him--come along with his
glass-settin' tools, and go to work settin' some glass in one of the
meetin'-house winders. Some o' them little small panes got broke
somehow--yes'm, I did, but I never meant to, honest I didn't. I was jest
tryin' my new catapult, and I never thought they'd have such measly
glass as all that. Well, so I see--saw him get to work, and I says to
Squashnose Weight--we was goin' home from school together--I says,
'Let's go up in the gallery!' Old Booby had left the door open, and
'twas right under the gallery that he was to work. So we went up; and I
had my pocket full of split peas--no'm, I didn't have my bean-blower
along; I'd known better than to take it into the meetin'-house, anyway;
and we slipped in behind old Booby's back and got up into the gallery,
and I slid the winder up easy, and we commenced droppin' peas down on
his head. He's bald as a bedpost, you know, and to see them peas hop up
and roll off--I tell ye, 'twas sport! Old Booby didn't know what in
thunder was the matter at first. First two or three he jest kind o'
shooed with his hand--thought it was hossflies, mebbe, or June-bugs; but
we went on droppin' of 'em, and they hopped and skipped off his head
like bullets, and bumby he see one on the ground. He picked it up and
looked it all over, and then he looked up. You know how he opens his
mouth and sort o' squinnies up his eyes? Mis' Tree, I couldn't help it,
no way in the world; I jest dropped a handful of peas right down into
his mouth. 'Twa'n't no great of a shot, for he opened the spread of a
quart dippe