I'll have to tell your Uncle Peabody--ayes!"

"Oh please don't tell my Uncle Peabody," I wailed.

"Ayes! I'll have to tell him," she answered firmly.

For the first time I looked for him with dread at the window and when he
came I hid in a closet and heard that solemn and penetrating note in her
voice as she said:

"I guess you'll have to take that boy away--ayes!"

"What now?" he asked.

"My stars! he sneaked into the parlor and tipped over the what-not and
smashed that beautiful wax wreath!"

Her voice trembled.

"Not them Minervy flowers?" he asked in a tone of doleful incredulity.

"Ayes he did!"

"And tipped over the hull what-not?"

"Ayes!"

"Jerusalem four-corners!" he exclaimed. "I'll have to--"

He stopped as he was wont to do on the threshold of strong opinions and
momentous resolutions.

The rest of the conversation was drowned in my own cries and Uncle
Peabody came and lifted me tenderly and carried me up-stairs.

He sat down with me on his lap and hushed my cries. Then he said very
gently:

"Now, Bub, you and me have got to be careful. What-nots and albums and
wax flowers and hair-cloth sofys are the most dang'rous critters in St.
Lawrence County. They're purty savage. Keep your eye peeled. You can't
tell what minute they'll jump on ye. More boys have been dragged away
and tore to pieces by `em than by all the bears and panthers in the
woods. When I was a boy I got a cut acrost my legs that made a scar ye
can see now, and it was a hair-cloth sofy that done it. Keep out o' that
old parlor. Ye might as well go into a cage o' wolves. How be I goin' to
make ye remember it?"

"I don't know," I whimpered and began to cry out in fearful
anticipation.

He set me in a chair, picked up one of his old carpet-slippers and began
to thump the bed with it. He belabored the bed with tremendous vigor.
Meanwhile he looked at me and exclaimed: "You dreadful child!"

I knew that my sins were responsible for this violence. It frightened me
and my cries increased.

The door at the bottom of the stairs opened suddenly.

Aunt Deel called:

"Don't lose your temper, Peabody. I think you've gone fur 'nough--ayes!"

Uncle Peabody stopped and blew as if he were very tired and then I
caught a look in his face that reassured me.

He called back to her: "I wouldn't 'a' cared so much if it hadn't 'a'
been the what-not and them Minervy flowers. When a boy tips over a
what-not he's goin' it purty strong."

"