eman came along leading him by the ear, the boy having
an empty champagne bottle in one hand, and a black eye. "What has he been
doing Mr. Policeman?" asked the grocery man, as the policeman halted with
the boy in front of the store.

"Well, I was going by a house up here when this kid opened the door with a
quart bottle of champagne, and he cut the wire and fired the cork at
another boy, and the champagne went all over the sidewalk, and some of it
went on me, and I knew there was something wrong, cause champagne is too
expensive to waste that way, and he said he was running the shebang and if
I would bring him here you would say he was all right. If you say so I
will let him go."

The grocery man said he had better let the boy go, as his parents would
not like to have their little pet locked up. So the policeman let go his
ear, and he throwed the empty bottle at a coal wagon, and after the
policeman had brushed the champagne off his coat, and smelled of his
fingers, and started off, the grocery man turned to the boy, who was
peeling a cucumber, and said:

"Now, what kind of a circus have you been having, and what do you mean by
destroying wine that way! and, where are your folks?"

"Well, I'll tell you. Ma she has got the hay fever and has gone to Lake
Superior to see if she can't stop sneezing, and Saturday Pa said he and me
would go out to Oconomowoc and stay over Sunday, and try and recuperate
our health. Pa said it would be a good joke for me not to call him Pa, but
to act as though I was his younger brother, and we would have a
real nice time. I knowed what he wanted. He is an old masher, that's
what's the matter with him, and he was going to play himself for a
batchelor. O, thunder, I got on to his racket in a minute. He was
introduced to some of the girls and Saturday evening he danced till the
cows came home. At home he is awful fraid of rheumatiz, and he never
sweats, or sits in a draft; but the water just poured off'n him, and he
stood in the door and let a girl fan him till I was afraid he would
freeze, and just as he was telling a girl from Tennessee, who was joking
him about being 'a nold batch,' that he was not sure as he could always
hold out a woman hater if he was to be thrown into contact with the
charming ladies of the Sunny South. I pulled his coat and said, 'Pa how do
you spose Ma's hay fever is to-night, I'll bet she is just sneezing the
top of her head off.' Wall, sir, you just oughten seen th