tly hand reached into a box
of figs.

"No you ain't no ghost," said the grocery man, recognizing the bad boy.
"Ghosts do not go prowling around groceries stealing wormy figs. What
do you mean by this sinful masquerade business? My father never had no
ghost!"

"O, we have struck it now," said the bad boy as he pulled off his mask
and rolled up the sheet he had worn around him. "We are going to have
amateur theatricals, to raise money to have the church carpeted, and I
am going to boss the job."

"You don't say," answered the grocery man, as he thought how much he
could sell to the church people for a strawberry and ice cream festival,
and how little he could sell for amateur theatricals. "Who is going into
it and what are you going to play?"

"Pa and Ma, and me, and the minister, and three choir singers, and my
chum, and the minister's wife, and two deacons, and an old maid are
rehersing, but we have not decided what to play yet. They all want to
play a different play, and I am fixing it so they can all be satisfied.
The minister wants to play Hamlet, Pa wants to play Rip Van Winkle,
Ma wants to play Mary Anderson, the old maid wants to play a boarding
school play, and the choir singers want an opera, and the minister's
wife wants to play Lady Macbeth, and my chum and me want to play a
double song and dance, and I am going to give them all a show. We had a
rehersal last night, and I am the only one able to be around to-day. You
see they have all been studying different plays, and they all wanted to
talk at once. We let the minister sail in first. He had on a pair of his
wife's black stockings, and a mantle made of a linen buggy lap blanket
and he wore a mason's cheese knife such as these fellows with poke
bonnets and white feathers wear when they get an invitation to a funeral
or an excursion. Well, you never saw Hamlet murdered the way he did
it. His interpretation of the character was that Hamlet was a Dude that
talked through his nose, and while he was repeating Hamlet's soliloquy,
Pa, who had come in with an old hunting suit on, as Rip Van Winkle,
went to sleep, and he didn't wake up till Lady Macbeth came in, in the
sleep-walking scene. She couldn't find a knife, so I took a slice of
watermelon and sharpened it for her, and she made a mistake in the one
she was to stab, and she stabbed Hamlet in the neck with a slice of
watermelon, and the core of the melon fell on Pa's face, as he lay
asleep as Rip, and when L