t on his hand for some time, and the ladies said what he needed was
rest. They said if that spot was allowed to go on it might develope into
a pimple, and the minister might die of blood poison, superinduced by
overwork, and they took up a collection, and he has gone. The night they
bid him good bye, the spot on his hand was the subject of much comment.
The wimmen sighed, and said it was lucky they noticed the spot on his
hand before it had sapped his young life away. Pa said Job had more than
four hundred boils worse than that, and he never took a vacation,
and then Ma dried Pa up. She told Pa he had never suffered from blood
poison, and Pa said he could raise cat boils for the market, and never
squeal. Ma see the only way to shut Pa up was to let him go home with
the choir singer. So she bounced him off with her, and he didn't get
home till most 'leven o'clock, but Ma she set up for him. Maybe what she
said to Pa made him go west after peppering your burglar. Well, I must
go home now, 'cause I run the family, since Pa lit out. Say, send some
of your most expensive canned fruit and things over to the house. Darn
the expense." And the bad boy took the lame dog under his arm and walked
out.

CHAPTER XXV.

THE BAD BOY GROWS THOUGHTFUL--WHY IS LETTUCE LIKE A GIRL?--
KING SOLOMON A FOOL--THINK OF ANY SANE MAN HAVING A THOUSAND
WIVES--HE WOULD HAVE TO HAVE TWO HOTELS DURING VACATION--300
BLONDES--600 BRUNETTES, ETC--A THOUSAND WIVES TAKING ICE
CREAM--I DON'T ENVY SOLOMON HIS THOUSAND.

"What you sitting there like a bump on a log for?" asked the grocery man
of the bad boy, as the youth had sat on a box for half an hour, with
his hands in his pockets, looking at a hole in the floor, until his eyes
were set like a dying horse. "What you thinking of, anyway? It seems to
me boys set around and think more than they used to when I was a boy,"
and the groceryman brushed the wilted lettuce and shook it, and tried
to make it stand up stiff and crisp, before he put it out doors; but the
contrary lettuce which had been picked the day before, looked so tired
that the boy noticed it.

"That lettuce reminds me of a girl. Yesterday I was in here when it was
new, like the girl going to the picnic, and it was as fresh and proud,
and starched up, and kitteny, and full of life, and as sassy as a girl
starting out for a picnic. To-day it has got back from the picnic,
and, like the girl, the starch is all taken