near fainting away, and Ma said ever since they had been married when
anything ailed her, Pa has had pains just the same as she has, only he
grunted more, and thought he was going to die. Gosh, if I was a man I
wouldn't be sick every time one of the neighbors had a back ache, would
you?

"Well you can't tell. When you have been married twenty or thirty years
you will know a good deal more than you do now. You think you know it
all, now, and you are pretty intelligent for a boy that has been brought
up carelessly, but there are things that you will learn after a while
that will astonish you. But what ails your Pa's teeth? The hired girl
was over here to get some corn meal for gruel, and she said your Pa was
gumming it, since he lost his teeth."

"O, about the teeth. That was too bad. You see my chum has got a dog
that is old, and his teeth have all come out in front, and this morning
I borried Pa's teeth before he got up, to see if we couldn't fix them in
the dog's mouth, so he could eat better. Pa says it is an evidence of a
kind heart for a boy to be good to dumb animals, but it is a darn mean
dog that will go back on a friend. We tied the teeth in the dog's mouth
with a string that went around his upper jaw, and another around his
under jaw, and you'd a dide to see how funny he looked when he laffed.

"He looked just like Pa when he tried to smile so as to get me to come
up to him so he can lick me. The dog pawed his mouth a spell to get the
teeth out, and then we gave him a bone with some meat on, and he began
to gnaw the bone, and the teeth come off the plate, and he thought it
was pieces of the bone, and he swallowed the teeth. My chum noticed it
first, and he said we had got to get in our work pretty quick to save
the plates, and I think we were in luck to save them. I held the dog,
and my chum, who was better acquainted with him, untied the strings and
got the gold plates out, but there were only two teeth left, and the dog
was happy. He woggled his tail for more teeth, but we hadn't any more.
I am going to give him Ma's teeth some day. My chum says when a dog gets
an appetite for anything you have got to keep giving it to him or he
goes back on you. But I think my chum played dirt on me. We sold the
gold plates to a jewelry man, and my chum kept the money. I think,
as long as I furnished the goods, he ought to have given me something
besides the experience, don't you? After this I don't have no more
partners