, you bet." All this time the boy was marking on a piece of
paper, and soon after he went out the grocery man noticed a crowd
outside, and on he found a sign hanging up which read:

WORMY FIGS

FOR PARTIES.

CHAPTER VI.

HIS PA AN ORANGEMAN--THE GROCERY MAN SHAMEFULLY ABUSED---HE
GETS HOT--BUTTER, OLEOMARGARINE AND AXLE GREASE--THE OLD MAN
WEARS ORANGE ON ST. PATRICK'S DAY--HE HAS TO RUN FOR HIS
LIFE--THE BAD BOY AT SUNDAY SCHOOL--INGERSOLL AND BEECHER
VOTED OUT--"MARY HAD A LITTLE LAM."

"Say, will you do me a favor," asked the bad boy of the grocery man, as
he sat down on the soap box and put his wet boots on the stove.

"Well, y-e-s," said the grocery man hesitatingly, with a feeling that
he was liable to be sold. "If you will help me to catch the villain who
hangs up those disreputable signs in front of my store, I will. What is
it?"

"I want you to lick this stamp and put it on this letter. It is to my
girl, and I want to fool her," and the boy handed over the letter and
stamp, and while the grocery man was licking it and putting it on, the
boy filled his pockets with dried peaches out of a box.

"There, that's a small job," said the grocery man, as he pressed the
stamp on the letter with his thumb and handed it back. "But how are you
going to fool her?"

"That's just business," said the boy, as he held the letter to his nose
and smelled of the stamp. "That will make her tired. You see, every time
she gets a letter from me she kisses the stamp, because she thinks
I licked it. When she kisses this stamp and gets the fumes of plug
tobacco, and stale beer, and limburg cheese, and mouldy potatoes, it
will knock her down, and then she will ask me what ailed the stamp, and
I will tell her I got you to lick it, and then it will make her sick,
and her parents will stop trading here. O, it will paralize her. Do you
know, you smell like a glue factory. Gosh I can smell you all over the
store, Don't you smell anything that smells spoiled?" The grocery man
thought he did smell something that was rancid, and he looked around the
stove and finally kicked the boy's boot off the stove and said, "It's
your boots burning. Gracious, open the door. It smells like a hot box
on a caboose. Whew! And there comes a couple of my best lady customers."
The ladies came in and held their handkerchiefs to their noses,
and while they were tradin