The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy: Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
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The Grocery Man And Peck's Bad Boy: Peck's Bad Boy and His Pa, No. 2 - 1883
Peck, George W. (George Wilbur)
American wit and humor; Boys -- Fiction; Practical jokes -- Fiction
STRAWBERRIES, TWO SHILLINGS A SMELL;
AND ONE SMELL IS ENOUGH.
CHAPTER XI.
GARDENING UNDER DIFFICULTIES--THE GROCERY MAN IS DECEIVED--
THE BAD BOY DON'T LIKE MOVING--GOES INTO THE COLORING
BUSINESS--THE OLD MAN THOROUGHLY DISGUISED--UNCLE TOM AND
TOPSY--THE OLD MAN ARRESTED--WHAT THE GROCERY MAN THINKS--
THE BAD BOY MORALIZES ON HIS FATE--RESOLVES TO BE GOOD.
“See here, you coon, you get out of here,” said the grocery man to the
bad boy, as he came in the store with his face black and shining, “I
don't want any colored boys around here. White boys break me up bad
enough.”
“O, philopene,” said the bad boy, as he put his hands on his knees and
laughed so the candy jars rattled on the shelves. “You didn't know me. I
am the same boy that comes in here and talks your arm off,” and the boy
opened the cheese box and cut off a piece of cheese so natural that the
grocery man had no difficulty in recognizing him.
“What in the name of the seven sleeping sisters have you got on your
hands and face,” said the grocery man, as he took the boy by the ear and
turned him around, “You would pass in a colored prayer meeting, and
no one would think you were galvanized. What you got up in such an
outlandish rig for?”
“Well, I'll tell you, if you will keep watch at the door. If you see
a bald-headed colored man coming along the street with a club, you
whistle, and I will fall down cellar. The bald-headed colored man will
be Pa. You see, we moved yesterday. Pa told me to get a vacation from
the livery stable, and we would have fun moving. But I don't want any
more fun. I know when I have got enough fun. Pa carried all the light
things, and when it came to lifting, he had a crick in the back. Gosh, I
never was so tired as I was last night, and I hope we have got settled,
only some of the goods haven't turned up yet. A drayman took one load
over on the west side, and delivered them to a house that seemed to be
expecting a load of household furniture. He thought it was all right, if
everybody that was moving got a load of goods. Well, after we got moved
Pa said we must make a garden, and we said we would go out and spade
up the ground and sow peas, and radishes, and beets. There was some
neighbors lived in the next house to our new one, that was all wimmen,
and Pa don't like to have them think he had to work, so he said it would
be a good joke to disguise ourselves as tramps, and the neighbors would
think we had hired some tramps to dig in the garden. I told Pa of a boss
scheme to fool them. I suggested that we take some of his shoe blacking
that is put on with a sponge, and black our faces, and the neighbors
would think we had hired an old colored man and his boy to work in the
garden. Pa said it was immense, and he told me to go and black up, and
if it worked he would black hisself. So I went and put this burnt cork
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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