“Well, said the bad boy as he yawned as though he had been up all night, “I am innocent of sitting up with your cat, but I plead guilty to sitting up with Duffy. You see, I am bad, and it don't make any difference where I am, and Duffy thumped me once when we were playing marbles, and I said I would get even with him some time. His Ma washes for us, and when she told me that her boy was sick with fever, and had nobody to stay with him while she was away, I thought it would be a good way to get even with Duffy, when he was weak, and I went down there to his shanty and gave him his medicine, and read to him all day, and he cried 'cause he knew I ought to have mauled him, and that night I sat up with him while his Ma did the ironing, and Duffy was so glad that I went down every day and stayed there every night, and fired medicine down him, and let his Ma sleep, and Duffy has got mashed on me, and he says I will be an angel when I die. Last night makes five nights I have sat up with him, and he has got so he can eat beef tea and crackers. My girl went back on me 'cause she said I was sitting up with some other girl. She said that Duffy story was too thin, but Duffy's Ma was washing at my girl's house and she proved what I said, and I was all right again. I slept all the forenoon the 4th, and then stayed with Duffy till 4 o'clock, and got a furlough and took my girl to the Soldiers' Home. I had rather set up with Duffy, though.” “O, get out. You can't make me believe you had rather stay in a sick room and set up with a boy, than to take a girl to the 4th of July,” said the grocery man, as he took a brush and wiped the saw dust off some bottles of peppersauce that he was taking out of a box. “You didn't have any trouble with the girl, did you?” “No,--not with her,” said the boy, as he looked into the little round zinc mirror to see if his eyebrows were beginning to grow. “But her Pa is so unreasonable. I think a man ought to know better than to kick a boy right where he has had a pack of firecrackers explode in his pocket. You see, when I brought the girl back home, she was a wreck. Don't you ever take a girl to the 4th of July. Take the advice of a boy who has had experience. We hadn't more than got to the Soldier's Home grounds before some boys who were playing tag grabbed hold of my girl's crushed-strawberry polonaise and ripped it off. That made her mad, and she wanted me to take offense at it, and I tried to reason with the boys and they both jumped on me, and I see the only way to get out of it honorably, was to get out real spry, and I got out. Then we sat down under a tree, to eat lunch, and my girl swallowed a pickle the wrong way, and I pounded her on the back, the way Ma does when I choke, and she yelled, and a policeman grabbed me and shook me, and asked me what I was hurting that poor girl for, and told me if I did it again he would arrest me. Everything went wrong.” [Illustration: Fourth of July misadventures 178]