“O, don't mention it,” said the grocery man, with a shudder. “I wouldn't take Solomon's place, and be the natural protector of a thousand wives if anybody would give me the earth. Think of getting up in a cold winter morning and building a thousand fires. Think of two thousand pair of hands in a fellow's hair! Boy, you have shown me that Solomon needed a guardian over him. He didn't have sense.” “Yes,” says the boy, “and think of two thousand feet, each one as cold as a brick of chocolate ice cream. A man would want a back as big as the fence of a fair ground. But I don't want to harrow up your feelings. I must go and put some arnica on Pa. He has got home, and says he has been to a summer resort on a vacation, and he is all covered with blotches. He says it is mosquito bites, but Ma thinks he has been shot full of bird shot by some water melon farmer. Ma hasn't got any sympathy for Pa because he didn't take her along, but if she had been there she would have been filled with bird shot, too. But you musn't detain me. Between Pa and the baby I have got all I can attend to. The baby is teething, and Ma makes me put my fingers in the baby's mouth to help it cut teeth. That is a humiliating position for a boy as big as I am. Say, how many babies do you figure that Solomon had to buy rubber toothing rings for in all his glory?” And the boy went out leaving the grocery man reflecting on what a family Solomon must have had, and how he needed to be the wisest man to get along without a circus afternoon and evening. CHAPTER XXVI. FARM EXPERIENCES. THE BAD BOY WORKS ON A FARM FOR A DEACON-- HE KNOWS WHEN HE HAS GOT ENOUGH--HOW THE DEACON MADE HIM FLAX AROUND--AND HOW HE MADE IT WARM FOR THE DEACON. “Want to buy any cabbages?” said the bad boy to the grocery man, as he stopped at the door of the grocery, dressed in a blue wamus, his breeches tucked in his boots, and an old hat on his head, with a hole that let out his hair through the top. He had got out of a democrat wagon, and was holding the lines hitched to a horse about forty years old, that leaned against the hitching post to rest, “Only a shilling apiece.” “O, go 'way,” said the grocery man. “I only pay three cents apiece.” And then he looked at the boy and said “Hello, Hennery, is that you? I have missed you all the week, and now you come on to me sudden, disguised as a granger. What does this all mean?” “It means that I have been the victim of as vile a conspiracy as ever was known since Cæesar was stabbed, and Marc Antony orated over his prostrate corpse in the Roman forum, to an audience of supes and scene shifters,” and the boy dropped the lines on the sidewalk, said, “whoa, gol darn you,” to the horse that was asleep, wiped his boots on the grass in front of the store and came in, and seated himself on the old half bushel. “There, this seems like home again.”