The Worst Boy in Town

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Jack had noticed the dog when that animal first put in his appearance in search of a scrap of meat or bone, and had thereafter observed his motions with that peculiar interest which dogs seem always to inspire in boys. Then he happened to see a very dilapidated tea-kettle behind the tin-shop, and when dogs and tea-kettles become closely associated in the mind of a boy, even if the boy himself be of excellent birth and breeding, and quite tender-hearted beside, the juvenile traditions of many generations have generally the effect of causing the dog and the kettle to enter into an entangling alliance which the animal regards with accumulative aversion, and about which the tea-kettle, whose expressions

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s said it, and he replied also, by several facial contortions, which were as irritating as they were hideous; he stuck his hands into his pockets, and bravely tried an ingratiating smile or two upon suc

avel?—oh, oh! But I don't see why I'm the worst boy in town. I declare. If it isn't just the morning to go fishing—warm, cloudy, worms easy to get. I wish't was Saturday, so there wouldn't be any school, and I wish school teachers knew what fun it is to go fishing; then they'd be easier on a fellow who played hookey, and they'd ask him where he caught them, and how many,

; then he approached a wood-pile where a boy of about his own age was at work; bef

along,

ily at the new fishing tackle, "th

" said Jack, "I'll explain th

t Jack. Besides, Matt was vigorously attacking the family wood-pile, his honest heart alive with a sense of the need there was for him to do all in his power to relieve his overworked father, and alive, too, with the conviction that he woul

rew his eyes from the new fishing tackle, "and he has already

n of Jack's was newer even than his tackle, for he had formed it while he talked). "She's been sick, you know, and I h

don't catch any?

endid fish-hole as the mill-dam. I think it's awful that a whole family should go hungry just because it hasn't got any fath

e appears as an angel of light, so Matt speedily agreed to

er, who happened to glance through a window wondered why Jack's father could accuse that boy of laziness. Then both boys carried the wood to the kitchen door, unearthed some worms between sundry

hill upon which the village

iver hasn't over

Matt, "I knew

it's only half a mile across the lowlands to the river, and there are fences all the way.

npleasant questions, as they certainly would have done had his frequent expeditions with them begun at the house of h

le of rail fencing is a trip which consumes patience with great rapidity. Had the adventurers been other than boys, they would have turned back at once, but when a boy gets a project clearly into his head he never gives any one an excuse to say that the mule is the most obstinate of all livin

ed, "look here!" and he

llowing Jack's example, he ma

lipped to one side, the other slipping in an opposite direction, and the young man came down astride the unyielding oak with a thud whose sound was something inaudible when considered in the light of the anguish which it caused. No new word presented itself for use just then; Jack continued to remark "Ow," with a variety of long-drawn inflections, while Matt precip

this in our st

em across their shoulders. Their progress thereafter was considerably more rapid, but a sudden shriek and a splash of voluminous sound and displac

got into the box and drowned them so they can't wiggle when they're on the hooks. Say, its warm; your clothes will dry on yo

deep with a field of corn stubble at the bottom of it. Matt's clothes seemed rather clammy as he again resumed his normal position inside them, but Jack described so delightfully the ass

e's the splendidest

le yet twenty rail lengths

f the little brooks; we'll just make a raft o

as simply two logs,—mud sills—connected by thr

ble us when we reach th

wood road that goes through the timber. It's half a mile the shorter way, besides

to knock down fe

e flood has gone down, and put them up again. And we'll play the raft is a ram—a regular Merrimac, you know,—a

at each side, and at a signal from Jack it was driven against the fence, through which i

of extemporizing a stirring address to his command, began to quote from "Rolla's Address to the Peruvians," which was considered the gem of that much use

tern, the result was that the raft came to a sudden standstill, and the crew were thrown flat

t in X shape, their lowest ends driven into the grounds

nose, "what did a man need to have a staked and ridered fence just here for?

and the raft went on swimmingly until it seemed to sl

e," said Jack. "Well, 'starn all,' as o

raft, and the sudden breaking of Jack's rod

pths of his mind. "I'll tell you what let's do, we'll take off our clothes, make them into a

ot get any fish for poor M

en o'clock; we've used up an awful lot of time, and we've got to get ashore yet, and be back home by the time school is out, else the folks'll know we've been playing hookey. I wonder if we cou

re they made wry faces while discussing the probable value to the widow Battay of the few pale pink cherries they found. Dinner was reached and, eaten, somehow with less appetites than was usual after a morning spent in school, and then the boys, each by him