questions
you do not understand, and saw more wood. Let the grown people run
things a while longer, and you boys prepare to take the burden a quarter
of a century hence," and the old man got up and put his arm around the
boy and felt of his head to see if he could find any soft spot.

"Well, I was only joshin' any way, Uncle Ike," said the boy, as he put
both arms around the old man, and felt in his uncle's pistol pocket to
discover something that was eatable. "But, Uncle Ike, I am serious now.
I have got in love with a girl, and she is mashed on another boy, and I
am having more trouble than McKinley. You know that quarter you gave me
yesterday? I saved 20 cents of it to treat her to ice-cream soda; and
when I went to find her, she was coming out of the drug store with the
other boy, and I found out they had been sitting on stools at the soda
fountain all the forenoon, drinking all the different kinds of soda,
until he had to hold her down for fear she would go up like a balloon,
from the soda bubbles that she had concealed about her person. I have
not decided whether to kill my rival, or go and enlist and go to
the Philippines and break her heart. What did you do under such
circumstances, Uncle, when you used to get in love?"

"I used to take castor oil," said Uncle Ike, as he looked at the
forlorn-looking boy, "but you don't need to. Just you take off those tan
shoes and put on black shoes, and change your luck. I never knew it to
fail, when a boy first put on tan shoes and a high collar. He is bound
to get in love before night. Take off those shoes, and you can go out
in the world and look everybody in the face and never get in love. It is
the same as being vaccinated," and the old man looked sober and serious,
and the boy went to work to change his shoes, with a bright hope for the
future lighting up his face.

CHAPTER IX.

"Go away from me! Don't you come any nearer or I will smite you!" said
Uncle Ike, as the redheaded boy came into the room with his red hair cut
short with the clippers, a green neglige shirt, with a red necktie, a
white collar, a tan belt with a nickel buckle, and short trousers with
golf socks of a plaid pattern that were so loud they would turn out a
fire department. "I am afraid of you. Who in the world got you to have
your red hair shingled so it looks like red sand-paper? And who is your
tailor? Have I got to go down to my grave with the thought that a nephew
of mine would appear