beholt! Sonny had slipped down the
open chimbly right in amongst 'em--come out a-grinnin', with his face
all sooted over, an', says he, "Say, fellers," says he, "I run up the
lightnin'-rod, an' he's a-waitin' for me to come down." An' with that he
went an' gethered up his books, deliberate, an'fetched his hat, an'
picked up a nest o' little chimbly-swallows he had dislodged in comin'
down (all this here it happened thess las' June), an' he went out an'
harnessed up his goat-wagon, an' got in. An' thess ez he driv' out the
school-yard into the road the teacher come in, an' he see how things
was.

Of co'se sech conduct ez that is worrisome, but I don't see no, to say,
bad principle in it. Sonny ain't got a bad habit on earth, not a-one.
They'll ever' one o' the teachers tell you that. He ain't never been
knowed to lie, an' ez for improper language, why he wouldn't know how to
select it. An' ez to tattlin' at home about what goes on in school, why,
he never has did it. The only way we knowed about him comin' down the
school-house chimbly was wife went to fetch his dinner to him, an' she
found it out.

[Illustration: "He had been playin' out o' doors bare-feeted."]

She knowed he had went to that school in the mornin', an' when she
got there at twelve o'clock, why he wasn't there, an' of co'se she
questioned the teacher, an' he thess told her thet Sonny had been
present at the mornin' session, but thet he was now absent. An' the
rest of it she picked out o' the child'en.

Oh, no, sir; she don't take his dinner to him reg'lar--only some days
when she happens to have somethin' extry good, or maybe when she
'magines he didn't eat hearty at breakfast. The school-child'en they
always likes to see her come, because she gen'ally takes a extry lot o'
fried chicken thess for him to give away. He don't keer much for nothin'
but livers an' gizzards, so we have to kill a good many to get enough
for him; an' of co'se the fryin' o' the rest of it is mighty little
trouble.

Sonny is a bothersome child one way: he don't never want to take his
dinner to school with him. Of co'se thess after eatin' breakfas' he
don't feel hungry, an' when wife does coax him to take it, he'll seem to
git up a appetite walkin' to school, an' he'll eat it up 'fo' he gits
there.

Sonny's got a mighty noble disposition, though, take him all round.

Now, the day he slipped down that chimbly an' run away he wasn't a bit
flustered, an' he didn't play h