coal and
getting it flashed up into his face when he was blowing the coal; some of
his eye-winkers were singed off. Jim Leonard had a rag round his hand, and
he said a whole pack of shooting-crackers had gone off in it before he
could throw them away, and burned the skin off; the fellows dared him to
let them see it, but he would not; and then they mocked him. They all said
there had never been such a Fourth of July in the Boy's Town before; and
Frank and Jake let them brag as much as they wanted to, and when the
fellows got tired, and asked them what they had done at Pawpaw Bottom, and
they said, "Oh, nothing much; just helped Dave Black haul rails," they set
up a jeer that you could hear a mile.

Then Jake said, as if he just happened to think of it, "And fought
bumblebees."

And Frank put in, "And took a shower-bath in the thunder-storm."

And Jake said, "And eat mulberries."

And Frank put in again, "And built a raft."

And Jake said, "And Dave got pulled into the mill-dam."

And Frank wound up, "And Jake and I got swept overboard."

By that time the fellows began to feel pretty small, and they crowded
round and wanted to hear every word about it. Then Jake and Frank
tantalized them, and said of course it was no Fourth at all, it was only
just fun, till the fellows could not stand it any longer, and then Frank
jumped up from where he was sitting on his front steps, and holloed out,
"I'll show you how Dave looked when his pole pulled him in," and he acted
it all out about Dave's pole pulling him into the water.

Jake waited till he was done, and then he jumped up and said, "I'll show
you how Frank and me looked when we got swept overboard," and he acted it
out about the limb of the tree scraping them off the raft while they were
laughing at Dave and not noticing.

As soon as they got the boys to yelling, Jake and Frank both showed how
they fought the bumblebees, and how the dogs got stung, and ran round
trying to rub the bees off against the ground, and your legs, and
everything, till the boys fell down and rolled over, it made them laugh
so. Jake and Frank showed how they ran out into the rain from the barn,
and stood in it, and told how good and cool it felt; and they told about
sitting up in the mulberry-tree, and how twenty boys could not have made
the least hole in the berries. They told about the quails and the
squirrels; and they showed how Frank had to keep whipping up his pony,
and how Jake's horse