e Ezra took Pa in a corner
and told him the best thing he could do would be to see 'Almira' and
compromise with her, and that made Pa mad, and he was going to hit uncle
Ezra with a chair. Pa was perfectly wild, and if he had a gun I guess he
would have shot all of us. Ma took the baby up stairs and had the girl
put it to bed, and after Pa got mad enough Uncle Ezra told him it was
all a joke, and it was his own baby, that we had put in the basket, and
then he was madder than ever, and he told Uncle Ezra never to darken his
door again. I don't how know he made up with Ma for calling it a dutch
baby from the Polack settlement, but anyway, he wheels it around every
day, and Ma and Pa have got so they speak again."

"That was a mighty mean trick, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself.
Where do you expect to fetch up when you die?" said the grocery man.

"I told Uncle Ezra it was a mean trick," said the boy, "but he said that
wasn't a priming to some of the tricks Pa had played on him years ago.
He says Pa used to play tricks on everybody. I may be mean, but I never
played wicked jokes on blind people as Pa did when he was a boy. Uncle
Ezra says once there was a party of four blind vocalists, all girls,
gave an entertainment at the town where Pa lived, and they stayed at the
hotel where Pa tended bar. Another thing I never sold rum, either, as
Pa did. Well, before the blind vocalists went to bed Pa caught a lot of
frogs and put them in the beds where the girls were to sleep, and when
the poor blind girls got into bed the frogs hopped over them, and the
way they got out was a caution. It is bad enough to have frogs hopping
all over girls that can see, but for girls that are deprived of their
sight, and don't know what anything is, except by the feeling of it, it
looks to me like a pretty tough joke. I guess Pa is sorry now for what
he did, 'cause when Uncle Ezra told the frog story, I brought home a
frog and put it in Pa's bad. Pa has been afraid of paralysis for years,
and when his leg, or anything gets asleep, he thinks that is the end of
him. Before bedtime I turned the conversation onto paralysis, and
told about a man about Pa's age having it on the West side, and Pa
was nervous, and soon after he retired I guess the frog wanted to get
acquainted with Pa, 'cause he yelled six kinds of murder, and we went
into his room. You know how cold a frog is? Well, you'd a dide to see
Pa. He laid still, and said his end had come, an