me off when I try to talk with him about such things,
and tells me to study the parable of the Prodigal Son, and the deacons
tell me to go and soak my head. There is darn little encouragement for a
boy to try and figure out things. How would you like to have a thousand
red headed wives come into the store this minute and tell you they
wanted you to send carriages around to the house at 3 o'clock so they
could go for a drive? Or how would you like to have a hired girl come
rushing in and tell you to send up six hundred doctors, because six
hundred of your wives had been taken with cholera morbus? Or--"

"O, don't mention it," said the grocery man, with a shudder. "I wouldn't
take Solomon's place, and be the natural protector of a thousand wives
if anybody would give me the earth. Think of getting up in a cold winter
morning and building a thousand fires. Think of two thousand pair of
hands in a fellow's hair! Boy, you have shown me that Solomon needed a
guardian over him. He didn't have sense."

"Yes," says the boy, "and think of two thousand feet, each one as cold
as a brick of chocolate ice cream. A man would want a back as big as the
fence of a fair ground. But I don't want to harrow up your feelings. I
must go and put some arnica on Pa. He has got home, and says he has been
to a summer resort on a vacation, and he is all covered with blotches.
He says it is mosquito bites, but Ma thinks he has been shot full of
bird shot by some water melon farmer. Ma hasn't got any sympathy for Pa
because he didn't take her along, but if she had been there she would
have been filled with bird shot, too. But you musn't detain me. Between
Pa and the baby I have got all I can attend to. The baby is teething,
and Ma makes me put my fingers in the baby's mouth to help it cut teeth.
That is a humiliating position for a boy as big as I am. Say, how many
babies do you figure that Solomon had to buy rubber toothing rings for
in all his glory?"

And the boy went out leaving the grocery man reflecting on what a family
Solomon must have had, and how he needed to be the wisest man to get
along without a circus afternoon and evening.

CHAPTER XXVI.

FARM EXPERIENCES. THE BAD BOY WORKS ON A FARM FOR A DEACON--
HE KNOWS WHEN HE HAS GOT ENOUGH--HOW THE DEACON MADE HIM
FLAX AROUND--AND HOW HE MADE IT WARM FOR THE DEACON.

"Want to buy any cabbages?" said the bad boy to the grocery man, as
he stopped at the door of the groce