Ever since I bit a circus lion, believing him to be another dog like myself, only larger, I have been what Doc Watson calls a Public Character in our town.
Freckles, my boy, was a kind of a public character, too. He went around bragging about my noble blood and bravery, and all the other boys and dogs in town sort of looked up to him and thought how lucky he was to belong to a dog like me. And he deserved whatever glory he got of it, Freckles did. For, if I do say it myself, there's not a dog in town got a better boy than my boy Freckles, take him all in all. I'll back him against any dog's boy that is anywhere near his size, for fighting, swimming, climbing, foot-racing, or throwing stones farthest and straightest. Or I'll back him against any stray boy, either.
Well, some dogs may be born Public Characters, and like it. And some may be brought up to like it. I've seen dogs in those travelling Uncle Tom's Cabin shows that were so stuck on themselves they wouldn't hardly notice us town dogs. But with me, becoming a Public Character happened all in a flash, and it was sort of hard for me to get used to it. One day I was just a private kind of a dog, as you might say, eating my meals at the Watson's back door, and pretending to hunt rats when requested, and not scratching off too many fleas in Doc Watson's drug store, and standing out from underfoot when told, and other unremarkable things like that. And the next day I had bit that lion and was a Public Character, and fame came so sudden I scarcely knew how to act.
Even drummers from big places like St. Louis and Chicago would come into the drug store and look at my teeth and toe nails, as if they must be different from other dogs' teeth and toe nails. And people would come tooting up to the store in their little cars, and get out and look me over and say:
“Well, Doc, what'll you take for him?” and Doc would wink, and say:
“He's Harold's dog. You ask Harold.”
Which Harold is Freckles's other name. But any boy that calls him Harold outside of the schoolhouse has got a fight on his hands, if that boy is anywhere near Freckles's size. Harry goes, or Hal goes, but Harold is a fighting word with Freckles. Except, of course, with grown people. I heard him say one day to Tom Mulligan, his parents thought Harold was a name, or he guessed they wouldn't have given it to him; but it wasn't a name, it was a handicap.
Freckles would always say, “Spot ain't for sale.” And even Heinie Hassenyager, the butcher, got stuck on me after I got to be a Public Character. Heinie would come two blocks up Main Street with lumps of Hamburg steak, which is the kind someone has already chewed for you, and give them to me. Steak, mind you, not old gristly scraps. And before I became a Public Character Heinie even grudged me the bones I would drag out of the box under his counter when he wasn't looking.
My daily hope was that I could live up to it all. I had always tried, before I happened to bite that lion, to be a friendly kind of a dog toward boys and humans and dogs, all three. I'd always been expected to do a certain amount of tail-wagging and be friendly. But as soon as I got to be a Public Character, I saw right away I wasn't expected to be too friendly any more. So, every now and then, I'd growl a little, for no reason at all. A dog that has bit a lion is naturally expected to have fierce thoughts inside of him; I could see that. And you have got to act the way humans expect you to act, if you want to slide along through the world without too much trouble.
So when Heinie would bring me the ready-chewed steak I'd growl at him a little bit. And then I'd bolt and gobble the steak like I didn't think so derned much of it, after all, and was doing Heinie a big personal favour to eat it. And now and then I'd pretend I wasn't going to eat a piece of it unless it was chewed finer for me, and growl at him about that.
That way of acting made a big hit with Heinie, too. I could see that he was honoured and flattered because I didn't go any further than just a growl. It gave him a chance to say he knew how to manage animals. And the more I growled, the more steak he brought. Everybody in town fed me. I pretty near ate myself to death for a while there, besides all the meat I buried back of Doc Watson's store to dig up later.
But my natural disposition is to be friendly. I would rather be loved than feared, which is what Bill Patterson, the village drunkard, used to say. When they put him into the calaboose every Saturday afternoon he used to look out between the bars on the back window and talk to the boys and dogs that had gathered round and say that he thanked them one and all for coming to an outcast's dungeon as a testimonial of affection, and he would rather be loved than feared. And my natural feelings are the same. I had to growl and keep dignified and go on being a Public Character, but often I would say to myself that it was losing me all my real friends, too.
The worst of it was that people, after a week or so, began to expect me to pull something else remarkable. Freckles, he got up a circus, and charged pins and marbles, and cents when he found any one that had any, to get into it, and I was the principal part of that circus. I was in a cage, and the sign over me read:
To feed the lion-eater, one cent or two white chiney marbles extry but bring your own meat.
Pat him once on the head twinty pins, kids under five not allowed to.
For shaking hands with Spot the lion-eater, girls not allowed, gents three white chinies, or one aggie marble.
Lead him two blocks down the street and back, one cent before starting, no marbles or pins taken for leading him.
For sicking him on to cats three cents or one red cornelian marble if you furnish the cat. Five cents to use Watson's cat. Watson's biggest Tom-cat six cents must be paid before sicking. Small kids and girls not allowed to sick him on cats.
Well, we didn't take in any cat-sicking money. And it was just as well. You never can tell what a cat will do. But Freckles put it in because it sounded sort of fierce. I didn't care for being caged and circused that way myself. And it was right at that circus that considerable trouble started.
Seeing me in a cage like that, all famoused-up, with more meat poked through the slats than two dogs could eat, made Mutt Mulligan and some of my old friends jealous.
Mutt, he nosed up by the cage and sniffed. I nosed a piece of meat out of the cage to him. Mutt grabbed it and gobbled it down, but he didn't thank me any. Mutt, he says:
“There's a new dog down town that says he blew in from Chicago. He says he used to be a Blind Man's Dog on a street corner there. He's a pretty wise dog, and he's a right ornery-looking dog, too. He's peeled considerably where he has been bit in fights.”
“Well, Mutt,” says I, “as far as that goes I'm peeled considerable myself where I've been bit in fights.”
“I know you are, Spot,” says Mutt. “You don't need to tell me that. I've peeled you some myself from time to time.”
“Yes,” I says, “you did peel me some, Mutt. And I've peeled you some, too. More'n that, I notice that right leg of yours is a little stiff yet where I got to it about three weeks ago.”
“Well, then, Spot,” says Mutt, “maybe you want to come down here and see what you can do to my other three legs. I never saw the day I wouldn't give you a free bite at one leg and still be able to lick you on the other three.”
“You wouldn't talk that way if I was out of this cage,” I says, getting riled.
“What did you ever let yourself be put into that fool cage for?” Mutt says. “You didn't have to. You got such a swell head on you the last week or so that you gotto be licked. You can fool boys and humans all you want to about that accidental old lion, but us dogs got your number, all right. What that Blind Man's Dog from Chicago would do to you would be a plenty!”
“Well, then,” I says, “I'll be out of this cage along about supper time. Suppose you bring that Blind Man's Dog around here. And if he ain't got a spiked collar on to him, I'll fight him. I won't fight a spike-collared dog to please anybody.”
And I wouldn't, neither, without I had one on myself, If you can't get a dog by the throat or the back of his neck, what's the use of fighting him? You might just as well try to eat a blacksmith shop as fight one of those spike-collared dogs.
“Hey, there!” Freckles yelled at Tom Mulligan, who is Mutt Mulligan's boy. “You get your fool dog away from the lion-eaters cage!”
Tom, he histed Mutt away. But he says to Freckles, being jealous himself, “Don't be scared, Freck, I won't let my dog hurt yours any. Spot, he's safe. He's in a cage where Mutt can't get to him.”
Freckles got riled. He says, “1 ain't in any cage, Tom.”
Tom, he didn't want to fight very bad. But all the other boys and dogs was looking on. And he'd sort of started it. He didn't figure that he could shut up that easy. And there was some girls there, too.
“If I was to make a pass at you,” says Tom, “you'd wish you was in a cage.”
Freckles, he didn't want to fight so bad, either. But he was running this circus, and he didn't feel he could afford to pass by what Tom said too easy. So he says:
“Maybe you think you're big enough to put me into a cage.”
“If I was to make a pass at you,” says Tom, “there wouldn't be enough left of you to put in a cage.”
“Well, then,” says Freckles, “why don't you make a pass at me?”
“Maybe you figure I don't dast to,” says Tom.
“I didn't say you didn't dast to,” says Freckles; “any one that says I said you didn't dast to is a link, link, liar, and so's his Aunt Mariar.”
Tom, he says, “I ain't got any Aunt Mariar. And you're another and dastn't back it.”
Then some of the other kids put chips on to their shoulders. And each dared the other to knock his chip off. And the other kids pushed and jostled them into each other till both chips fell off, and they went at it then. Once they got started they got really mad and each did all he knew how.
And right in the midst of it Mutt run in and bit Freckles on the calf of his leg. Any dog will fight for his boy when his boy is getting the worst of it. But when Mutt did that I give a bulge against the wooden slats on the cage and two of them came off, and I was on top of Mutt. The circus was in the barn, and the hens began to scream and the horses began to stomp, and all the boys yelled, “Sick 'im!” and “Go to it!” and danced around and hollered, and the little girls yelled, and all the other dogs began to bark, and it was a right lively and enjoyable time. But Mrs. Watson, Freckles's mother, and the hired girl ran out from the house and broke the fight up.
Grown women are like that. They don't want to fight themselves, and they don't seem to want any one else to have any fun. You gotto be a hypocrite around a grown woman to get along with her at all. And then she'll feed you and make a lot of fuss over you. But the minute you start anything with real enjoyment in it she's surprised to see you acting that way. Nobody was licked satisfactory in that fight, or licked any one else satisfactory.
Well, that night after supper, along comes that Blind Man's Dog. Never did I see a Blind Man's Dog that was as tight-skinned. I ain't a dog that brags, myself, and I don't say I would have licked that heavy a dog right easy, even if he had been a loose-skinned dog. What I do say is that I had been used to fighting looseskinned dogs that you can get some sort of a reasonable hold on to while you are working around for position. And running into a tight-skinned dog that way, all of a sudden and all unprepared for it, would make anybody nervous. How are you going to get a purchase on a tight-skinned dog when you've been fighting looseskinned dogs for so long that your teeth and jaws just naturally set themselves for a loose-skinned dog without thinking of it?
Lots of dogs wouldn't have fought him at all when they realized how they had been fooled about him, and how tight-skinned he was. But I was a Public Character now, and I had to fight him. More than that, I ain't ready to say yet that that dog actually licked me. Freckles he hit him in the ribs with a lump of soft coal, and he got off of me and run away before I got my second wind. There's no telling what I would have done to that Blind Man's Dog, tight-skinned as he was, if he hadn't run away before I got my second wind.
Well, there's some mighty peculiar dogs in this world, let alone boys and humans. The word got around town, in spite of his running away like that before I got my second wind, that that Blind Man's Dog, so called, had actually licked me! Many pretended to believe it. Every time Freckles and me went down the street someone would say:
“Well, the dog that licked the lion got licked himself, did he?”
And if it was a lady said it, Freckles would spit on the sidewalk through the place where his front teeth are out and pass on politely as if he hadn't heard, and say nothing. And if it was a man that said it Freckles would thumb his nose at him. And if it was a girl that said it he would rub a handful of sand into her hair. And if it was a boy anywhere near his size, there would be a fight. If it was too big a boy, Freckles would sling railroad iron at him.
For a week or so it looked like Freckles and I were fighting all the time. Three or four times a day, and every day. Oft the way to school, and all through recess-times, and after school, and every time we went on to the street. I got so chewed and he got so busted up that we didn't hardly enjoy life.
No matter how much you may like to fight, some of the time you would like to pick the fights yourself and not have other people picking them off of you. Kids begun to fight Freckles that wouldn't have dast to stand up to him a month before. I was still a Public Character, but I was getting to be the kind you josh about instead of the kind you are proud to feed. I didn't care so awful much for myself, but I hated it for Freckles. For when they got us pretty well hacked, all the boys began to call him Harold again.
And after they had called him Harold for a week he must have begun to think of himself as Harold. For one Saturday afternoon when there wasn't any school, instead of going swimming with the other kids or playing baseball, or anything, he went and played with girls.
He must have been pretty well down-hearted and felt himself pretty much of an outcast, or he wouldn't have done that. I am an honest dog, and the truth must be told, the disgrace along with everything else, and the truth is that he played with girls of his own accord that day—not because he was sent to their house on an errand, not because it was a game got up with boys and girls together, not because it was cousins and he couldn't dodgje them, but because he was an outcast. Any boy will play with girls when all the boys and girls are playing together, and some girls are nearly as good as boys; but no boy is going off alone to look up a bunch of girls and play with them without being coaxed unless he has had considerable of a down-fall.
Right next to the side of our yard was the Wilkinses. They had a bigger house and a bigger yard than ours. Freckles was sitting on the top of the fence looking into their orchard when the three Wilkins girls came out to play. There was only two boys in the Wilkins family, and they was twins; but they were only year-old babies and didn't amount to anything. The two oldest Wilkins girls, the taffy-coloured-haired one and the squint-eyed one, each had one of the twins, taking care of it. And the other Wilkins girl, the pretty one, she had one of those big dolls made as big as a baby.
They were rolling those babies and the doll around the grass in a wheelbarrow, and the wheel came off, and that's how Freckles happened to go over.
“Up in the attic,” says the taffy-coloured-haired one, when he had fixed up the wheelbarrow, “there's a little old express wagon with one wheel off that would be better'n this wheelbarrow. Maybe you could fix that wheel on, too, Harold.”
Freckles, he fell for it. After he got the wagon fixed, they got to playing charades and fool girl games like that. The hired girl was off for the afternoon, and pretty soon Mrs. Wilkins hollered up the stairs that she was going to be gone for an hour, and to take good care of the twins, and then we were alone in the place.
Well, it wasn't much fun for me. They played and they played, and I stuck to Freckles—which his name was called nothing but Harold all that afternoon, and for the first time I said to myself “Harold” seemed to fit. I stuck to him because a dog should stick to his boy, and a boy should stick to his dog, no matter what the disgrace. But after while I got pretty tired and lay down on a rug, and a new kind of flea struck me. After I had chased him down and cracked him with my teeth I went to sleep.
I must have slept pretty sound and pretty long. All of a sudden I waked up with a start, and almost choking, for the place was smoky. I barked and no one answered.
I ran out on to the landing, and the whole house was full of smoke. The house was on fire, and it looked like I was alone in it. I went down the back stairway, which didn't seem so full of smoke, but the door that let out on to the first-floor landing was locked, and I had to go back up again.
By the time I got back up, the front stairway was a great deal fuller of smoke, and I could see glints of flame winking through it way down below. But it was my only way out of that place. On the top step I stumbled over a gray wool bunch of something or other, and I picked it up in my mouth. Thinks I, “That is Freckles's gray sweater, that he is so stuck on. I might as well take it down to him.”
It wasn't so hard for a lively dog to get out of a place like that, I thought. But I got kind of confused and excited, too. And it struck me all of a sudden, by the time I was down to the second floor, that that sweater weighed an awful lot.
1 dropped it on the second floor, and ran into one of the front bedrooms and looked out.
By jings! the whole town was in the front yard and in the street.
And in the midst of the crowd was Mrs. Wilkins, carrying on like mad.
“My baby!” she yelled. “Save my baby. Let me loose! I'm going after my baby!”
I stood up on my hind legs, with my head just out of that bedroom window, and the flame and smoke licking up all around me, and barked.
“My doggie! My doggie!” yells Freckles, who was in the crowd, “I must save my doggie!” And he made a run for the house, but someone grabbed him and slung him back.
And Mrs. Wilkins made a run, but they held her, too. The front of the house was one sheet of flame. Old Pop Wilkins, Mrs. Wilkins's husband, was jumping up and down in front of Mrs. Wilkins yelling, here was her baby. He had a real baby in one arm and that big doll in the other, and was so excited he thought he had both babies. Later I heard what had happened. The kids had thought they were getting out with both twins but one of them had saved the doll and left a twin behind. The squint-eyed girl and the taffy-coloured-haired girl and the pretty girl was howling as loud as their mother. And every now and then some man would make a rush for the front door, but the fire would drive him back. And everyone was yelling advice to everyone else, except one man who was calling on the whole town to get him an axe. The volunteer fire engine was there, but there wasn't any water to squirt through it, and it had been backed up too near the house and had caught fire and was burning up.
Well, I thinks that baby will likely turn up in the crowd somewhere, after all, and I'd better get out of there myself while the getting was good. I ran out of the bedroom, and run into that bunched-up gray bundle again.
I ain't saying that I knew it was the missing twin in a gray shawl when I picked it up the second time. And I ain't saying that I didn't know it. But the fact is that I did pick it up. I don't make any brag that I would have risked my life to save Freckles's sweater. It may be I was so rattled I just picked it up because I had had it in my mouth before and didn't quite know what I was doing.
But the record is something you can't go behind, and the record is that I got out the back way and into the back yard with that bundle swinging from my mouth, and walked round into the front yard and laid that bundle down—and it was the twin!
1 don't make any claim that I knew it was the twin till I got into the front yard, mind you. But you can't prove I didn't know it was.
And nobody tried to prove it. The gray bundle let out a squall.
“My baby!” yells Mrs. Wilkins. And she kissed me! I rubbed it off with my paw. And then the taffy-coloured-haired one kissed me. And the first thing I knew the pretty one kissed me. But when I saw the squint-eyed one coming I got behind Freckles and barked.
“Three cheers for Spot!” yelled the whole town. And they give them.
And then I saw what the lay of the land was, so 1 wagged my tail and barked.
It called for that hero stuff, and I throwed my head up and looked noble—and pulled it.
An hour before Freckles and me had been outcasts. And now we was Public Characters again. We walked down Main Street, and we owned it. And we hadn't any more than got to Doc Watson's drug store than in rushed Heinie Hassenyager with a lump of Hamburg steak, and with tears in his eyes.
“It's got chicken livers mixed in it, too!” says Heinie. I ate it. But while I ate it, I growled at him.
Never did I suppose that I would be a bloodhound in an “Uncle Tom's Cabin” show. But I have been one, and my constant wish is that it has not made me too proud and haughty. For proud and haughty dogs, sooner or later, all have their downfalls. The dog that was the rightful bloodhound in that show was the proudest and haughtiest dog I ever met, and he had his downfall.
Other proud and haughty dogs I have seen, in my time; and some of them I have licked, and some of them have licked me. For instance, there was the one that used to be a blind man's dog on a street corner in Chicago. He was a tough, loud-barking, red-eyed dog, full of suspiciousness and fleas; and his disposition was so bad that it was even said that if one of his fleas bit an ordinary dog, that ordinary dog would swell up where he was bit as if a hornet had stung him. He was proud of those fleas and proud of being that ornery; but he had his downfall.
Another proud and haughty dog I knew belonged to the dog and pony part of a circus that came to our town once. He sat in a little cart in the street parade, with a clown's hat and jacket on, and drove a Shetland pony. You couldn't get him into a fight; he would just grin and say he was worth too much money to risk himself in a fight, especially as the money he was worth did not belong to him anyhow, but to the circus that owned him. He said it wouldn't be honest to risk other people's money just because he wanted to fight; but I have never believed that he really wanted to fight. He grinned mostly all the time, a conceited kind of grin, and he would up-end himself and stand on his head for you to admire him, and then flop over and bark and look proud of his own tricks and proud of the money he was worth. But he had his downfall right in the midst of his greatest pride, for a brindle Tom-cat with one eye went after him right in the middle of that street parade, and he left that cart very quickly, and it nearly broke up the parade.
But the proudest and haughtiest of all was the bloodhound that owned that Uncle Tom show—leastways, he acted as if he owned it. It was a show that showed in a tent, like a regular circus, and it stayed in our town three days. It had a street parade, too; and this bloodhound was led along at the head of the street parade with a big heavy muzzle on, and he was loaded down with chains and shackles so he could hardly walk. Besides the fellow that led him, there were two more men that followed along behind him and held on to chains that were fastened to his collar. In front of him marched the Uncle Tom of that show; and every now and then the bloodhound would struggle to get at Uncle Tom and be pulled back. He was a very dangerous-looking dog, and you thought to yourself what a lot of damage he would probably do if he was ever to bite those chains to pieces and eat up those three men that held him and chew Uncle Tom and then run loose into the world. Every step he took he would toss his head and jangle those chains and growl.
After the parade was over, a lot of us dogs and boys went down to the lot where the show was to be held. We were hanging around the tent where the actors were eating, and that bloodhound dog was there without chains like any other dog, and us dogs got to talking with him.
“You country-town dogs,” he says to Mutt Mulligan, who is a friend of mine and some considerable dog himself, “don't want to come fussin' around too close to my cook tent or my show! Us troupers ain't got any too much use for you hick dogs, anyhow.”
“Oh, it's your show, is it?” says Mutt.
“Whose show did you think it was?” says that bloodhound dog, very haughty.
“1 thought from all those chains and things, maybe the show owned you, instead of you owning the show,” says Mutt.
“You saw who led that street parade, didn't you?” says the bloodhound dog. “Well, that ought to tell you who the chief actor of this show is. This here show is built up around me. If anything was to happen to me, there couldn't be any show.”
Mutt, he gave me a signal with his tail to edge in a little closer, and I sidled up to where I could grab a front leg unexpected to him, if he made a pass at Mutt. And then Mutt says, sneering so his teeth stuck out and his nose wrinkled:
“Something's goin' to happen to you, if you ain't more polite and peaceable in your talk.”
“What's goin' to happen to me?” says that bloodhound dog.
“Don't you let them bristles rise around your neck,” says Mutt, “or you'll find out what's goin' to happen to you.”
“Whose bristles are they?” says that bloodhound dog.
“It don't make any difference whose bristles they are,” says Mutt. “No dog can stick his bristles up into my face like that and get away with it. When I see bristles stand up, I take it personal.”
But just then Old Uncle Zeb White, who is coloured, come amoseyin' along, and that Tom-show dog barked out:
“Somebody hold me! Quick! Somebody muzzle me! Somebody better put my chains on to me again! Somebody better tell that coloured man to clear out of here! I've been trained to chase coloured men! What do they mean by letting that coloured man get near my show tent?”
Old Uncle Zeb, he is the quietest and most peaceable person anywhere, amongst dogs, boys, or humans, and the janitor of the Baptist church. He is the only coloured man in our town, and is naturally looked up to and respected with a good deal of admiration and curiosity on that account, and also because he is two hundred years old. He used to be the bodyservant of General George Washington, he says, until General Washington set him free. And then along comes Abraham Lincoln after a while and sets him free again, he says. And being set free by two prominent men like that, Uncle Zeb figures he is freer than anybody else, and I have heard him tell, time and again, how he can't speak kindly enough of them two white gentlemen.
“Don't anybody sick me on to that coloured man,” says this bloodhound dog. “If I was to be sicked on to that coloured man, this whole town couldn't pull me off again! I been trained to it, I tell you!”
Which it was easy enough to see he really didn't want to start anything; it was just his pride and haughtiness working in him. Just then Freckles Watson, who is my boy that I own, and Tom Mulligan, who is Mutt Mulligan's boy, both says: “Sick 'im!” Not that they understood what us dogs was talking about, but they saw me and Mutt sidling around that Tom-show dog, and it looked to them like a fight could be commenced. But the Tom-show dog, when he heard that “Sick 'im!” jumped and caught Uncle Zeb by a leg of his trousers. Then Uncle Zeb's own dog, which his name is Burning Deck after a piece Uncle Zeb heard recited one time, comes a-bulging and a-bouncing through the crowd and grabs that Tom-show dog by the neck.
They rolled over and over, and into the eating tent, and under the table. The actors jumped up, and the table got tipped over, and the whole meal and the tin dishes they was eating off of and all the actors and the benches and the dogs was wallowing and banging and kicking and barking and shouting on the ground in a mess, and all of us other dogs run in to help Burning Deck lick that bloodhound, and all the boys followed their dogs in to see a square deal, and then that tent come down on top of everything, and believe me it was some enjoyable time. And I found quite a sizeable piece of meat under there in the mix-up, and I thinks to myself I better eat that while I can get it, so I crawled out with it. Outside is sitting Uncle Zeb, watching that fallen-down tent heaving and twisting and squirming, and I heard him say to himself:
“White folks is allers gittin' up some kin' of entuh-tainment fo' us cullud people to look at! Us cullud people suah does git treated fine in dese heah Nothe'n towns!”
Pretty soon everybody comes crawling out from under that tent, and they straightens her up, and the boss of the show begins to talk like Uncle Zeb has done the whole thing, and Uncle Zeb just sits on the grass and smiles and scratches his head. And finally the boss of the show says to Uncle Zeb could he hire Burning Deck for the bloodhound's part? Because Burning Deck has just about chewed that proud and haughty dog to pieces, and they've got to have a bloodhound!
“No, suh,” says Uncle Zeb. “No, suh! I thank yo' kindly fo' yo' offer, suh, but Burnin' Deck, he ain't gwine inter no show whah he likely ter be sicked on ter no cullud pusson. Burnin' Deck, he allers been a good Republican, bringed up that-a-way, des de same as me, an' we ain't gwine ter take no paht in any gwines-on agin' de cullud nation.”
“But see here,” says the boss. “In this show the coloured people get all the best of it. In this show the coloured people go to Heaven!”
Uncle Zeb says he had heard a good deal about that Uncle Tom show in his life, first and last, and because he had heard so much, he went to see it one time. And he says if getting chased by bloodhounds and whipped by whips is giving them the best of it, he hopes he never obtains admission to any show where they get the worst of it. The boss, he says that show is the show that helped make the coloured people free, and Uncle Zeb ought to be proud of Burning Deck acting in it. But Uncle Zeb says he ain't to be fooled; it was General Washington set 'em free first, and Abraham Lincoln set 'em free the second time, and now President Wilson is licking them Germans and setting them free again. And as for him, he says, he will stick to his own white folks that he knows and janitors for and whose clothes fit him, and Burning Deck will do the same. And as far as them Tom-show coloured folks' going to heaven is concerned, he reckons he don't want to be chased there by no bloodhounds; and it ain't likely that a man that has janitored for a Baptist church as faithful as he has would go anywhere else, anyhow. So he takes Burning Deck and goes along home.
“I've got to have a dog,” says the boss, watching them get the tent fixed up, and rubbing his head.
“Would Spot do?” says Freckles, which is my boy, Spot being me.
Well, I never expected to be an actor, as I said before. But they struck a bargain, which Freckles was to get free admission to that show, and I was to be painted and dyed up some and be a bloodhound. Which the boss said the regular bloodhound which Burning Deck had eat so much of wasn't really a bloodhound, anyhow, but only a big mongrel with bloodhound notions in his head.
Well, maybe you've seen that show. Which all the bloodhound has to do is to run across the stage chasing that Uncle Tom, and Freckles was to run across with me, so there wasn't much chance to go wrong.
And nothing would have gone wrong if it hadn't been for Burning Deck. Uncle Zeb White must have got over his grouch against that show, for there he was sitting in the front row with a new red handkerchief around his throat and his plug hat on his knees, and Burning Deck was there with him. I never had anything but liking for Uncle Zeb, for he knows where to scratch dogs. But Burning Deck and me have never been close friends, on account of him being jealous when Uncle Zeb scratches you too long. He even is jealous when Uncle Zeb scratches a pig, which all the pigs in town that can get loose have a habit of coming to Uncle Zeb's cottage to be scratched, and they say around town that some of those pigs never find their way home again. Squeals have been heard coming from Uncle Zeb's kitchen, but the rest of the pigs never seem to learn.
But no self-respecting dog would be jealous if his boss scratched a pig. For after all, what is a pig? It is just a pig, and that is all you can say for it. A pig is not a person; a pig is something to eat. But Burning Deck is a peculiar dog, and he gets ideas into his head. And so, right in the midst of the show, when I chased that coloured man across the stage, Burning Deck all of a sudden jumped up on to the platform and grabbed me. I would have licked him then and there, but what was left of the show's bloodhound come crawling out on to the stage dragging two of his legs, and Burning Deck turned from me to him, and then all the actors run on to the stage to save what was left of the bloodhound, and Si Emery, the city marshal, threw open his coat so you could see his big star and climbed on to the stage and arrested everybody, and somebody dropped the curtain down right into the midst of it.
And the way it happened, on the outside of the curtain was left Freckles and me and the Little Eva of that show, which she is beautiful, with long yellow hair and pink cheeks and white clothes like an angel. And before Freckles could stop her, she took hold of him by the hand and says to the audience won't they please be kind to the poor travelling troupers and not let them be under arrest, and let the show go on? And she cried considerable, and all through her crying you could hear Si Emery behind the curtain arresting people; and after while some of the women in the audience got to crying, too, and the city fathers was all in the audience, and they went up on to the stage and told Si, for the sake of Little Eva, to release everyone he had arrested, and after that the show went on.
Well, after the show was out, quite a lot of the dogs and boys that was friends of mine and of Freckles was waiting for us. Being in a show like that made us heroes. But some of them were considerably jealous of us, too, and there would have been some fights, but Freckles says kind of dignified that he does not care to fight until his show is out of town, but after that he will take on any and all who dare—that is, he says, if he doesn't decide to go with that show, which the show is crazy to have him do. And me and him and Stevie Stevenson, which is his particular chum, goes off and sets down on the schoolhouse steps, and Stevie tells him what a good actor he was, running across the stage with me after that Uncle Tom. But Freckles, he is sad and solemn, and he only fetches a sigh.
“What's eatin' you, Freckles?” Stevie asks him. Freckles, he sighs a couple of times more, and then he says:
“Stevie, I'm in love.”
“Gosh, Freckles,” says Stevie. “Honest?”
“Honest Injun,” says Freckles.
“Do you know who with?” says Stevie.
“Uh-huh!” says Freckles. “If you didn't know who with, how would you know you was?”
But Stevie, he says you might be and not know who with, easy enough. Once, he says, he was like that. He says he was feeling kind of queer for a couple of weeks last spring, and they dosed him and dosed him, with sassafras and worm-medicine and roots and herbs, and none of it did any good. His mother says it is growing-pains, and his father says it is either laziness and not wanting to hoe in the garden or else it is a tapeworm. And he thinks himself maybe it is because he is learning to chew and smoke tobacco on the sly and keeps swallowing a good deal of it right along. But one day he hears his older sister and another big girl talking when they don't know he is around, and they are in love, both of them, and from what he can make out, their feelings is just like his. And it come to him all of a sudden he must be in love himself, and it was days and days before he found out who it was that he was in love with.
“Who was it?” asks Freckles.
“It turned out to be Mabel Smith,” says Stevie, “and I was scared plumb to death for a week or two that she would find out about it. I used to put toads down her back and stick burrs into her hair so she wouldn't never guess it.”
Stevie says he went through days and days of it, and for a while he was scared that it might last forever, and he don't ever want to be in love again. Suppose it should be found out on a fellow that he was in love?
“Stevie,” says Freckles, “this is different.”
Stevie asks him how he means.
“I want her to know,” says Freckles.
“Great Scott!” says Stevie. “No!”
“Uh-huh!”
“It don't show on you, Freckles,” says Stevie.
Freckles says of course it don't show. Only first love shows, he says. Once before he was in love, he says, and that showed on him. That was last spring, and he was only a kid then, and he was in love with Miss Jones, the school teacher, and didn't know how to hide it. But this time he can hide it, because this time he feels that it is different. He swallows down the signs of it, he says, the way you keep swallowing down the signs of it when you have something terrible like heart-disease or stomach-trouble, and nobody will ever know it about him, likely, till after he is dead.
And when he is dead, Freckles says, they will all wonder what he died of, and maybe he will leave a note, wrote in his own blood, to tell. And they will all come in Injun file and pass through the parlour, he says, where his casket will be set on to four chairs, and She will come filing by and look at him, and she will say not to bury him yet, for there is a note held tight in his hand.
And everybody will say: “A note? A note? Who can it be to?”
And She will say to pardon her for taking the liberty at a time like this, but She has saw her own name on to that note. And then, Freckles says, She will open it and read it out loud right there in the parlour to all of them, and they will all say how the departed must have liked her to draw up a note to her wrote in his own blood like that.
And then, Freckles says, She will say, yes, he must have liked her, and that she liked him an awful lot, too, but She never knew he liked her, and She wished now she had of known he liked her an awful lot, because to write a note in his own blood like that showed that he liked her an awful lot, and if he only was alive now she would show she liked him an awful lot and would kiss him to show it. And she would not be scared to kiss him in front of all those people standing around the sides of the parlour, dead or alive. And then she would kiss him, Freckles says. And maybe, Freckles says, he wouldn't be dead after all, but only just lying there like the boy that travelled around with the hypnotizer who was put in a store window and laid there all the time the hypnotizer was in town with everybody making bets whether they could see him breathing or not. And then, Freckles says, he would get up out of his casket, and his Sunday suit with long pants would be on, and he would take the note and say: “Yes, it is to you, and I wrote it with my own blood!”
Which, Freckles says, he has a loose tooth he could suck blood out of any time, not wanting to scrape his arm on account of blood poison breaking out. Though he says he had thought of using some of Spot's blood, but that would seem disrespectful, somehow. And the tooth-blood seemed disrespectful, too, for he did not know the girl right well. But it would have to be the tooth-blood, he guessed, for there was a fellow out by the county line got lockjaw from blood poison breaking out on him, and died of it. And when She handed him the note, Freckles says, he would tell the people in the parlour: “Little Eva and I forgive you all!”
“Little Eva!” says Stevie. “Gosh all fish hooks, Freckles, it ain't the girl in the show, is it?”
“Uh-huh!” says Freckles, kind of sad and proud. “Freckles,” says Stevie, after they had both set there and thought, saying nothing, for a while, “I got just one more question to ask you: Are you figuring you will get married? Is it as bad as that?”
“Uh-huh!” says Freckles.
Stevie, he thought for another while, and then he got up and put his hand on to Freckles's shoulder.
“Freckles, old scout,” he says, “good-bye. I'm awful sorry for you, but I can't chase around with you any more. I can't be seen running with you. I won't tell this on you, but if it was ever to come out I wouldn't want to be too thick with you. You know what the Dalton Gang would do to you, Freck, if they ever got on to this. I won't blab, but I can't take no risks about chumming with you.”
And he went away and left Freckles and me sitting there. But in a minute he came back and said:
“Freckles, you know that iron sling-shot crotch of mine? You always used to be stuck on that slingshot crotch, Freckles, and I never would trade it to you. Well, Freckles, you can have that darned old iron slingshot crotch free for nothing!”
“Stevie,” says Freckles, “I don't want it.”
“Gosh!” says Stevie, and he went off, shaking his head.
And I was considerable worried myself. I tagged him along home, and he wasn't natural. He went into the house, and I tagged him along in and up to his room, and he took no notice of me, though I'm not supposed to be there at all.
And what do you suppose that kid did?—he went and washed his ears. It was midnight, and there wasn't any one to make him do it, and there wasn't any one to see his ears but me, but he washed 'em careful, inside and out. And then he wet his hair and combed it. First he parted it on one side, and then he parted it x on the other, and then he blushed and parted it in the middle. I was sitting on the floor by the foot of the bed, and he was facing the looking-glass, but I saw the blush because it spread clear around to the back of his neck.
And then he went to the closet and put on his long pants that belonged to his Sunday suit. The looking-glass wasn't big enough so he could see his hair and his long pants all at the same time, but he tilted the glass and squirmed and twisted around and saw them bit by bit. At first I thought maybe he was going out again, even at that time of night, but he wasn't; all he was doing was admiring himself. Just then his father pounded on the wall and asked him if he wasn't in bed yet, and he said he was going. He put the light out right away. But he didn't go to bed. He just sat in the dark with his clean ears and his long pants on and his hair parted in the middle, and several times before I went to sleep myself I heard him sigh and say: “Little Eva! Little Eva's dying! Little Eva!”
He must have got so tired he forgot to undress, staying up that late and everything, for in the morning when his father pounded on the door he didn't answer. I was under the bed, and I stayed there. Pretty soon his father pounded again, and then he came into the room. And there Freckles was lying on the bed with his Sunday pants on and his hair parted in the middle and his ears clean.
“Harold!” says his father, and shook him, “what does this mean?”
Harold is Freckles's other name, but if any one of his size calls him Harold, there will be a fight. He sat up on the bed and says, still sleepy:
“What does what mean, Pa?”
“Your lying there asleep with your clothes on,” says his father..
“I was dressing, and I went to sleep again,” says Freckles.
“Uh-huh!” says his father. “It looks like it, don't it?”
“Yes, sir,” says Freckles.
I had crawled out to the foot of the bed where I could see them, and he was still sleepy, but he was trying hard to think up something.
“It looks a lot like it,” says his father. “If you had slept in that bed, the covers would have been turned down, wouldn't they?”
“Yes, sir,” says Freckles, looking at them.
“Well, what then?” says his father.
“Well, Pa,” says Freckles, “I guess I must have made that bed up again in my sleep, and I never knew it.”
“Humph!” says his father. “Do you do that often?”
“Yes, sir,” says Freckles, “a good deal lately.”
“Harold,” says his father, real interested, “aren't you feeling well these days?”
“No, Pa,” says Freckles, “I ain't felt so very well for quite a while.”
“Humph!” says his pa. “How does it come when you dressed yourself you put on your Sunday pants, and this is only Tuesday?”
Harold says he guesses he did that in his sleep, too, the same time he made the bed up.
His pa wants to know if that has ever happened to him before.
“Yes, sir,” says Freckles, “once I woke up in the moonlight right out on one of the top limbs of the big maple tree in the front yard, with my Sunday suit on.”
“Humph!” says his father. “And was your hair parted in the middle that time, too?”
Freckles, he blushes till you can hardly see his freckles, and feels of his hair. But he is so far in, now, that he can't get out. So he says:
“Yes, sir, every time I get taken that way, so I go around in my sleep, Pa, I find my hair has been parted in the middle, the next morning.”
“Uh-huh!” says his pa. “Let's see your ears.” And he pinched one of them while he was looking at it, and Freckles says, “Ouch!”
“I thought so,” says his pa, but didn't say what he thought right away. Then pretty soon he says: “Those ears have been washed since that neck has.”
“Yes, sir,” says Freckles.
“Did you do that in your sleep, too?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Do you always do that when you have those spells of yours?”
“Yes, sir, I always find my ears have been washed the next morning.”
“But never your neck?”
“Sometimes my neck has, and sometimes it hasn't,” said Freckles.
“Uh-huh!” says his father, and took notice of me. I wagged my tail, and hung my tongue out, and acted friendly and joyful and happy. If you want to stay on good terms with grown-up humans, you have to keep them jollied along. I wasn't supposed to be in the house at night, anyhow, but I hoped maybe it would be overlooked.
“Did you paint and dye that dog up that way?” asked Freckles's father. For of course the paint and dye they had put on me was still there.
“Yes, sir,” says Freckles. “Nearly always when I come to myself in the morning I find I have dyed Spot.”
“That's queer, too,” said his father. And then Harold says he dyes other dogs, too, and once when he woke up in the maple tree there were three strange dogs he had dyed at the foot of it.
“Harold,” says his father, “how often do these spells come on?”
Freckles, he says, some weeks they come often and some weeks hardly ever.
“Humph!” says his father. “And when they come on, do you notice it is harder for you to tell the truth than at any other times?”
Freckles says he doesn't know what he says in his sleep when those spells take him, nor even whether he talks in his sleep or not, but he guesses if he does talk in his sleep what he says would be talk about his dreams, but he can't remember what his dreams are, so he doesn't know whether what he says is true or not.
“Uh-huh!” says his father. “Harold, do you own a gun?”
“No, sir,” says Harold. Which is true, for he only owns a third interest in a gun. Tom Mulligan and Stevie Stevenson own the rest of it, and they are keeping it hid in the rafters of Tom Mulligan's barn till they can save money enough to get it fixed so it will shoot.
“You haven't killed anybody in these spells of yours, have you, Harold?” asks his father.
“No, sir,” says Freckles.
“How would you know if you had?” asks his father.
Freckles says there would be blood on him next morning, wouldn't there?
“Not,” says his father, “if you stood at a distance and killed them with a gun.”
Freckles knows he hasn't ever really had any of these spells he says he has had, but from his looks I should judge he was scared, too, by the way his father was acting.
“Pa,” he says, “has any one been found dead?”
“The body hasn't been found yet,” says his father, “but from what I heard you say, early this morning in your sleep, I should judge one will be found.”
I thinks to myself maybe Freckles does do things in his sleep after all, and from the looks of his face he thinks so, too. He is looking scared.
“Pa,” he says, “who did I kill? What did I say?”
“You said: 'Little Eva's dying! Little Eva's dying!'” said his father. “I heard you say it over and over again in your sleep.”
Freckles, he gets red in the face again, and stares at his feet, and his pa stands and grins at him for a minute or two. And then his pa says: “Get into your weekday clothes and wash your face and neck to match your ears, and come on down to breakfast. When you get ready to tell what's on your mind, all right; but don't try to tell lies to your dad.”
“Yes, sir,” says Freckles.
But he looked mighty gloomy. And when his father went out of the room he got his fountain pen and sucked some blood out of his loose tooth and tried to spit it into his fountain pen. From which I judged he was still of a notion to write that letter and was pretty low in his mind. But he couldn't spit it into the pen, right. And he cried a little, and then saw me watching him crying and slapped at me with a hairbrush; and then he petted me and I let him pet me, for a dog, if he is any sort of dog at all, will always stand by his boy in trouble as well as gladness, and overlook things. A boy hasn't got much sense, anyhow; and a boy without a dog to keep him steered right must have a pretty tough time in the world.
If he was low in his mind then, he was lower in his mind before the day was through. For after breakfast there was Stevie Stevenson and Tom Mulligan waiting for him outside, and in spite of his promise, Stevie has told everything to Tom. And Tom has a wart and offers some wart blood to write that letter in. But Freckles says another person's blood would not be fair and honourable. He has a wart of his own, if he wanted to use wart blood, but wart blood is not to be thought of. What would a lady think if she found out it was wart blood? It would be almost and insult, wart blood would; it would be as bad as blood from a corn or bunion.
“Well, then,” says Stevie, “the truth is that you don't want to write that letter, anyhow. Last night you talked big about writing that letter, but this morning you're hunting up excuses for not writing it.”
“I'll write it if I want to write it, and you can't stop me,” says Freckles. “And I won't write it if I don't want to write it, and nobody of your size can make me.”
“I can too stop you,” says Stevie, “if I want to.”
“You don't dast to want to stop me,” says Freckles.
“I do dast,” says Stevie.
“You don't,” says Freckles.
“I do,” says Stevie.
“You're a licked, licked liar—and so's your Aunt Mariar,” says Freckles.
“I ain't got any Aunt Mariar,” says Stevie.
“You don't dast to have an Aunt Mariar,” says Freckles.
“I do dast,” says Stevie.
Then Tom put a chip on each of their shoulders, and pushed them at each other, and the chips fell off, and they went down behind the barn and had it out, and Freckles licked him. Which proves Freckles couldn't be stopped from writing that note if he wanted to, and he was still so mad that he wrote it right then and there back of the barn on a leaf torn out of a notebook Tom Mulligan owned, with his fountain pen, using his own nose bleed that Stevie had just drawed out of him; and he read out loud what he wrote. It was:
Dear Miss Little Eva: The rose is red, the violet's blue. Sugar is sweet and so are you. Yours truly. Mr. H. Watson. This is wrote in my own blood.
“Well, now, then,” says Stevie, “where's the coffin?”
“What do you mean, the coffin?” says Freckles.
“Last night,” says Stevie, “you was makin' a lot of brags, but this morning it looks like you didn't have the sand to act up to them.”
“If you think you've got size enough to make me lay down into a coffin with that note,” says Freckles, “you got another think cornin' to you. There ain't a kid my size, nor anywhere near my size, in this whole town can make me lay down into a coffin with that note. And if you think so, you just try it on!”
Stevie, he doesn't want to fight any more. But Tom Mulligan says never mind the casket. Nobody really wants him to lay in a casket anyhow. He says he is willing to bet a million dollars Freckles doesn't dast to carry that note to the show grounds and give it to that Little Eva.
“I dast!” says Freckles.
“Dastn't!” says Tom.
“You don't dast to knock this chip off my shoulder,” says Freckles.
“I dast!” says Tom. And Stevie give him a push, and he did it. And they had it. Freckles got him down and jammed his head into the ground.
“Now, then,” he says, “do I dast to carry that note, or don't I dast to?”
“You dast to,” says Tom. “Leave me up.”
And that was the way it come about that Freckles had to carry the note, though not wanting to at all. But he did it. We all went with him over to the show grounds, Stevie Stevenson and Tom Mulligan and Mutt, Tom's dog, and me.
There was a lady sitting out in front of one of the tents on a chair. She had been washing her hair, and it was spread out to dry over her shoulders, and she was sewing on a pair of boy's pants. She had on a pair of those big horn-rimmed glasses, and we could see from her hair, which had gray in it, that she was quite an old lady, though small. I heard later that she was all of thirty-five or thirty-six years old.
The rest of us hung back a little ways, and Freckles went up to her and took off his hat.
She laid down her sewing and smiled at him.
“Well, my little man, what is it?” she said. “Were you looking for somebody?”
“Yes, ma'am,” says Freckles. He stuttered a little and he was standing on one foot.
“For whom?” she asked.
“For Little Eva,” says Freckles.
The lady stared at him, and then she smiled again.
“And what do you want with Little Eva, sonny?” she said.
Freckles, he stands on the other foot a while, and says nothing. And like as not he would have backed away, but Tom Mulligan yells: “You don't dast give it to her, Freck!”
Then Freckles hands her the letter and gulps and says: “A letter for Miss Little Eva.”
The lady takes it and reads it. And then she reads it again. And then she calls out: “Jim! Oh, Jim!”
A man comes out of the tent, and she hands it to him. He reads it, and his mouth drops open, and a pipe he is smoking falls on to the grass.
“Jim,” says the lady, “someone is making love to your wife!”
Jim, he reads the letter again, and then he laughs. He laughs so hard he bends double, and catches the back of the lady's chair. And she laughs of a sudden and puts her hand in front of her face and laughs again. And then Jim, he says to Freckles, who has been getting redder and redder:
“And who is Mr. H. Watson?”
“Don't you get it?” says the lady, taking off her glasses to wipe them, and pointing to Freckles. “This is the boy that owns the dog that played the bloodhound last night, and he is Mr. H. Watson!”
And when she took off her glasses like that, we all saw she was the Little Eva of that show!
“Mr. H. Watson,” says Jim to Freckles, “did you intend matrimony, or were you trying to flirt?”
“Quit your kidding him, Jim,” says Little Eva, still laughing. “Can't you see he's hacked nearly to death?”
“None of your business what I intended!” yells Freckles to Jim. And he picks up a clod of dirt and nearly hits Jim with it, and runs. And we all run. But when we had run half a block, we looked back, and nobody was following us. Jim and Little Eva had busted out laughing again, and was laughing so hard they was hanging on to each other to keep from falling down.
“Good-bye, Mr. H. Watson,” yells Jim. “Is it really your own blood?”
And then began a time of disgrace for Freckles and me such as I never hope to live through again. For the next thing those two boys that had been his friends was both dancing round him laughing and calling him Mr. H. Watson; and by the time we got down to the part of Main Street where the stores are, every boy and every dog in town was dancing around Freckles and hearing all about it and yelling, “H. Watson! Mr. H. Watson! Is it your own blood? Is it your own blood, Mr. H. Watson?”
Freckles and I did the best we could, fighting all that was our size and some bigger; but after a couple of hours it got so that most any one could lick us. Kids that was afraid to stand up to him the day before could lick him easy, by now, and dogs I had always despised even to argue with began to get my number. All you could hear, on every side, was: “Is it your own blood, Mr. Watson?”
And at noon we went home, but Freckles didn't go into the house for dinner at all. Instead, he went out to the barn and laid down in the hay, and I crawled in there with him. And he cried and cried and choked and choked. I felt sorry for him, and crawled up and licked his face. But he took me by the scruff of the neck and slung me out of the haymow. When I crawled back again, he kicked me in the ribs, but he had on tennis shoes and it didn't hurt much, and anyhow I forgave him. And I went and crawled back to where he was and nuzzled my head up under his armpit. And then he cried harder and hugged me and said I was the best dog in the world and the only friend he ever had.
And then I licked his face again and he let me and we both felt better, and pretty soon he went to sleep there and slept for an hour or so, with his head on my ribs, and I lay there quiet so as not to wake him. Even when a flea got me, I let that flea bite and didn't scratch for fear of waking him. But after a while that flea got tired of me, and crawled over on to Freckles, and he waked natural. And when he waked, he was hungry, but he didn't want to go into the house for fear the story had spread to the grown-ups and he would have to answer questions. So he found a couple of raw turnips, and ate them, and a couple of apples, only they were green, and he milked the cow a little into an old tin cup and drank that. And in a little while he begins to have pains, and he thinks he is getting heart's disease and is really going to die, but he says to himself out loud if he dies now he won't get any credit for it, and he would have enjoyed it more if he had died while he still thought Little Eva was young and beautiful and probably going to marry him in the end.
But after awhile it seems turning from heart's disease into some kind of stomach trouble; so he drinks some stuff out of a bottle that was left in the barn last spring when Bessie, the old roan mare, had the colic, and whether it is heart's disease or stomach trouble, that stuff cures him. And him and me drift along downtown again to see if maybe the kids have sort of begun to forget about it a little.
But they hadn't. It had even spread to some of the grown-ups. We went into Freckles's father's drug store, and Mr. Watson told Freckles to step around to the post office and ask for his mail. And the clerk in the post office when we come in, looks at Freckles very solemn and says:
“Ah, here is Mr. H. Watson, after a letter! Will you have a letter written in blood?”
So Freckles told his dad there wasn't any mail, and we sneaked along home again. That night at supper I was lying on the porch just outside the dining room and the doors were open, and I heard Freckles's dad say:
“Harold, would you like to go to the show to-night?”
“No, Pa,” says Freckles.
His mother says that is funny; it is the first time she ever heard him refuse to go to a show of any kind. And his father asks him if anything special has happened that makes him want to stay away from this particular show. I guess when his father says that, Freckles thinks his father is wise, too, so he says he has changed his mind and will go to the show after all. He didn't want to start any argument.
So him and me sneaks down to the show grounds again. It is getting dark, but too early for the show, and every kid we know is hanging around outside. And what Freckles has had to stand for in the way of kidding beforehand is nothing to what comes now. For they all gets around him in a ring and shouts: “Here is the bridegroom! Here is Mr. H. Watson come to get married to Little Eva! And the wedding invitations are wrote in his own blood! His own blood! His own blood!”