PECK'S BAD BOY.

New Zealand Graphic, Volume XX, Issue XXVI, 25 June 1898, Page 815

PECK'S BAD BOY.

LIMBURGER CHEESE. Ma sent me to pay a bill at the grocer's last Saturday. The. boss behind the counter made, me a present of something wrapped in a piece of silver paper, w-hich he told me was a piece of Limburger cheese. When I got outside the shop I opened the paper. When I smelled what was inside I felt tired. I took it home and put it in the coal shed. In the morning I went to it again. It was still there—nobody had taken it. I wondered what 1 could do with it. Father and mother were getting ready to go to church. I put a piece in the back pocket of father's pants, and another piece in the lining of ma's muff. 1 walked behind when we started for church. It was beginning to get warm. When we got into church father looked anxious. After the first hymn mother told father not to sing again, but to keep his mouth shut- and breathe through his nose. After the prayer the perspiration stood on father's face, the people in the next ]m*w to ours got up and walked out. After the next hymn father whispered to mother that he thought she hail better go out and air herself. After the second lesson one of the ehnrch wardens came round to see if there were any stray eats in the church. Some more people near our pew got up anil went out. putting handkerchiefs to their noses as they went. The parson said they hail 1 letter close the service, and hold a meeting outside to discuss the sanitary condition of the church. Father told mother they had better go home one at a time. Mother told father to go the nearest way home anil disinfect himself liefore she came. When they got home they both went into the front room, but did not speak for some time- Mother spoke first and told father to put the eat out of the room, she thought it was going to lie sick: it was sick liefore father could get it out. Mother then turned round and noticed that, the canary wan dead. Mother told father not to sit so near the fire. It made it worse. Father told mother to go and smother herself. Mother said .she thought she

smothered already. Just then our servant came in and asked if she should open the windows the room smelt verj close. Father went upstairs an<l changed his clotbrs. ami had a hot bath. Mother took father's clothes and offered them to a tramp, who said. *T hanks. kind lady, they are a bit too high for me.* Mother threw them over the fence into the canal. Father was summoned afterwards for poisoning the fiah. Mother went to l>ed. Father asked her if she had l»een fumigated. Just then someone sent father a note. Father came to wish me ‘Good-night’ at ten o’clock in the evening with a note in one hand and a razor strop in the other. I got under the bed. The people next door thought we were beating carpeta in our house. (I cannot sit down comfortably yet.) I have given mv little sister what I had left of that Limburger cheese. I thought it a pity to waste it.