Mischievous Ned.

By EBEN REXFORD.

Ned was like most other boys, I suppose. Some days he felt so good-natured that his spirits were positively "catching," as they say about colds and the mumps, and you couldn't have had the blues if you had made up your mind to do so, if he was round. But the very next day was apt to be one of his cross days, and he could be as cross and disagreeable as any boy ever could.

One morning he got up feeling very much out of sorts.

"Ned's going to be cross to-day," said Harry, when they gathered round the breakfast table. "It's sticking out all over him now."

"I don't know as it's any of your business," answered Ned promptly. "I'd a good deal rather be cross than make a fool of myself by trying to say smart things when I couldn't."

Which shot, considering that Harry hadn't tried to say anything "sharp," was rather uncalled for, and didn't hit anybody in particular.

"Don't let me hear any more such conversation," said Mrs. Haynes, taking her seat at the table. "You are both of you old enough to behave yourselves as gentlemen ought to."

Ned found any amount of fault with the victuals. The buckwheat cakes had too much soda in them; the sirup wasn't fit to eat; the butter looked as if an old squaw had made it; the potatoes were a little the worst ones he ever tasted. And the result of his fault-finding was, that he was sent away from the table with an unsatisfied appetite.

When he was outside the dining room, he realized that, poor as the breakfast might be, it would have been better than none, and began to wish he had said less, and eaten more.

After breakfast the hired girl began to wash the windows. Ned watched her standing on the stepladder, and thought what fine fun it would be to tip it over when she was on it, but concluded he wouldn't try it just then, as Bridget was apt to be cross as well as himself, and he remembered that some of the practical jokes he had played off on her had resulted in tingling ears, and having his ears boxed was about the worst kind of punishment for Ned. But as Bridget came out of the sitting room with the stepladder, which she was taking to the veranda, in order to wash the windows from the outside, she stumbled over him in the hall, and came so near falling that she had to let the ladder go and catch at the stair railing to save herself. And the ladder in its fall struck against a bracket on which a little vase stood, and away went both of them, and the vase was shivered into fragments.

"You good-for-nothin' spalpeen!" cried Bridget, giving him a slap across the ears; "you got forninst me on purpose, an' now see what you've done! That illigant mug all broke to pieces, jist on account of your bad ways. I've a good mind to tell the missus."

"You needn't 'a' stumbled over me," said Ned angrily. "If you'd look where you were going, you wouldn't go round smashing things up in this style. I'd turn you off if I was in father's place."

"Would you now?" demanded Bridget, her arms akimbo. "Indade I'd like to see ye doin' it. If you don't take yerself off, I'll box ye, mind that, now; an' I'll do it up in illigant style."

Ned concluded that discretion was the better part of valor at present, and repaired to the veranda.

Presently Bridget came out with the stepladder, which she adjusted before one of the windows, and then went in after water.

A bright idea struck Ned. Bridget had been saucy and impudent. He would be even with her. He'd learn her to slap his ears!

He pulled a long piece of stout cord out of his pocket and tied it to one leg of the stepladder, and then hid in the shrubbery.

Presently out came Bridget. She mounted the ladder, unconscious of any danger, and began washing the window vigorously.

All at once the ladder seemed to jerk itself out from under her, and with a whoop that would have done credit to any Apache brave, she landed in the middle of a great lilac bush, before she realized whether her sudden descent was caused by a collapse of the ladder, an earthquake, or one of Ned's pranks. She strongly suspected the latter; but, looking around from her dignified position in the lilac bush, she could see nothing of him, and there was nothing about the innocent-looking ladder, as it lay on the ground at the veranda steps, to indicate that it had been meddled with. But as she proceeded to alight from her elevated pedestal, she heard a chuckle somewhere in the shrubbery, which satisfied her that her suspicions were correct.

Harry came along pretty soon, and wanted Ned to join a party of children who were going down to the old mill after berries.

But Ned answered, very shortly, that he "wasn't going to do any such thing," and Harry went on, without stopping to coax him any.

That made Ned madder than ever. It was quite evident that they didn't want him, and only asked him because they couldn't very well help doing so.

"I'll have some fun with 'em," said Ned, setting off in the same direction, about half an hour afterward.

The berries the children had gone after grew in an old meadow. In this old meadow, through which a brook ran, there was a mill, which was said to be haunted, and every child was afraid to go near it in the daytime.

Ned picked his way through the bushes on the edge of the meadow, and got into the mill on the opposite side from where the children were picking berries.

So busily were they engaged in gathering the ripe fruit that they were not aware how near they were getting to the mill, till a sepulchral groan made them look up in undefined terror, and there, in the farthest shadowy corner, was something awfully ghost-like.

"Repent of your sins!" exclaimed the ghost, uttering the first and only thing he could think of; and then, with wild shouts of fright, the children started off in a stampede for the road, spilling their berries and tearing their clothes.

Little Susie Mayne lost her sunbonnet, and Will Blake lost his shoe, but they didn't dare to stop for such trifles.

When they reached the road, panting and breathless, they looked back, half expecting to see the ghost after them.

But instead of a ghost, there stood Ned, waving a sheet and apparently highly pleased at the success of his project.

"I should think you'd be ashamed of yourself," shouted Will Blake. "I'll tell Johnny, an' he'll lick you."

"Don't you wish he could?" answered Ned defiantly. "If any of you young ones go to being saucy, I'll just come over there and trounce you."

The children set off toward home, but, coming to another meadow, where strawberries were quite plenty, they concluded to stop and fill up their baskets.

"Mr. Belding's awful ugly old cow runs in this meadow, I heard father say," said Harry. "We'd better keep a lookout for her."

But in five minutes they had forgotten all about the cow.

Suddenly they all started.

"Moo, moo-o!" sounded in the bushes close by, and they heard an awful racket as if half a dozen cows were coming.

"Oh, dear!" screamed all the girls, and made for the fence, with the boys at their heels.

Susie Mayne tumbled down and bruised her nose so badly that it bled, and Harry dragged her toward the fence in anything but a comfortable way.

"I'd be ashamed to run at every little noise before I knew where it came from," called out Ned, making his appearance from the bushes. "Cowards! cowards!"

The boys were for clubbing together and giving him a whipping, but concluded to leave that to the big boys. The girls all pronounced him, without a single dissenting voice, to be the "meanest boy they ever heard of," and then they all went off in high indignation.

Ned climbed up on the fence, and sat there for some time meditating what to do next. Pretty soon Mr. Belding's Sammy came along without seeing Ned, and got over into the meadow, and began picking berries.

Now, Ned hated Sammy Belding, and he thought it would be fine fun to throw stones at him. He calculated the chances of getting caught, and concluded if he stayed over the fence he could get enough start while Sammy was climbing to take him out of danger. So he filled his pockets with stones, and began throwing them at Sammy.

At first Sammy looked around in astonishment, and couldn't make out where they came from. But by and by he pretended that he was paying no attention to them. But if you could have looked under his broad-brimmed hat, you would have seen that he was keeping keen watch.

Ned continued to throw stones. All at once up jumped Sammy, and made for the fence. Ned was taken entirely by surprise, but turned to run as soon as he realized that Sammy had discovered him. But he caught his foot on a stick, and down he went, and before he got on his feet Sammy had him, and proceeded to give him a good pounding, out of which he came with a black eye and a bloody nose. It was too bad the children couldn't have been there to see it.

"Throw stones at me again, will you?" said Sammy. "I'll teach you to mind your own business, if you don't know how."

Ned went home as soon as Sammy got through with him. He was hungry, and his whipping had discouraged him somewhat.

Harry had got home before him, and had reported his bad conduct. The result was that he was ordered to weed out three onion beds that afternoon. That made him groan in spirit. He hated weeding in the garden about the worst of anything in the world.

But there wasn't any help for it, and he went at it.

The old rooster came along pretty soon. Ned knew he never did any harm, as he was too well-behaved a bird to scratch in the garden, but he wanted to vent his spite on something, so he up with a big stone and shied it at the rooster's head, not once thinking that it would hit him. But it did, and with one shrill squawk the fowl gave a leap into the air, kicked about wildly, and fell dead.

Ned was frightened. What would his father say? He had been very careful of the rooster, because he came of a choice breed. What should he do with him? While he was debating the question with himself, who should come along but his mother.

"Why, Ned!" exclaimed she, seeing the poor old rooster lying there, with one claw stretched up pathetically, as if to call a sympathetic attention to his tragic fate. "How did this happen?"

"Well, you see," began Ned, at a loss for an explanation, "he came along, and I thought maybe he'd go scratching, and I shoed him, but he wouldn't go off. Then I threw a stone that way, and it must have hit him, 'cause——"

"You weren't afraid he would scratch, because he never did that," said Ned's mother severely. "I am very sorry to see you in such a bad temper to-day. Go right up to the garret and stay there till your father comes home. I don't know what he will say when he knows of this."

Ned took himself off to the garret, congratulating himself that that wasn't quite as bad as weeding onions. But he was terribly troubled about what his father would say. He couldn't get that out of his mind.

By and by he heard some one coming up the garret stairs. It sounded like Bridget's steps. A pan stood near by, which had been placed under a leak in the roof, and was full of water. Before he stopped to think what the consequence might be—he felt so ugly that he didn't care much—Ned seized the pan full of water, and just as a head made its appearance in the shadowy depths of the garret stairway he let fly pan and all in that direction.

There was an awful spluttering, as if the water had taken the visitor fairly in the face.

Ned turned pale. It wasn't Bridget, after all, but his father.

"Young man," said that worthy person, making his appearance, dripping from head to foot with water, and looking terribly severe, "I want to see you in the wood shed."

His tone struck terror to Ned's heart. The wood shed, on such occasions, was quite apt to prove a second inquisition.

Ned followed, not daring to do otherwise. He didn't even dare to look at his father's face. What took place in the shed I can't say, but directly after their visit to that part of the house Ned went to bed, and I hope he got up feeling better next morning.