A BOY’S DAY AT HOME.

MASTER BILDERBACK had been home all day, confined to the house and barn by the rain, and excited by the prospect of unlimited fun during the long vacation. He was a blessing to his mother and sister, and his affectionate parent caught her death of cold by running around after him in one stocking foot, searching out the tender places in his nature and anatomy with a four and a half slipper. He tied one end of his sister’s ball of crochet cotton to the fly-wheel of the sewing-machine and the other around the tail of the cat, and by the time his mother had sewed half-way down one of the long seams in Mr. Bilderback’s new shirt, all but a few yards of that cotton was a chaotic mass about that fly-wheel and shaft, and the cat was waltzing in and out of the kitchen, sprawling along backward, tail straight as a poker, fur up and eyes aflame, snowling, and spitting, and swearing like mad, and Mrs. Bilderback and her daughter climbed upon the table and shrieked till the windows rattled, while Master Bilderback, hid behind the clothes-horse in the kitchen, lay down on his back and laughed a wicked gurgling kind of a laugh. Then he went out and jammed a potato into the nose of the chain pump and the hired girl went out and pumped till her arms ached clear down to her heels, and then told Mrs. Bilderback the cistern had sprung a leak and was dry as a bone. And then Mrs. Bilderback, declaring she knew better, went out and turned the wheel till her head swam and she gave up, and Miss Bilderback went out and turned till she cried, and then Master Bilderback, rather than go to the neighbor’s for water, went out and fixed the pump and came in to be praised, and was duly praised with the slipper, for he had been watched. He put an old last year’s fire-cracker in the kitchen stove; he insured a steady run of strange visitors for about two hours, to the great amazement of his mother and sister, by pinning a placard on the porch step, plainly seen from the street, but invisible from the front door, “Man wanted to drive carriage; $35.00 a month and board.” Mrs. Bilderback drew a sigh of relief when she heard Mr. B.’s step in the hall, and informed her son that as soon as his father came in he should be duly informed of all that had been going on. A most impressive silence followed this remark, and the trio in the sitting-room listened to Mr. Bilderback’s heavy breathing as he divested himself of his wet boots, and prepared to assume his slippers. Master Bilderback’s face wore an expression of the deepest concern.

Suddenly the silence was broken by a shout of astonishment and terror, followed by a howl of intense agony, and there was a clattering as of a runaway crockery wagon in the hall. The affrighted family rushed to the door, and beheld Mr. Bilderback cleaving the shadows with wild gestures and frantic gyrations. “Take it off,” he shouted, and made a grab at his own foot, but, missing it, went on with his war-dance. “Water!” he shrieked, and started up stairs, three at a step, and turning, came back in a single stride, “Oh, I’m stabbed!” he cried, and sank to the floor and held his right leg high above his head; then he rose to his feet with a bound and screamed for the boot-jack, and held his foot out toward his terrified family. “Oh, bring me the arnica!” he yelled, and with one despairing effort he reached his slipper and got it off, and with a groan as deep as a well and hollow as a drum, sank into a chair and clasped his foot in both hands. “Look out for the scorpion,” he whispered hoarsely, “I’m a dead man.”

A BOY’S DAY AT HOME.

Master Bilderback was by this time out in the woodshed, rolling in the kindling in an ecstasy of glee, and pausing from time to time to explain to the son of a neighbor, who had dropped in to see if there was any innocent sport going on in which he could share, “Oh, Bill, Bill,” he said, “you wouldn’t believe; some time to-day, some how or Other, a big blue wasp got into the old man’s slipper, and when he come home and put it on—oh, Bill, you don’t know!”