“That sign,” said Halpert McCormack, the apparent leader of the group, “ought to come down. In my opinion a cobbler has no business to be selling puppies. ‘Shoemaker, stick to your last!’ That’s a proverb we parsed in Miss Buskin’s class this morning. What do you say, fellows?”
“Sure it ought to come down,” was the immediate and unanimous response.
“Besides,” added Little Dusty, the youngest boy in the company, “his puppies is no good anyway. My cousin Joe bought one off of him last week, and he can’t even bark yet.”
One member of the group, inclined to be facetious, inquired:
“Neither one of ’em,” was the quick reply. “But the puppy’s got fleas an’ Joe ain’t.”
“That settles it,” said Hal McCormack, gravely. “A man that will sell puppies with fleas on ’em deserves no consideration from us.”
“Right you are!” was the response. “Here goes!”
It took but a minute to cut the sign loose from its fastenings and to carry it around into a side street where darkness threw a protecting mantle over mischief.
One of the other boys turned to Hal. “Well,” he said, “you told us to take it down; now you got to say what we do with it.”
“Stick it up somewheres,” suggested Little Dusty.
“Sure, stick it up somewheres,” exclaimed the first boy, “but where?”
“We might fasten it to the sign o’ Jim Nagel, the butcher,” responded Little Dusty.
Then a boy known as Slicker spoke up. “Butchers don’t sell puppies,” he said, “they buy ’em. Folks’d think he was goin’ out o’ business if he put up a sign like that.”
“Oh,” commented Hal, “can that joke. It’s got whiskers.”
“Besides,” continued Slicker, “I know a better stunt than that. We’ll take it up to Barriscale’s, an’ fasten it on the gate-post.”
“Gee!” exclaimed Little Dusty. “My dad works at Barriscale’s, and if Mr. Barriscale found out I had a hand in it, Pop might get fired.”
“Well,” replied Slicker, “nobody’s goin’ to know who had a hand in it. We ain’t goin’ to hire no brass band an’ go around shoutin’ what we done. Are we, Hal?”
“No,” said Hal soberly. “This is secret business. No boy’s got a right to tell on anybody but himself, not even if they skin him alive. I won’t.”
“Nor I,” “Nor I.” The response was unanimous and whole-hearted.
“I don’t know about this Barriscale business, though,” added Hal. “If Mr. Barriscale should get mad about it, he’d scour the city to find out who did it, and then he’d have us all put in jail. Young Ben isn’t any easy proposition to butt up against, either.”