Of all the surprising affairs in which the youthful Jimmie had a hand we think the affair of the fat little Baker boy the most amusing. “We was in the swing,” Jimmie explained to his mother, “and I butted Ed in the belly.”
“‘He hit him in the abdomen,’ corrected the Baker girl.
“‘I have always been very particular,’ Mrs. Baker announced, ‘Mrs. Preston, about the language my children use, as you can see for yourself. You heard how Jimmie referred to Edward’s abdomen. He has used that word at least six times in the last five minutes; and that, Mrs. Preston, I cannot stand. I will have my home kept refined and I say no home can be refined where vulgar, common words are in daily use.’
“To this I found nothing to say but ‘Come home with me, Jimmie.’
“On the way, ‘Have I got to say “abdomen”?’ he asked. ‘Say, have I?’
“I took refuge in the cowardly woman’s evasion. ‘I don’t think that there’s the slightest need of your using either of those terms ever,’ I replied.
“Maria, who had heard the last words, said: ‘Yes, I should think one could find pleasanter topics of conversation, Jimmie.’”
The trouble was that within a day or two four little boys, friends of Jimmie’s, with their arms around each other’s necks, insisted on marching up and down the street chanting in a derisive sing-song:
“Mr. and Mrs. Domen and Ab Domen, Mr. and Mrs. Domen and Ab Domen, Mr. and Mrs. Domen and Ab Domen.”
They were audible even while Mrs. Baker, very flushed and angry, called on Mrs. Preston, desiring her to Take Steps. The passage along the street of the fat little Baker boy occasioned loud cries of “Here comes Ab! Hello, Ab! There’s Ab Domen!” We will only say further of this diverting and entirely truthful episode that it had an amazing sequel.
Jimmie, who cannot be convicted of having conspired to fasten upon young Edward Baker a nickname at once refined and unusual, was more or less responsible, we fear, for his aunt’s finding herself unable to open the bathroom door after he had repaired and oiled all the locks in the house. He was blameless of the thefts of what the family called “nether undergarments” from the neighbors’ clotheslines. Here Maria played detective, though the discovery of the culprit was mostly luck.