human
He asked me if he could go to the fair at Middletown! He wanted his next week's allowance.
gpt
William, and Mrs. Lee's gentle voice was stern,
human
He's with Jim Archer!
gpt
Billy's with him a lot,
human
He teases us girls all the time, too, Mother! He put June bugs in my bed last night!
gpt
Billy is certainly in all wrong just now,
human
But _do_ you think these fairs are quite the places for boys like Billy and Jim Archer--alone? asked Mrs. Lee with a troubled look.
gpt
He should have been home long ago! They must have ridden their wheels!
human
Don't worry, little mother! Billy will come home tired and hungry and none the worse for the fair! Why, when I was a boy I never missed a fair anywhere around and always walked, too! _They_ used to be real fairs--nothing like them these days!
gpt
Oh, tell us a story!
human
Please do!
gpt
Down in our village old Cy Addington had a calf he'd entered in the County Fair. He'd set his heart on that calf's winning a prize--all the other farmers had told him it would. It was black as jet with just a little white mark on its fore quarter. He tended that calf like a baby and spent hours at a time getting it all in shape for the Fair. Well, the night before the Fair opened two boys--bad boys they were--stole that calf out of its shed, took it off in some woods where they had a lantern and a can of paint hidden under a log. What do you think they did? Painted the animal white--snow white--every bit of him! Then they took him to the graveyard and tied him to a tombstone!
human
Oh, Daddy, how dreadful!
gpt
Then what happened?
human
Well, a lot of things happened, and they happened fast! Miss Cymantha Jones, a nervous spinster, was walking home from Widow Markham's house--rather late, but she'd been caring for the widow through a sick spell. And Miss Cymantha saw that calf jumping around among the tombstones and thought it was a ghost! She let out such screams that it brought Charley, the old sexton, running to the door in his night shirt, and he saw the calf, and Miss Cymantha scuttling down the road screaming and holding her skirts high so's she could run faster, and I guess he thought it was the resurrection itself, for what did he do but ring the bell and the folks all thought it was a fire and came rushing out in all kinds of clothes! Then Cy Addington found his precious calf and the neighbors had an indignation meeting right then and there and the ones who had the most clothes on started out to find the offenders and some of the others went in to quiet Miss Cymantha, and a few others put the sexton to bed and locked him in so that he couldn't give any more alarms!
gpt
But what happened to the boys?
human
Oh, when the crowd was the most excited they just climbed over a woodshed into the house and by the time the volunteers were lined up to go to find them they were sound asleep!
gpt
Who were they, Father? Were they boys you knew?
human
Oh, I know--I know! It was you, Daddy,
gpt
Come, dear, sit down! William, if you were that sort of a boy what can we expect of Billy? Hark--isn't that his whistle?
human
He's all right--he always whistles when he's happy!
gpt
It is he! cried Mrs. Lee, going down the steps.
human
And what in the world is he bringing with him!