164 TROTTYS WEDDING TOUR.

“°T ain’t me,” said Bob. “It’s Jake. He’s got smashed
into the mills, and boss sent me after ye. Golly! You’d
ought to see him. Iseen him. Jammed his finger clean off
into the gearing.”

I had my hat and rubber-boots. on before Bob had finished
his message, and we started off together at a fast walk,
splashing through the spring mud.

“ Poor Jake!” I said, between the splashes; not that I
had the least idea who Jake was, but that I knew any Jake
must be a poor Jake, who had lost a finger in the gearing.

“T tell you,” said Bob, in his confidential way, — for his
size, Bob has the most confidential manner of any gentleman
of my acquaintance, —“ I tell you! I don’t call him none of
yer ‘ poor Jakes !’”

“That ’s a pity,” said marm, the doctor, abstractedly. -

“No, ’tain’t, neither,” said Bob, the confident, stoutly.
‘It’s my pinion them chaps puts their fingers into the gear-
ing a puppuss.”’

“ What?” Marm, the doctor, suddenly attentive.

“Yes, sir!”’ said Bob, mysteriously. “That ’s my *pinion,
marm. They puts their fingers in a puppuss.”’

“ But what could possibly —”’

“'Fo git out. They puts in their fingers and then they
puts out. Jim Shanks he done it. He loafed three weeks
"fore he healed over. He done it just in skatin’-time, and
he had a pair o’ new rockers, Christmas, that he had n’t
tried. And J think,” said Bob, with an injured air, “ it’s