in with his wife, the old woman threw her arms around his neck and called
him her darling, and when he pushed her away, and told her she was drunk,
she picked up a bottle of citrate of magnesia and pointed it at him, and
the cork came out like a pistol, and he thought he was shot, and his wife
fainted away, and the police came and took the old gin refrigerator away,
and then the drug man told me to face the door, and, when I wasn't looking
he kicked me four times, and I landed in the street, and he said if I ever
came in sight of the store again he would kill me dead. That is the way I
resigned. I tell you, they will send for me again. They never can run that
store without me.

"I guess they will worry along without you," said the grocery
man. "How does your Pa take your being fired out? I should think it would
brake him all up."

"O, I think Pa rather likes it. At first he thought he had a soft snap
with me in the drug store, cause he has got to drinking again, like a
fish, and he has gone back on the church entirely; but after I had put a
few things in his brandy he concluded it was cheaper to buy it, and he is
now patronizing a barrel house down by the river.

"One day I put some Castile soap in a drink of drandy, and Pa leaned over
the back fence more than an hour, with his finger down his throat. The man
that collects the ashes from the alley asked Pa if he had lost anything,
and Pa said he was only 'sugaring off.' I don't know what that is. When Pa
felt better he came in and wanted a little whisky to take the taste out of
his mouth, and I gave him some, with about a teaspoonful of pulverized
alum in it. Well, sir, you'd a dide. Pa's mouth and throat was so puckered
up that he couldn't talk. I don't think that drugman will make anything by
firing me out, because I shall turn all the trade that I control to