Page:Aunt Jo's Scrap-Bag, Volume 1.djvu/126

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THE CHILDREN'S JOKE.
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Mr. Fairbairn went away into the dull study and made believe do his lesson, but he really smoked and meditated.

The young folks had a grand revel, and kept it up till ten o'clock, while mamma lay awake, longing to go down and see what they were about, and papa shortly fell asleep, quite exhausted by the society of a Latin Grammar.

'Idle boy, is this the way you study?' said Harry, audaciously tweaking him by the ear.

'No, it's the way you do;' and feeling that his day of bondage was over, papa cast off his allegiance, tucked a child under each arm, and marched upstairs with them, kicking and screaming. Setting them down at the nursery door, he said, shaking his finger at them in an awful manner,—

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