After that trouble with Aunt Eliza—the time she stayed up on the roof and was rained on—I had no misfortunes for nearly a week. Aunt Eliza went home as soon as she was well dried, and father said that he was glad she was gone, for she talked so much all the time that he couldn\'t hear himself think, though I don\'t believe he ever did hear himself think. I tried it once. I sat down where it was real still, and thought just as regular and steady as I could; but I couldn\'t hear the least sound. I suppose our brains are so well oiled that they don\'t creak at all when we use them. However, Mr. Travers told me of a boy he knew when he was a boy. His name was Ananias G. Smith, and he would run round all day without any hat on, and his hair cut very short, and the sun kept beating on his head all day, and gradually his brains dried so that whenever he tried to think, they would rattle and creak like a wheelbarrow-wheel when it hasn\'t any grease on it. Of course his parents felt dreadfully, for he couldn\'t go to school without disturbing everybody as soon as he began to think about[Pg 98] his lessons, and he couldn\'t stay home and think without keeping the baby awake.

As I was saying, there was pretty nearly a whole week that I kept out of trouble; but it didn\'t last. Boys are born to fly upward like the sparks that trouble, and yesterday I was "up to mischief again," as Sue said, though I never had the least idea of doing any mischief. How should an innocent boy, who might easily have been an orphan had things happened in that way, know all about cooking and chemistry and such, I should like to know.

It was really Sue\'s fault. Nothing would do but she must give a party, and of course she must have ice-cream. Now the ice-cream that our cake-shop man makes isn\'t good enough for her, so she got father to buy an ice-cream freezer, and said she would make the ice-cream herself. I was to help her, and she sent me to the store to order some salt. I asked her what she wanted of salt, and she said that you couldn\'t freeze[Pg 99] ice-cream without plenty of salt, and that it was almost as necessary as ice.

I went to the store and ordered the salt, and then had a game or two of ball with the boys, and didn\'t get home till late in the afternoon. There was Sue freezing the ice-cream, and suffering dreadfull............