This presently attracted Will's attention.
"What have you, young one, been up to now?" he queried, in a tone half
amused and half rebuking.
Ted's eyes sparkled mischievously.
"O, nothing much!" said he, bending his curly head over the remains
of a bird's egg, which he suddenly discovered in the grass. But his
denial was not intended to deny so much as to provoke further inquiry.
He was a persistent, and sometimes troublesome practical joker; but he
usually wanted Will to know of his pranks beforehand, that Will's
steady good sense might keep him from anything too extravagant in
the way of trickery.
"O, come off now, Ted," exclaimed Will, grinning. "Tell me what it is,
or I'll go and find out, and spoil the fun."
"It's just a little trap I've set for a fellow I want to catch,"
replied Ted, thus adjured.
"Well?" said Will, expectantly.
"Well!" continued the joker. "I've set a tub of 'crick' water--with
lots of mud in it--right under the seat up there, and fixed the bushes
and vines round it so that it hardly shows. I've sawed the seat almost
through, from underneath, so that when a fellow sits down on it--and
after climbing the hill, you know, he always sits down hard--well,
you can see just what's going to happen."
"O, yes," grumbled the elder boy, "I see _just_ what's going to happen.
_I'll_ have to fix a new seat there to-morrow; for _you_ can't make
a decent job of it. But, look here, I don't think much of that for
a trick: There's nothing clever about it, and you may catch the wrong
person.
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