Once I got thirsty, and went into the house for a drink of water, and Mom called out to the kitchen from the front room and said, “That you, Theodore?” which is Pop’s first name.
“Come on in a minute, Bill. Somebody wants to see you.”
“Who?” I said, wondering who it was and hoping it wasn’t anybody I didn’t know.
I peeked around the corner of the kitchen door and saw our lady Sunday school teacher. All of a sudden I felt good, although kinda bashful, on account of I was in my overalls and was probably very dusty and sweaty and maybe had my hair mussed up.
We said a few bashful words to each other, and she said, “I brought you that book of Indian stories,” and right away I was thinking of little “Snow-in-the-face” up North and wishing I could go up and see him again.
I thanked her for the book, and said, “Well--thanks, that’s swell--I mean, Thank you so very much,” which was what I thought Mom would want me to say in the way I said it.
“Don’t overwork,” she said to me with a smile in her voice, and I said “I will,” and was going out the kitchen door before I knew I’d said the wrong thing. She certainly was a good Sunday school teacher, and knew how to make a boy like her, and also want to come back to Sunday school every Sunday.
Just as I was about to let the door shut behind me quietly like I do when we have company, I heard the news on the radio in the front room, and I knew that maybe Mom and my teacher had been listening to the radio when I came in, and had turned it low for a jiffy. One of the things I heard was about a little St. Paul, Minnesota girl named Marie Ostberg having been kidnapped and a reward being offered by the father... Then I heard the announcer mention something that I thought was a wonderful idea and it was: “Duluth--the hayfever colony--will have thousands of new visitors this year, because the heavy rains throughout the nation have made it the worst for pollen in many years. Thousands will be going north...”
That would give us _two_ reasons why some of the gang ought to get to go--overwork and hayfever. Dragonfly had the hayfever, and if I worked awful hard, I might overwork, although it’d be easier to have hayfever if I could only get it.
Right that second, while I was picking up the hoe to go back to the potatoes again, I heard our car horn and Pop was at the gate, waiting for me to come and open it. Boy, was I ever glad I was hot and sweaty and that there were four or five long rows of potatoes already hoed which Pop could see himself.