Next morning Mark and Plunk and I went out to the Wigglesworth farm to see Rock. We walked right into the yard like we always do, now that Jethro thinks we’re working for him, but Rock wasn’t in sight. Jethro was, though. He was fussing around the side yard and we walked over to where he was.
“Howdy, Jethro!” says Mark, and Jethro turned his face toward us. He had one of the biggest and best black eyes I ever saw. It was a regular socdolager of a black eye—one of the kind that runs way down on your cheek and that starts to wiggling and twitching every once in a while like a blob of jelly.
“Howdy!” says Jethro, short-like.
“Run into somethin’?” says I.
“Yes,” says he, and felt of his eye.
“I run into one of them things once,” says Plunk, who talks sometimes when he ought to keep his mouth shut. “There was a boy on the other end of it, and he was mad at me.”
“There wasn’t no boy on the other end of this,” says Jethro.
“Where’s Rock?” says Mark.
“Around the house somewheres,” says Jethro. “Yell and he’ll come.”
So we left Jethro and went around back of the house and yelled for Rock. In a minute he came, and you could see right off that he was either sick or something. He wasn’t exactly pale, but he looked like he’d like to be pale. His eyes was kind of big and hollow like he hadn’t slept much.