I guess I tried to say I would, but I couldn't even swallow. I didn't know how I'd even get away from there, because Miss Carter might stay until I said I would or something, and I couldn't work my voice: it had dried up, I guess. But I didn't have to say anything. Miss Carter put her hand on my head and let it stay there a minute, and then she smiled and jumped up as if everything was fixed and I had said I would, and she said: “All right, George; you can go home.” And I went, you bet.
Well, that settled Miss Carter with me! She had been one of the three women I thought were dandy, because the other two were my mother and my grandmother that everybody calls “Ladylove” because she is so dear, but after that I was done with Miss Carter. Anybody that would talk to a fellow about his girl as if she was his girl! I guessed maybe I would n't go back to school any more unless I could get transferred to another teacher's room.
So I felt pretty mean and sore and everything when I got home, and I started around to the side yard, where Swatty and Bony were finishing the capstan, and all at once my mother came to the end of the porch and pulled the vines aside and said:
“George, come here!”
I tried to think what I had done to make her say it like that, but I couldn't, only a fellow is always doing something, so it didn't matter much what it was. I went around and onto the porch.
“Yes, ma'am,” I said.
“George,” my mother said in the way they call severe, “Mrs. Martin was here.”
“Yes'm,” I said, for I didn't know what else to say, because I didn't know why Mrs. Martin had been there. I knew who Mrs. Martin was and where she lived, because she was the lady that had the lame boy that would never grow up but would always be about five years old. He was thirteen years old, and he played with a rag doll and always stayed in his yard, but sometimes he looked out between the fence-pickets. Sometimes when I went downtown on errands and got a nickel for it and bought some candy, I'd give him a piece when I went by, and so would Swatty and so would Bony. Sometimes he'd say, “Where you get that ball? I want it!” just like a little baby, and if we didn't give it to him, he'd cry, but we couldn't give him our ball, could we? So when we went by his house we hid anything he might cry for, so he wouldn't cry for it. That was all I knew about Mrs. Martin, only she was a widow and she was cross sometimes. Anyway, sometimes she looked cross.
“George,” my mother said—and I guess she never spoke to me any sadder than she did then—“Mrs. Martin told me something I would never have believed of my boy. I have always thought you were a kind-hearted, considerate boy. Oh, George, why—why did you strike that poor, helpless little cripple?”
“I did not! I didn't do any such thing! It ain't so!” I said, because I knew she meant I had hit Sammy Martin.