VIII. WASTED EFFORT
Well, a good many things happened that vacation. Fan stayed over at Chicago and Herb Schwartz began studying to be a lawyer in Judge Hannan's law office. Miss Carter went off to a school somewhere but I don't know whether she was teaching or learning. Mamie Little was down at Betzville, on a farm, and Lucy never did tag along with us anyway, so it looked as if me and Swatty and Bony was going to have one of the best vacations we ever had. We used to go up to our cave and work on it. Scratch-Cat went with us mostly, but we didn't count her for a girl. So it looked pretty good.
Me and Swatty and Bony liked vacation because we never did have time to do all we wanted to do when school kept. What we wanted to do most was to finish up our cave in the clay bank up Squaw Creek. The Graveyard Gang had chased us away from it, but that was all right when vacation came because the Graveyard Gang kids all have to go to work when school is over. Some of them work for the farmers on the Island, and some work in the sawmills. So we went up and looked at the cave.
The cave was all right. The Graveyard Gang had fixed up the door and made it look better, and the stove was there, and they had made another room to the cave, in behind, only it wasn't all dug out yet. So me and Swatty and Bony and Scratch-Cat thought we would finish digging the new room and then, maybe, we would get a Gatling gun or something and put it in the cave, so we could hold the fort when school began again and the Graveyard Gang tried to chase us out again. Swatty said maybe his uncle would give him a Gatling gun for his birthday if he wrote to Derlingport and asked him. So me and Bony thought that sounded good, and we went ahead and dug at the cave.
Well, it looked like we was going to have the best vacation we ever had. I guess we ought to have known that when everything looked so bully something was going to spoil it all. It was too good to be right. Swatty's mother's cow went dry, and Swatty didn't have to go home early to get her from the pasture so he could deliver the milk around to the neighbors, and that was too good to be right; and Bony sort of stopped bawling at every little thing, and that wasn't like him. We ought to have knowed something was going to happen.
It was too nice. Most always, in vacation, my mother made me and my sister wash and wipe the dinner dishes at noon, and it didn't do any good to drop plates and break them, or whine, or get a bad headache all of a sudden; I had to wipe. There ought to be a law so boys couldn't wipe dishes, but there ain't; so about all I could ever do was to wipe them as mean as I could and leave the butter between the tines of the forks when my sister didn't wash it all out.
Well, when this vacation came I thought I'd have to start in wiping the doggone dishes again; but I didn't. My mother got back the hired girl we had off and on. Her name was Annie Dombacher and she was a strong girl and a happy one, and she didn't care any more for work than shucks. She could wash and wipe dishes and enjoy it, so maybe she was crazy; but what did I care if she was? She pitched in and even carried in her own wood, and made a jar of cookies every two days. I thought it was bully. I ought to have knowed better. I ought to have knowed that mothers don't get hired girls that will carry in the wood and everything unless they've got something mean they are going to do to a fellow pretty soon.
The first thing that happened was Bony. Me and Swatty had got so we didn't hardly think of Bony as a cry-baby any more, and here all at once he was different. He used to come yelling and “yoo-ooing” to meet us, and then one noon he come sort of sneaking, like a dog you've told to go home and thrown a stone at. He come up to us, mighty quiet and looking pretty sick, and didn't say nothing.
“What's the matter, Bony?” Swatty asked.