“Don’t tell your mother. I aren’t going to tell my mother, you bet. By and by she’ll find the holes and think they just wore through naturally.”
“Well,” said Sammy, with a sigh, “I guess I’ve slid down enough for to-day, anyway. Good-bye, you fellers, I’ll see you later.”
He did not feel at all as cheerful as he spoke. He was really smitten with remorse, for this was almost a new suit he had on. He wished heartily that he had put on that cowboy suit—even his bathing suit—before joining that coasting party.
“That big feller,” grumbled Sammy, “is a foxy one, he is! He didn’t wear through his pants, you bet. But me—”
Sammy was very much lowered in his own estimation over this mishap. He was by no means so smart as he had believed himself to be. He felt gingerly from time to time of the holes in his trousers. They were of such a nature that they could scarcely be hidden.
“Crickey!” he muttered, “she sure will give me fits.”
The boys he had been playing with disappeared. Sammy secured his bag and suddenly found it very, very heavy. Evening was approaching. The sun was so low now that its almost level rays shone into his eyes as he plodded along the road.
A farmer going to Milton market in an auto-truck, its load covered with a brown tarpaulin, passed Sammy. If it had not been for the holes in his trousers, and what his mother would do and say about it, the boy surely would have asked the farmer for a ride back home!
His hesitancy cost him the ride. And he met nobody else on this road he was traveling. He struggled on, his courage beginning to ebb. He had eaten the last crumbs of his lunch. After the pond was out of sight behind him the runaway saw no dwellings at all. The road had entered a wood, and that wood grew thicker and darker as he advanced.
Fireflies twinkled in the bushes. There was a hum of insect life and somewhere a big bullfrog tuned his bassoon—a most eerie sound. A bat flew low above his head and Sammy dodged, uttering a startled squawk.