"I declare, Jodie, you're gonna wear out the soles of your boots pacing the floor! Please sit down. He can't harm the child, or any of us—not with us and everybody else in the settlement watching."
In a few more weeks, after Papa got the carpenters started on building the new store, he quit pacing the floor every night.
And when the store was finished, Papa helped me draw two pictures of it to send off in the mail to my big brothers, who just kept on staying in the army.
Clyde wrote back that he was keeping his picture in a knapsack. Walker wrote that he was going to take his with him all the way to France. He didn't say when he was going or how long he might stay, and Mama almost cried.
The very next day—right in the middle of a tea party I was having with my doll and Mierd's old cat Nero—I heard Mama laughing and crying, all at the same time! I hid the tea cakes from Nero and ran to see about Mama. She was talking on the phone to Papa and whispered to me what it was about.
I ran quick to tell Grandma Ming.
"Grandma! Grandma! Kaiser Bill ain't gonna cut off my hands! Yours neither!" I was fairly yelling as I dashed into Grandma Ming's house and up to the side of her bed.
"Bandershanks, baby, what in this round world are you talking about?"
"The phone ringed, and Mama was just a-laughing and a-crying and couldn't hardly talk! I asked her, 'What's the matter?' And she said, 'The war's over!' I said, 'Is the old Kaiser coming?' And Mama said, 'O Lord, no!'" I stopped a minute to catch my breath. "So, Grandma, Kaiser Bill ain't coming! He ain't gonna cross the ocean to cut off little kids' and old women's arms and legs!"
Grandma didn't say a word.