The public, in the guise of Aunt Keziah Kate, walked briskly into the kitchen, “Now then, ma man,” she was saying, “you shall have the rolling-pin and a bit o’——”
Then there was a start and an exclamation. “Why, my blessed fäather, and where is the boy? Surely ’n to goodness, I must have left ’e upstairs.”
While Aunt Keziah Kate returned to Granny’s room to look for the missing nephew, a wriggling Tommy, some inches of runnerin’ in his mouth, gave rise to distracting undulations in the roller-towel.
Back once more in the kitchen his Aunt instituted a thorough search; behind the rocking-chair covered with the big woolwork antimacassar; under the horse-hair sofa round which Daddy had walked in the new patent-leather shoes; in the kitchen cupboard; even in the coal-box and other probable and improbable places.
There was one breathless moment when Aunt Keziah Kate rinsed her fingers under the tap, and actually came to the roller-towel to dry them. Even then she did not find the missing boy.
By this time she was overcome with grief and sitting down on the sofa, in an attitude of despair, gave way to tears; leastways she produced a large handkerchief of granfäather’s from her overall pocket, covered her face with it, and rocked to and fro.
“How shall a tell his mother?” she wailed; “oh, ma lamb, ma blessed little lamb! His mother’ll have to get a new little boy as none of us knows, ’n poor little Tommy gone no one knows where.”
But this was the breaking strain. The roller-towel heaved and pulled, and with clenched fists out rushed Tommy.
“Hush, hush, hush!” he screamed. “I’m here, Aunt Keziah Kate, I’m right here.” Then in reply to her incredulous stare, “I was hidin’,” he explained, “hidin’ behind the runnerin’-towel,” and he jerked his thumb in the direction of the kitchen door.