“It’s not tomorrow,” she said. “It’s today. This letter was written yesterday. She’ll be out on the five o’clock bus this afternoon.”
The boys were deeply absorbed in a marvelous invention that would make an iceboat out of an old baby carriage. Jane grinned and put her finger to her lips. “Don’t tell them,” she said to Mom. “They weren’t paying attention to what we said.”
She held out her arms for Butch. “Come, my little brown friend. Let’s go down to the pier and catch flies.” She stretched out on the hot boards and dreamed in the sun. Butchie scrambled around on the braces under the pier, snatching at shadows and frightening schools of timid minnows. In a little while the boys came down and jumped into the boat and rowed away. Janie stretched lazily. Two weeks from today, she thought, I’ll be back in school. It doesn’t seem possible. Why the summer has just begun. I don’t like to leave this. The sky will be just as blue when we’re gone, and the water will be just as warm. Of course school won’t be too bad, and this year there’ll be dancing class. I’ll waltz and waltz (she dreamed), in a pink tulle gown, with pale pink ostrich feathers in my hair.
Bump.... The boys banged into the pier full force with the boat and Janie sat straight up.
“Hey, hey!” she yelled. “What are you trying to do, break the pier down? Why are you back so soon? I thought you were going fishing.”
The boys laughed at her confusion. “We caught something right away,” said Billy, “so we brought it back. Hold it up James.”
It was a small green turtle. His curved green legs pawed the air as James held him up, and his under shell was red, green, and yellow in a most interesting pattern.
“I’m going to bring him back to town and give him to Robin,” said James. “He can keep him in his bathtub.”
“I guess his Grandmother will have something to say about that,” said Jane primly.
“Well,” James argued, “why should she care if the turtle stays in the bathtub? Turtles are clean. They’re almost the cleanest creatures in the whole world, and she could lift him up if someone wanted to take a bath, couldn’t she?”