"He ought to have a hat on," Dragonfly said. "He'll catch his death of cold with his bald head."
"Or he might get stung on the head by a bumblebee," Circus said, and Little Jim spoke up all of a sudden and said, like he was almost
mad at us, "Can anybody help it that he gets bald? My pop's beginning to lose some of his hair on top...." Then he grabbed his stick which he had leaned up against the beech tree for a jiffy, and struck very fiercely at a tall brown mullein stalk that was standing there in a little open space, and the seeds scattered in every direction, one of them hitting me hard right on my freckled face just below my right eye, and stung like everything; then Little Jim started running as fast as he could go in the direction of the sycamore tree, like he had been mad at us for something we'd done wrong. In fact, when he said that, I felt a kind of a sickish feeling inside of me, like maybe I had done something wrong. I grabbed my stick and started off on the run after Little Jim, calling out to the rest of the gang to hurry up, and saying, "Last one to the sycamore tree is a cow's tail," and in a jiffy we were running and jumping and diving around bushes and trees and leaping over snow-covered brushpiles toward the old sycamore tree and the mouth of the cave, which was there, and which as you know is a very long cave, and comes out at the other end in the cellar of Old Man Paddler's cabin.
3
Of course everybody knows about Old Man Paddler, the kindest old long whiskered old man who ever lived, and who was the best friend the Sugar Creek Gang ever had. He lived up in the hills above Sugar Creek, and almost every week the gang went up to see him—sometimes in the summer-time we went nearly every day. We went in the winter, too, on account of he lived all by himself and we had to go up to take him things which our moms were always cooking for him, and also we had to be sure he didn't get sick 'cause there wouldn't be anybody there to take care of him or call the doctor for him on account of he didn't have any telephone....
After a little while we were tired of running so fast, so we slowed down, it being easier to be a cow's tail than to get all out of breath. Poetry and I were side by side most of the time with Little Jim walking along behind us and with Little Tom Till and Circus and Dragonfly swishing on ahead of us. Once when Little red-haired Tom and Little Jim were beside each other behind Poetry and me, I heard Little Jim say to red-haired Tom, "Mom says for you to be ready a little early tomorrow morning, on account of the choir has to practice their anthem again before they sing."
I knew what Little Jim was talking about 'cause his folks stopped at Tom's house every Sunday morning about nine o'clock, and Little Tom got in and rode to Sunday School with them in their big maroon and grey car. Little Jim's very pretty mom was the pianist at our church, and had to be always on time. Little Jim's words came out kinda jerkily like he was doing something that made him short of breath while he talked. I turned around quick to see, and sure enough, he was shuffling along, making rabbit tracks with his stick, and saying his words every punch of his stick into the snow.
Little Tom answered Little Jim by saying, "O de koke," which is the same as saying, "Okey doke," which means "O.K." which is what most anybody says when he means "All right," meaning Tom Till would be ready early, and that when Little Jim's folks came driving up to their front gate tomorrow, Little Tom, with his best clothes on, would come running out of their dilapidated old unpainted house, carrying his New Testament, which Old Man Paddler had bought for him.... Then they'd all swish away together to Sunday School.