I heard Poetry gasp and call back down, "Get WHAT?"
"The Hoosier Schoolmaster!" his mom called up. "It's on the second shelf in your library—it's a red book with gold lettering
on it;" then Mrs. Thompson said to me, "Having a new gentleman teacher in the community has made everybody interested in that very interesting book, so Mrs. Mansfield is going to review it for the Literary Society next Wednesday night."
Then Poetry's mom called up to him and asked, "Find it, Leslie?" which of course he hadn't and couldn't, anyway, not upstairs, 'cause right that minute it was lying open on two sticks stuck into Mr. Black's stomach at the bottom of Bumblebee hill. For some reason it didn't seem as if we wanted to tell Mrs. Thompson where it was, but it looked like we were in for it.
We couldn't come right out and tell her where the book was, 'cause she was like most of the other parents in Sugar Creek territory—she thought Mr. Black, who rode a fine horse and wore a brown leather jacket and riding boots and who could smile politely and tip his hat whenever he saw a Sugar Creek Gang mother, was a very fine gentleman, and certainly didn't know what a hard time the gang had been having with him.
Just that second Poetry called down and said, "Bill and I'll take it to her."
The gang didn't know Mrs. Mansfield very well, on account of she was a new person in the Sugar Creek territory and didn't have any boys, and was more interested in society than any of the gang's moms and was always reading important books on account of it maybe made her seem more important if she knew the names of all the important books and who wrote them.
Poetry came downstairs with his camera, coming down in a big hurry and saying to me in a business-like voice, "Let's get going, Bill," and made a dive for the door so his mom wouldn't see he didn't have The Hoosier Schoolmaster, not wanting her to ask where it was, so he wouldn't have to tell her.
Both Poetry and I were out of doors in a jiffy and the door was half shut behind us when Poetry's mother said, "Hadn't we better wrap it up, Leslie,—just in case you might accidentally drop it?"
"I promise you, I won't drop it," Poetry said, "besides we want to hurry. I want to take a picture of something before the sun gets too far down. Come on, Bill, hurry up!" Poetry squawked to me,