I strained my ears hard to hear what Mom would answer, and this is what she said, "All right, Theodore, I'll be patient; but just the same, I'm worried."
"Don't you worry one little tiny bit, Mother," Pop said. "A boy's heart is like a garden. If you plant good seed in it, and cultivate and plow it and water it with love, he'll come out all right," which made me like my pop a lot, only I didn't have time to think about it 'cause right that very second almost, I heard Mom say in a worried voice, "Yes, dear, but weeds grow in a garden without anyone's planting them," which made me feel all saddish inside, and for some reason I could see our own garden which every spring and summer had all kinds of weeds—ragweeds, smartweeds, and big ugly Jimson-weeds, and lots of other kinds. Right that second, I remembered something my pop had said to me once last summer which was, "Say, Bill, do you know how to keep the big weeds out of our garden,
without having to pull up or cut out even one of them?" and when I said, "No, how, Pop?" he said, "Just kill all of them while they are little."
Well, I didn't want Mom or Pop to know I'd heard them talking about me, so I sneaked out the back door very carefully and started to talking in a friendly voice to Mixy, saying to her, "Listen, Mixy, do you know how to keep all the great big mice out of our barn? You just catch all the mice while they're little—it's as easy as pie."
Mixy looked up from her empty milk pan and mewed and looked down at her pan again, and looked up at me again and mewed again, and then walked over to me and rubbed her sides against my boots like she liked me a lot. For some reason, I thought Mixy was a very nice cat right that minute, so I said to her, "I'm awful glad you like me, Mixy, even if nobody else around this place does."
Pretty soon, Pop and I were out doing the rest of the chores while Mom was getting supper. Almost right away, it began to get dark, and we went in to supper. "Wash your hands and go get Charlotte Ann," Mom said to me. "I think she's awake now."
Charlotte Ann, you know, is my baby sister, and even though she is a girl, is a pretty swell baby; in fact, she's wonderful.
In a few minutes Pop and Mom and Charlotte Ann and I were all sitting around our kitchen table in the lamp light. We had two kerosene lamps lit, one of them behind me on the high mantel-shelf above my head, and the other on another mantel-shelf above the water pail in the corner.
We always bowed our heads at our house before every meal, different ones of us asking the blessing, whichever one of us Pop called on. When I was little I'd said a little poem prayer, but didn't do it any more on account of Pop thought I was too big, and since I was an actual Christian, in spite of having Jimson-weeds in my heart, I always prayed whenever Pop told me to, only I hoped that he wouldn't ask me to tonight. Pop looked around the table at all of us, and Mom helped Charlotte Ann fold her hands, which she didn't want to do, but kept wiggling and squirming and reaching for things on the table, which were too far away, "Well, let's see—whom shall we ask to pray, tonight? ah—"
Pop's "ah—" was cut short by the telephone ringing our ring, which meant that one of us had to answer the phone. "I'll get it," I said, "maybe it's one of the gang—"