Little Tom looked, and swallowed and got a very scared expression on his face, and started to say something, and then stopped.
"'Smatter?" I said, and he said, "Nothing, only--"
"Only what?" I asked him.
"Only—only Bob's got a terrible temper, and he's already mad at me."
Say, when I saw the scared expression on that little guy's face, I realized that if I let Snow-white out of that cage, Tom would maybe get a terrible beating-up-on from his big brother, and it'd be my fault. Just that minute, Pop and Mom came out of the side door of Tom's house, and it was time for us to go home. Mom was going to hurry with our own dinner, which had nearly all been cooked yesterday, and we were going to bring some nice chicken soup back in the car for Tom's mom's dinner, and also some chicken for Tom, himself.
I still didn't know who was coming to our house for dinner, and whoever did come would have to wait awhile, on account of Mom would have to finish preparing it. "Who's coming to our house for dinner?" I asked, and Mom said, as we all started down the road toward Little Jim's house, "A certain very fine gentleman named Little Jim Foote, of the Sugar Creek Gang,"—and was I ever glad? But as the car glided down the white road, I kept thinking of my pretty Snow-white in Bob Till's cage, and I knew that Bob would maybe kill her along with all the other pigeons and sell them at the Sugar Creek Poultry Shop....
Just that second, just as we were getting close to Little Jim Foote's house, Little Jim said, "Hey, Bill! Look! There goes a white pigeon, flying all by itself."
I looked out the car window, and sure enough there was, a snow white pigeon, with its white wings flapping, and it was diving along
through the Sugar Creek sky right past our car and straight for Sugar Creek and in the direction of our house on the other side of the woods. All of a sudden I got a choked-up feeling in my throat, 'cause I just knew that was my very own Snow-white, and that Tom Till liked me so well he was going to run the risk of getting a terrible beating-up-on by his brother Bob, by opening their pigeon cage and letting Snow-white out so she could fly home.
For some reason all of a sudden, I liked Little red-haired Tom Till so well that I wished I could do something very wonderful for him and his sick mother. I just kept my eyes strained on the sky above Sugar Creek and the woods where I'd seen Snow-white disappear, when I heard Little Jim say to me beside me, "Nearly all the snow's melted off our house now."