"Anything I can do?" Little Jim asked Mom politely. Mom let him pour the water into the glasses for me, and when we finished helping her, she said we could go out to the barn if we wanted to, but to be ready to come running as soon as she called us, which we probably would be on account of the oven was open right that minute and I could smell the baked chicken and knew that it was going to be a wonderful dinner.
"Hi, Mixy!" Little Jim said to our black and white cat which was lying in a cozy nest of her own at the bottom of the ladder which went up to our haymow. Little Jim stooped down to pet her, and she lifted her head without standing up and rubbed the sides of her pretty black and white face against his small hand, and mewed lazily, with half-closed blinking eyes.
I could hardly wait till we got up in the haymow and could climb up Pop's new ladder to the cupola to see if Snow-white was home again, so I started to go up the first ladder first, noticing that there was dirt on the ladder that might have been made by somebody with boots or shoes on that had dirty snow on them, and I knew Bob Till and Shorty Long had been there. How many pigeons had they caught? I wondered, and felt an angry feeling inside of me, 'cause if there was anything the boys of the Sugar Creek Gang didn't do,
it was we didn't go into anybody's barn and catch pigeons without the farmer asking us to, or without us first asking the farmer if we could.
Right that minute, while Little Jim was stroking Mixy, and I had my hand and one foot on the ladder ready to start up, I heard Pop's voice calling from somewhere up in the haymow, and saying to us. "Bill! Are you down there?"
"Yeah," I yelled back up to him, "Little Jim and I are both here. We're coming up!" Pop's voice had a worried sound in it, and also sounded like maybe I had done something I shouldn't have, or else had maybe left something undone which I should have done.
Then Pop's voice called down to us, and this time it sounded even more like I thought it had, when Pop said, "Where'd you put my new ladder? I can't find it anywhere."
New ladder! I thought, and wondered, What on earth! Why just yesterday I'd used it to climb up to Snow-white's nest and had left it right there, with the top of it resting on the beam on the south side of the cupola.
"It's right there!" I yelled up to Pop, "Right there in the center of the haymow, going up into the cupola."