To my tangled-up surprise she had in her hands a shovel like the one she had been using to dig in the ground. She looked all around in a sort of dazed circle, not seeing us at first, then she started off in a hurry toward the direction of Strawberry Hill.
Say, quick as anything and without knowing I was going to do it, I whistled a sharp bobwhite whistle that flew as straight as an arrow right toward her. It made her stop stock-still and stand and stare. Then her eyes fell on Charlotte Ann, whom Mom had dressed special for the visit in a little blue organdy playsuit that made her look as cute as a bug’s ear and even cuter.
Say, Frances Everhard dropped her shovel like it had had a hot handle and gasped an excited gasp like women who like babies do when they see a pretty one and said, “You darling baby!” and started to make a beeline for her, like she was going to pick her up, then she stopped, whirled around fast and disappeared into the tent.
For just a second I had a queer fluttering feeling in my heart and it was kinda like about fifty pretty black and yellow, swallow-tail butterflies had been fluttering in front of my eyes in the bright sunlight and then all of a sudden had flown toward the green tent and disappeared all at once. It was the same kind of happy feeling I get when I hear a wood thrush singing but can’t see it and wish I could.
A jiffy later she was back outside again with a folding camera. For a while she didn’t act like anybody was around except Charlotte Ann. Her extra-pretty face was all lit up and she seemed very happy. “She looks almost enough like my own Elsa to be a twin,” she told Mom. “In fact, almost enough to be her.” Then she sighed a heavy sigh and so did Mom.
Well, it was a very interesting visit we had that afternoon at the ranch-house tent. As soon as Charlotte Ann got over being a little bit bashful, she let Mrs. Everhard hold her and take all kinds of pictures of her: in the playpen, in the jumper swing, lying on a blanket and doing different things. She had her bobwhite husband take a picture of the two of them while she held Charlotte Ann on her lap.
Everybody had a good time except me on account of I like to keep my mind in a boy’s world, and nobody could do that when there were three grown-ups and a baby around. So I asked if they would like me to get some fresh, cold water from the spring and when they said “Yes,” I took a thermos jug and shot like a red-headed arrow out past the pawpaw bushes toward the old overhanging linden tree above the spring.
I was thinking as I ran that the mystery of the little holes being dug all over Sugar Creek territory was all explained and it looked like the gang would have to scout around for some other problem to set our seven different kinds of brains to working on. I didn’t know as I ran that on account of Charlotte Ann and the woman’s dead baby looking so much alike I was going to have to put my own brain to work in a very special way before the summer was over.