Well, that was our chance to make a quick search for the wad of oiled paper which is what we had come there for in the first place. I remembered just about where I had tossed it and in only a few seconds Poetry hissed, “Here it is! Here’s our clue!”
His excitement about the thing and his being so sure, had built up my mind to expect to see something wonderful inside that oiled paper. Anybody who would go to the trouble to steal and deliver a watermelon secretly in a boat at night, would probably leave something in the melon worth a hundred times more than the melon itself.
There in the shadow of the linden tree, to the music of the bubbling water in the spring, and the singing of the crickets, Poetry held the flashlight while my trembling fingers unfolded that crumpled piece of oiled paper, and spread it out.
“There’s printing on it!” Poetry exclaimed under his breath.
And there was—actually was!
“What does it say?” I exclaimed.
“It says—it says, ‘Eat more Eatmore Bread. It’s better for you. The more Eatmore you eat, the more you like it.’”
It was disgusting; very disappointing also.
“Smell it,” Poetry exclaimed, which I did, and say!
Boy oh boy, there was really a perfume odor around the place now! If Dragonfly had been there, I thought again—or rather, started to think and didn’t get to finish, ’cause all of a sudden from the crest of the hill I heard a rustling of last year’s dry leaves, saw a flashlight leading the way and a spindle-legged barefoot boy in red-striped pajamas coming down the incline to the spring. Imagine that! Dragonfly in his night clothes! What on earth!