It seemed like Mom, by being a friend to Bob and Tom Till’s mother, was helping to prove that “all men are created equal.”
“All men are created equal,” was still in my mind when I reached the bottom of the ladder. For some reason, though, it didn’t seem right that Little red-haired, fiery-tempered, freckle-faced Tim Till was as equal as I was. We might look a lot alike to anybody who saw us dressed in the same kind of clothes, but I was not a watermelon thief—and he was, I thought—and the first chance I got I was going to prove to him that even though all men, boys especially, might be created equal, when one boy sneaked out into another boy’s melon patch, stole a melon, and sold it to a girl scout troupe, the other boy was equal to giving him a sound thrashing.
I was wondering whether I ought to tell Pop about what the girl scout leader had told me, when I heard Mom’s voice calling from up near the walnut tree, “Is Bill out there somewhere?”
I almost jumped out of my bare feet when I heard Pop answer her from just outside the barn door, “He’s helping me with the chores!”
Mom called back to say that she wanted me to take care of Charlotte Ann while she drove Mrs. Till on home.
It wasn’t easy, taking care of that wriggling, impatient little rascal of a sister. Whatever makes a two-year-old baby sister so hard to take care of anyway? And why do they always want to run away from you and get into dangerous situations the very second your back is turned? I hadn’t any sooner sat down in the big rope swing under the walnut tree, and started to pump myself a little, than I heard Pop yelling from some direction or other—in fact from away up at the pignut tree—and how in the world did he get that far away so quick?—yelling for me to “Run quick and get Charlotte Ann away from Old Red Addie’s fence.”
I swung out of the swing in a scared hurry, ’cause my eyes told me that that cute little reddish-brown-haired baby sister of mine was not only near the hog-lot fence but was actually trying to crawl through it to get inside—Charlotte Ann not being afraid of a single animal on our farm—not even one.
I scattered our seventy-eight hens in even more directions than that as I flew to Charlotte Ann’s rescue. Mom would have a conniption fit if I let that little sister of mine get her clean dress soiled and her best shoes muddy in Red Addie’s apartment-house yard—especially if she decided the mud puddle was a good place to walk in, which she probably would.
I got there just in time. Honestly! That child! You can hardly do anything else when you are looking after her. Mom calls it “baby-sitting” when she asks me to take care of her, but it isn’t! It’s baby-running, and keeping your eyes peeled every second or you won’t even have a baby sister. She’ll be gone in a flash, and you have to look all over for her—like the time she got lost in the woods and a terrible cyclone roared into our territory and trees were uprooted and fell in every direction and—But you know all about that if you’ve read the story, “The Green Tent Mystery at Sugar Creek.”
Well, after what seemed like too long a time, Mom got back from driving Mrs. Till home, and I went to the car to help her carry in the groceries and other things, and that’s when we found the brown paper bag with oranges in it, which Mrs. Till had accidentally left on the floor in the back, and Mom hadn’t seen it.