“Yes, that’s hers,” Mom said. “I’d better drive right back with it. Her doctor wants her to have fresh orange juice three times a day.”
“I—it’s almost time to start supper,” Pop said, looking at his watch. He explained to Mom about the special prayer meeting for men at the church, then gave me a quick order which was, “Bill, you take your bike and ride over to the Tills’ with these oranges while your mother starts supper.”
And that’s how come I ran into a situation that gave me a chance to prove in several, very fast hair-raising adventures that Little Tom Till and I were actually created equal.
I got to find out, also, who the old witch who lived in the green tent really was—and also why she lived there.
9
WHEN I knocked at Mrs. Till’s back screen door, she was in the kitchen ironing something with an old fashioned iron iron with an all-iron handle. I could see it was a pair of Little Tom Till’s old, many times-patched jeans.
As soon as I’d given her the oranges and she had thanked me, she said, “You have such a nice mother, Bill. Such a nice mother.”
I shifted from one bare foot to the other, swallowed something in my throat which hadn’t been there a second before, and wished I could think of something polite to say, and couldn’t at first, then managed to think of:
“Tom has a nice mother, too.” I noticed Little Jim’s brown envelope with his awkward handwriting on it, lying on the other end of the ironing board. She’d probably read it, I thought, and then I got a little mixed up in my mind as I said, and was sorry for it afterward: