Pepsy sat down on a rock by the roadside partly to rest and partly because she did not want to go home. She knew, or she ought to have known, that Aunt Jamsiah was pretty sure to be lenient about a harmless transgression with so generous a motive. But the warning voice from that unseen bridge disconcerted her. It was not long after she was seated that her head hung down and soon the gentle comforter of sleep came to her and she lay there, pillowing her head on her little thin arm.
But the comforter did not stay long, for Pepsy dreamed a dream. She dreamed that all the people of the village, Simeon Drowser, Nathaniel Knapp, Darius Dragg, the sneering Deadwood Gamely, and even the faithless Arabella Bellison, the school teacher, were pointing fingers a yard long at her and saying, “You have to go back to the big brick building. You have to go back, you have to go back.” On the big doughnut jar in the “refreshment parlor” sat Licorice Stick saying, “You have to go back the next time it thunders.” She shook her fist at Licorice Stick and called him a Smarty and said she would not go back, but they all laughed and sang:
“You have to go back,
You have to go back.”
Miss Bellison was the worst of all....
“You have to go back,
You have to—”
With a sudden start Pepsy sat up on the rock, wide awake,
“—go back,
You have to go back.”