Outside, the grass was wet and cold with dew, and he rolled up his britches so the cuffs wouldn’t get all soaked and set off across the pasture.
Going through the woods there were some spooky places, but he wasn’t scared too badly, although no one could go through the woods at night without being scared a little.
Finally he got to the blackberry patch and stood there wondering how he could get through the patch in the dark without ripping his clothes and getting his bare feet full of thorns. And, standing there, he wondered if what he’d seen was still there and all at once he knew it was, for he felt a friendliness come from it, as if it might be telling him that it still was there and not to be afraid.
He was just a little unnerved, for he was not used to friendliness. The only friend he had was Benny Smith, who was about his age, and he only saw Benny during school and then not all the time, for Benny was sick a lot and had to stay home for days on end, and since Benny lived way over on the other side of the school district he never saw him during vacation time at all.
By now his eyes were getting a little used to the darkness of the blackberry patch and he thought that he could see the darker outline of the thing that lay in there and he tried to understand how it could feel friendly, for he was pretty sure that it was just a thing, like a wagon or a silo-filler, and nothing alive at all. If he’d thought that it was alive, he’d have been really scared.
The thing kept right on feeling friendly toward him.
So he put out his hands and tried to push the bushes apart so he could squeeze in and see what it was. If he could get close to it, he thought, he could strike the matches in his pocket and get a better look at it.
“Stop,” said the friendliness, and at the word he stopped, although he wasn’t sure at all that he had heard the word.
“Don’t look too closely at us,” said the friendliness, and Johnny was just a little flustered at that, for he hadn’t been looking at anything at all-not too closely, that is.
“All right,” he said. “I won’t look at you.” And he wondered if it was some sort of a game, like hide-and-seek that he played at school.