“But I must—Oh, there he is under the table.”
On being called and asked to sit with the others, Willie looked up and shook his head. “I don’t want to.”
He seemed so content playing with his little mounds of dirt that Judy didn’t insist. The children were waiting. She set bowls of wet clay and tubes of paint on the table and distributed pipe cleaners.
“See how pliable they are. They bend easily to any shape and with a pair of scissors can be cut any length. I’m going to try to make a man out of this wire and fill in the face with clay.”
The little group became interested. They suggested their own ideas, horses and snakes, violins and trombones. All were soon completely absorbed. Judy, her head bent, was delicately painting the eyes and mouth of her figurine. A stream of icy water descended on her back. Jumping from shock and surprise, she lost her balance and fell from the backless bench, her skirt flying ignominiously over her head. The children were convulsed with laughter as the water continued its steady stream.
Rising clumsily to her feet, she looked around for the cause. There a few feet back of her sat Willie holding the garden hose while the children frantically cried, “Turn it off!”
For one brief moment Judy stared at the little boy’s cherubic face. The words of Gilbert and Sullivan flashed through her mind, “Let the punishment fit the crime.” She grasped the hose and turned it on Willie. “Now you know how it feels to get soaked to the skin with all your clothes on.”
The children shouted their approval. “He deserves worse than that—” “Always tinkering with that hose—”
Judy asked the children to go back and finish their projects. With as much dignity as she could command, she and Willie, both dripping pools as they walked, went toward the barn. Surprisingly enough, Willie hadn’t uttered a sound nor shed a tear! She helped the boy change into a pair of shorts discovered among the costumes and Lynne’s discarded bathrobe did service for her. Together they hung their wet clothes on the fence where the hot sun would soon dry them.
“Willie,” she said, “let’s sit on the grass for a few minutes before we go back to the others.” She studied the boy and wondered what went on in that little head, behind the woebegone little face.