Mrs. Brenner sighed. She pulled off the sticky shoes and rose stiffly.
"Go get in bed," she said.
"Aw, Ma, I want to stay up with my butterflies," the boy pleaded. Two big tears rolled down his fat cheeks. In his queer, clouded world he had learned one certain fact. He could almost always move his mother with tears.
But this time she was firm. "Do as I told you!" she ordered him. "Mebbe if you're in bed your father won't be thinking about you. And I'll try to dry these shoes afore he thinks about them." She took the grimy box from his resisting fingers, and, holding it in one hand, pulled him to his feet and pushed him off to his bedroom.
When she had closed the door on his wail she returned and laid the box on the shelf. Then she hurried to gather up the shoes. Something on her hand as she put it out for the sodden shoes caught her eye and she straightened, holding her hand up where the feeble light from the shelf caught it.
"I've cut myself," she said aloud. "There's blood on my hand. It must 'a' been on those lacings of Tobey's."
The old woman in the corner roused. "Blood!" she screeched. "Olga! Blood on his hands!"
Mrs. Brenner jumped. "You old screech-owl!" she cried. She wiped her hand quickly on her dirty apron, and held it up again to see the cut. But there was no cut on her hand! Where had that blood come from? From Tobey's shoes?
And who was it that had screamed on the hill? She felt herself enwrapped in a mist of puzzling doubts.
She snatched up the shoes, searching them with agonized eyes. But the wet and pulpy mass had no stain. Only the wet sands and the slimy water-weeds of the beach clung to them.