"I guess you could call it a needle, Oley," she told him. "An ice needle."
Oley instinctively waited until Momma's back was turned before taking the nice neatle to try its biting powers; and instinctively took it out of the kitchen before starting his experiments.
As he passed the cellar door he heard a soft gurgling and promptly changed course. Pulling open the door with difficulty, he seated himself on the cellar stairs to watch a delightful new spectacle—frothing, gurgling water making its way across the floor towards the stairs. It looked wonderfully dirty and brown, and to Oley it was an absorbing phenomenon. It never occurred to him to tell Momma.
Suddenly above him the cellar door slammed open, and Poppa came charging down the stairs, narrowly missing the small figure, straight into the rising waters, intent, though Oley couldn't know it, on reaching the drain pipe in the far corner of the cellar to plug it before water from the spring rains could back up farther and really flood the cellar out.
Halfway across the cellar, Poppa reached up and grasped the dangling overhead light to turn it on, in order to see his way to the drain—and suddenly came to frozen, rigid, gasping stop as his hand clamped firmly over the socket.
Little Oley watched. There was juice in the cellar. Poppa had hold of an electric. Was Poppa trying to make the shorts he needed?
Oley wasn't sure. He thought it probable. And from the superior knowledge of his four years, Oley already knew a better way to make shorts. Neatles make good shorts. Juice don't do so well.
Suddenly, Oley decided to prove his point: Nice neatles probably made even better shorts than other neatles—and there was a big electric running up the side of the stairs—an electric fat enough to make a real good shorts. Maybe lots of shorts.
Raising his nice neatle, Oley took careful aim and plunged it through the 220-volt stove feeder cable.