“Hum,” said I, “I wouldn't rub it in, if I were you. I seem to recall a public day when old Gilman Temple, the committee man, asked you what was the largest bird that flies, and you said, 'The Kangaroo.'”
Old Hundred grinned. “That's the day the new boy laughed,” said he. “Remember the new boy? I mean the one that wore the derby which we used to push down over his eyes? Sometimes in the yard one of us would squat behind him, and then somebody else would push him over backward. We made him walk Spanish, too. But after that public day he and I went way down to the horse-sheds behind the meeting-house in the village, and had it out. I wonder why we always fought in the holy horse-sheds? The ones behind the town hall were never used for that purpose.”
This was true, but I couldn't explain it. “We couldn't always wait to get to the horse-sheds, as I remember it,” said I. “Sometimes we couldn't wait to get out of sight of school.”
I began hunting the neighborhood for the hide-and-seek spots. The barn and the carriage-shed across the road were still there, with cracks yawning between the mouse-gray boards. The shed was also ideal for “Anthony over.” And in the pasture behind the school stood the great boulder, by the sassafras tree. “I'll bet you can't count out,” said I.
“Pooh!” said Old Hundred. He raised his finger, pointed it at an imaginary line of boys and girls, and chanted—
“Acker, backer, soda cracker,
Acker, backer, boo!
If yer father chews terbacker,
Out goes you.
And now you're it,” he finished pointing at me.
I was not to be outdone. “Ten, twenty, thirty, forty,—” I began to mumble. Then, “One thousand!” I shouted.
“Bushel o' wheat and a bushel o' rye,
All 't 'aint hid, holler knee high!”
I looked for a stick, stood it on end, and let it fall. It fell toward the boulder. “You're up in the sassafras tree,” I said.