Part 1 (2/2)

Now, it was Carl's to go on, to seek the flowering.

Unconscious that he was the heir-apparent of the age, but decidedly conscious that the woodshed was dark, Carl finished the pile.

From the step of the woodshed he regarded the world with plaintive boredom.

”Ir-r-r-r-rving!” he called.

No answer from Irving, the next-door boy.

The village was rustlingly quiet. Carl skipped slowly and unhappily to the group of box-elders beside the workshop and stuck his finger-nails into the cobwebby crevices of the black bark. He made overtures for company on any terms to a hop-robin, a woolly worm, and a large blue fly, but they all scorned his advances, and when he yelled an ingratiating invitation to a pa.s.sing dog it seemed to swallow its tail and ears as it galloped off. No one else appeared.

Before the kitchen window he quavered:

”Ma-ma!”

In the kitchen, the m.u.f.fled pounding of a sad-iron upon the padded ironing-board.

”Ma!”

Mrs. Ericson's whitey-yellow hair, pale eyes, and small nervous features were shadowed behind the cotton fly-screen.

”Vell?” she said.

”I haven't got noth-ing to do-o.”

”Go pile the vood.”

”I piled piles of it.”

”Then you can go and play.”

”I _been_ playing.”

”Then play some more.”

”I ain't got n.o.body to play with.”

”Then find somebody. But don't you step vun step out of this yard.”

”I don't see _why_ I can't go outa the yard!”

”Because I said so.”

Again the sound of the sad-iron.

Carl invented a game in which he was to run in circles, but not step on the gra.s.s; he made the tenth inspection that day of the drying hazelnuts whose husks were turning to seal-brown on the woodshed roof; he hunted for a good new bottle to throw at Irving Lamb's barn; he mended his sling-shot; he perched on a sawbuck and watched the street.

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