No answer.
The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked over them about the
room; then she put them up and looked out under them. She seldom or
never looked _through_ them for so small a thing as a boy; they were
her state pair, the pride of her heart, and were built for style, not
service she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well.
She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not fiercely, but
still loud enough for the furniture to hear:
Well, I lay if I get hold of you I ll
She did not finish, for by this time she was bending down and punching
under the bed with the broom, and so she needed breath to punctuate the
punches with. She resurrected nothing but the cat.
I never did see the beat of that boy!
She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out among the
tomato vines and jimpson weeds that constituted the garden. No Tom. So
she lifted up her voice at an angle calculated for distance and shouted:
Y-o-u-u TOM!
There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just in time to seize
a small boy by the slack of his roundabout and arrest his flight.
There! I might a thought of that closet. What you been doing in
there?
Nothing.
Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth. What _is_ that
truck?
I don t know, aunt.
Well, I know. It s jam that s what it is. Forty times I ve said if you
didn t let that jam alone I d skin you. Hand me that switch.
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