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Martha,” Mrs. Singer said, leaning over and putting her hands on the edge of the tub. “I’m not a gossip, and I don’t want you to think I’m anything like one. But I thought you would want to hear the truth.”
    “What is it?” Ma asked.
    “Mr. Stroup is out at that Mrs. Weatherbee’s this very minute,” she said quickly. “And that’s not all, either. He’s been out there at her house all day long, too. Just him and her!”
    “How do you know?” Ma asked, straightened up.
    “I passed there and saw him with my own eyes, Martha,” Mrs. Singer said. “I decided right then and there that it was my duty to tell you.”
    Mrs. Weatherbee was a young grass widow who lived all alone just outside of town. She had been married for only two months when her husband left her one morning and never came back.
    “What is Morris Stroup doing out there at that place?” Ma said, raising her voice just as if she were blaming everything on Mrs. Singer.
    “That’s not for me to say, Martha,” she said, backing away from Ma. “But I considered it my Christian duty to warn you.”
    She left the yard and hurried out of sight around the corner of the house. Ma leaned over and sloshed the water in the tub until a lot of it splashed out. After a minute or two she turned around and started across the yard, drying her hands on her apron as she went.
    “William,” she said, calling me, “you go inside the house and stay there until I come back. I want to think you are obeying me, William. Do you hear me, William?”
    “I hear you, Ma,” I said, backing toward the door.
    She walked out of the yard in a hurry and went up the street. That was the direction to take to get to Mrs. Weatherbee’s house. She lived about three-fourths of a mile from where we did.
    I stood on the back porch out of sight until Ma crossed the street at the next corner, and then I ran around the house and cut across Mr. Joe Hammond’s vacant lot toward the creek. I knew a short cut to Mrs. Weatherbee’s house, because I had passed by it a lot of times going rabbit hunting with Handsome Brown. Handsome had always said it was a good idea to know short cuts to every place, because there was no telling when one would come in handy just when it was needed the most. I was glad I knew a short cut to Mrs. Weatherbee’s because Ma would have seen me if I had gone behind her.
    I ran all the way out there, keeping close to the willows along the creek just like Handsome and I had done every time we went out there looking for rabbits. Just before I got to Mrs. Weatherbee’s house I stopped and looked around for Pa. I couldn’t see him anywhere about Mrs. Weatherbee’s house. I couldn’t even see her.
    Then I crossed the creek and ran up the lane toward the house, keeping close to the fence that was covered over with honeysuckle vines.
    It didn’t take long to get as far as the garden, and as soon as I looked around the corner post I saw Ida standing at the garden gate. All she was doing was standing there switching flies with her tail. I think she must have recognized me right away, because she pricked up both ears and held them straight up in the air while she watched me.
    I had started crawling around the garden fence when I looked across Mrs. Weatherbee’s backyard and saw Ma coming jumping. She was leaping over the cotton rows, headed straight for the backyard.
    Just then I heard Mrs. Weatherbee giggle. I looked toward the house, and I didn’t even have to get up off my knees to see her and my old man; Mrs. Weatherbee kept it up, giggling as if she were out of her head, just exactly like the girls at school did when they knew a secret about something. At first all I could see was Mrs. Weatherbee’s bare legs and feet dangling over the side of the porch. Then I saw my old man standing on the ground tickling her with a chicken feather. Mrs. Weatherbee was lying on her back on the porch, and he was standing there tickling her bare toes for all he was