u all that happened for the next fifteen minutes,
on account of I have to hurry with the rest of this story, but Mr.
Black was very kind to us boys. He came down into the basement, and
took a flashlight picture of us with our pingpong balls and paddles
and with Little Jim at the organ, and didn't say a word about the snow
man we knew he'd seen yesterday, or the book, or anything. He was very
nice, and a little later when he rode away on his great big beautiful
prancing saddle horse, I thought maybe he was going to be a good
teacher after all. The last thing he said to us just before he swung
prancing Prince around and jogged up Poetry's lane to the house, was,
"Well, I'll see you boys in the morning at school.... I'm going to
ride over now and get the fire started. I let it go out over Saturday
to save fuel.... But the weather report is for a cold wave tonight, so
I think I'll get the fire going good, and it'll be cozy as a bug in a
rug tomorrow morning when everybody comes."

It certainly was a pretty horse, and he certainly knew how to ride
him; and the big beautiful brown saddle and Mr. Black's riding habit
made me wish I had a big brown horse and a riding outfit and could go
galloping around all over Sugar Creek territory.

Almost right away, we all decided to play outdoors awhile, 'cause if
there was going to be a real cold wave tonight, it meant that tomorrow
we'd all have to stay inside the school most of the time, 'cause
sometimes a cold wave in Sugar Creek territory meant twenty degrees
below zero.... Poetry went in the house and got his binoculars and we
all climbed up on their chicken house which didn't have any snow on
its roof, and started to look around Sugar Creek at different things.
Little Jim grinned when he noticed there wasn't any snow on the roof
of the chicken house, and said, "That certainly was a good sermon this
morning," then he grunted and sat down astride the chicken house roof,
right close to a little tin chimney out of which white smoke was
coming, there being a kerosene heater inside the chicken house.

"It sure was," Poetry said, with the binoculars focused in the
direction Mr. Black had gone.

"Here, Bill, look at him, will you.... He's stopping at Circus's
house. Suppose maybe he's going to take a picture of one of Circus's
sisters?"

Dragonfly giggled when Poetry said that, and I felt hot inside, on
account of Circus had a lot of sisters, and one of them was a real
honest-to-good