asket down on Mom's work table, and started into the
front room, where I thought they'd maybe be. All of a sudden I heard
Mom saying something in a tearful voice, and I stopped cold--wondering
what I'd maybe done and shouldn't have, and if Mom was telling Pop
about it, so I started to listen--and then was half afraid to, so I
started to open the door and go out when I heard Pop say something in
a low voice, and it was, "No, Mother, whatever it is, I know one
thing--our Bill will tell the truth. He'd tell the truth right now if
I asked him, but I'm not going to. I'm going to wait and see what
happens, and see if he'll tell me himself."

I strained my ears hard to hear what Mom would answer, and this is
what she said, "All right, Theodore, I'll be patient; but just the
same, I'm worried."

"Don't you worry one little tiny bit, Mother," Pop said. "A boy's
heart is like a garden. If you plant good seed in it, and cultivate
and plow it and water it with love, he'll come out all right," which
made me like my pop a lot, only I didn't have time to think about it
'cause right that very second almost, I heard Mom say in a worried
voice, "Yes, dear, but _weeds_ grow in a garden without anyone's
planting them," which made me feel all saddish inside, and for some
reason I could see our own garden which every spring and summer had
all kinds of weeds--ragweeds, smartweeds, and big ugly Jimson-weeds,
and lots of other kinds. Right that second, I remembered something my
pop had said to me once last summer which was, "Say, Bill, do you know
how to keep the big weeds out of our garden, without having to pull
up or cut out even one of them?" and when I said, "No, how, Pop?" he
said, "Just kill all of them while they are _little_."

Well, I didn't want Mom or Pop to know I'd heard them talking about
me, so I sneaked out the back door very carefully and started to
talking in a friendly voice to Mixy, saying to her, "Listen, Mixy, do
you know how to keep all the great big mice out of our barn? You just
catch all the mice while they're little--it's as easy as pie."

Mixy looked up from her empty milk pan and mewed and looked down at
her pan again, and looked up at me again and mewed again, and then
walked over to me and rubbed her sides against my boots like she liked
me a lot. For some reason, I thought Mixy was a very nice cat right
that minute, so I said to her, "I'm awful glad you like me, Mixy, even
if nobody else around this place do