orks harder and uses itself up."

This confused explanation of shorts was, of course, taken verbatim,
despite the fact that Oley couldn't define half the words and probably
couldn't even pronounce them.

"I don't like shorts. I don't like these pink shorts Momma put on me
this morning. Is they electrics, Sven?"

Sven glanced around at the accidentally-dyed-in-the-laundry, formerly
white shorts.

"Um-m-m. Yeah. You could call 'em electric."

With this Oley let out whoop and dashed out of the room, trailing a
small voice behind him. "Momma, Momma. Sven says my shorts is electric!"

"I'll short Sven's electrics for him, if he makes fun of your shorts!"
Oley heard his mother's comforting reply.

* * * * *

In the adult world days passed before Oley's accidentally acquired
pattern of nubilous information on the subject of shorts was enlarged.
It was only days in the adult world, but in Oley's world each day was a
mountainous fraction of an entire lifetime, into which came tumbling and
jumbling--or were pulled--bits, pieces, oddments, landslides and
acquisitions of information on every subject that he ran into, or that
ran into him. Nobody had told Oley that acquiring information was his
job at the moment; the acquisition was partly accidental, mostly
instinctive, and spurred by an intense curiosity and an even more
intense determination to master the world as he saw it.

There was the taste of the sick green flowers that Momma kept in the
window box and, just for a side course, a little bit of the dirt, too.
There were the patterns of the rain on the window, and the reactions of
a cat to having its tail pulled. The fact that you touch a stove one
time, and it's cool and comfortable to lay your head against, and
another time it hurts. Things like that. And other things--towering
adults who sometimes swoop down on you and throw you high into the air;
and most times walk over you, around you, and ignore you completely. The
jumble of assorted and unsorted information that is the heritage of
every growing young inquiring brain.

In terms of time, it was only a couple of weeks, if you were looking at
it as an adult, until the next "shorts" incident.

Oley was sitting peacefully at the breakfast table, doing his level best
to control the manipulation of the huge knife-fork-and-spoon,
plate-bowl-and-glass, from which he was expected to eat a meal. Things
smelled good. Momma was cooking dos