Walking Home From School
We had only a quarter mile to walk home from school, but we walked everywhere but on the road. In spring, it was so tempting to crawl through the fence and walk in the pasture and try out all the little water puddles that still had ice on them. Invariably, we'd get to the middle and the ice would break. The water was deep enough that we'd get wet feet. After being warned and threatened many times, Sylva, a girl who walked with us, came home again with wet feet. When questioned by her mother, she told her that because of the spring melt, the water was across the road and she couldn't help it. That night her mother went to PTA, and found that there was no water on the road. When she got home that night, Sylva was in bed sleeping. But no matter, her mother got her out of bed and spanked her for telling a fib.
We got into all kinds of deviltry on the way home. One afternoon, Sylva and I were walking home with two neighbor boys when they discovered that they had forgotten something at school. So they left their lunch pails along the side of the road and went back to school. It was winter, and Sylva and I buried their lunch pails in the snow and went on home. She lived a mile down the road, but had stopped at our house for a haircut. In the meantime, the boys came back and discovered our prank. They must have known that she was at our house because they waited for her. When she came out to go home, they chased her with a broom and always threw her into the ditch and covered her with snow. I watched from the window, not daring to say anything, because being guilty too, I feared for what was in store for me.
The next day, Sylva didn't come to school, or the next, or the next. In fact she didn't come back for three weeks. I was sure I knew the reason. It turned out that she had gotten scarlet fever, not at all from the prank, although that probably hastened its onset. Was I happy to see her again when she finally returned to school! By that time, the incident with the lunch pails had been completely forgotten, and I never received my punishment.