Almanzo straightened up and shouted:
“I say, WHOSE BOSS ARE YOU?”
Eliza Jane gasped. Then she cried out:
“You just wait, Almanzo James Wilder! You just wait till I tell Moth—”
Almanzo didn’t mean to throw the blacking-brush. It flew right out of his hand. It sailed past Eliza Jane’s head. Smack! it hit the parlor wall.
A great splash and smear of blacking appeared on the white-and-gold wall-paper.
Alice screamed. Almanzo turned around and ran all the way to the barn. He climbed into the haymow and crawled far back in the hay. He did not cry, but he would have cried if he hadn’t been almost ten years old.
Mother would come home and find he had ruined her beautiful parlor. Father would take him into the woodshed and whip him with the blacksnake whip. He didn’t want ever to come out of the haymow. He wished he could stay there forever.
After a long while Royal came into the haymow and called him. He crawled out of the hay, and he saw that Royal knew.
“Mannie, you’ll get an awful whipping,” Royal said. Royal was sorry, but he couldn’t do anything. They both knew that Almanzo deserved whipping, and there was no way to keep Father from knowing it. So Almanzo said:
“I don’t care.”
He helped do the chores, and he ate supper. He wasn’t hungry, but he ate to show Eliza Jane he didn’t care. Then he went to bed. The parlor door was shut, but he knew how the black splotch looked on the white-and-gold wall.
Next day Father and Mother came driving into the yard. Almanzo had to go out to meet them with the others. Alice whispered to him:
“Don’t feel bad. Maybe they won’t care.” But she looked anxious, too.
Father said, cheerfully: “Well, here we are. Been getting along all right?”
“Yes, Father,” Royal answered. Almanzo didn’t go to help unhitch the driving-horses; he stayed in the house.
Mother hurried about, looking at everything while she untied her bonnet strings.
“I declare, Eliza Jane and Alice,” she said, “you’ve kept the house as well as I’d have done myself.”
“Mother,” Alice said, in a small voice. “Mother—”
“Well, child, what is it?”
“Mother,” Alice said, bravely, “you told us not to eat all the sugar. Mother, we—we ate almost all of it.”
Mother laughed. “You’ve all been so good,” she said, “I won’t scold about the sugar.”
She did not know that the black splotch was on the parlor wall. The parlor door was shut. She did not know it that day, nor all the next day. Almanzo could hardly choke down his food at mealtimes, and Mother looked worried. She took him to the pantry and made him swallow a big spoonful of horrible black medicine she had made of roots and herbs.
He did not want her to know about the black splotch, and yet he wished she did know. When the worst was over
he could stop dreading it.
That second evening they heard a buggy driving into the yard. Mr. and Mrs. Webb were in it. Father and Mother went out to meet them and in a minute they all came into the dining-room. Almanzo heard Mother saying:
“Come right into the parlor!”
He couldn’t move. He could not speak. This was worse than anything he had thought of. Mother was so proud of her beautiful parlor. She was so proud of keeping it always nice. She didn’t know he had ruined it, and now she was taking company in. They would see that big black splotch on the wall.
Mother opened the parlor door and went in. Mrs. Webb went in, and Mr. Webb and Father. Almanzo saw only their backs, but he heard the window-shades going up. He saw that the parlor was full of light. It seemed to him a long time before anybody said anything.
Then Mother said: