No answer.

     "TOM!"

     No answer.

     "What's gone with that boy,  I wonder? You TOM!"

     No answer.

     The old lady pulled her spectacles down and looked 

over them about the room; then she put them up and looked

out under them. She seldom or never looked THROUGH

them for so small a thing as a boy; they were her state pair,

the pride of her heart, and were built for "style," not service 

-- she could have seen through a pair of stove-lids just as well. 

She looked perplexed for a moment, and then said, not 

fiercely, but still loud enough for the furniture to hear:

     "Well, I lay if I get hold of you I'll--"

     She did not finish, for by this time she was bending 

down and punching under the bed with the broom, and so

she needed breath to punctuate the punches with. She 

resurrected nothing but the cat.

     "I never did see the beat of that boy!"

     She went to the open door and stood in it and looked out 

among the tomato vines and "jimpson" weeds that constituted

the garden. No Tom. So she lifted up her voice at an angle

calculated for distance and shouted:

     "Y-o-u-u TOM!"

     There was a slight noise behind her and she turned just

in time to seize a small boy by the slack of his roundabout

and arrest his flight.

     "There! I might 'a' thought of that closet. What you been

doing in there?"

     "Nothing."

     "Nothing! Look at your hands. And look at your mouth.

What IS that truck?"

     "I don't know, aunt."

     "Well, I know. It's jam-- that's what it is. Forty times I've

said if you didn't let that jam alone I'd skin you. Hand me that

switch."

     The switch hovered in the air-- the peril was desperate --

     "My! Look behind you, aunt!"