Shenanigans at Sugar Creek

ratched by a nail, I was wondering what would happen next-what Mr. Black would do, and what would happen when I got home,

smoking a teacher out of his schoolhouse, the one who was going to be what is called a gentleman, now lying upside down in a scrambled-up h

unt of the snowdrift being pretty deep, b

f the schoolhouse with a big pail in his hand and swooped with it down onto a snowdrift, scooped up a pailful of snow and without even looking in our direction dived back around the corner of the schoolhouse like he was h

my snowdrift, and the four of us made a dive for the front of the schoolhouse and around to the open door

said, "I'm allergic to sm

sound. I looked just in time to see the little wooden gate to which the horse had been tied, break in two or maybe three, and part of it go galloping down the road being dragged by a scared wild-eyed brown saddle horse, and at the same time I saw a half-wild-looking man co

orse as he went racing down that road after his horse, yelling for the horse to stop.... The very minute he went swishing past us, I noticed that his hands were black with soot, as also

Gang had the wo

his named

ce had the homel

and forty

n bald, his hair would certainly have been all mussed up like mine is mo

ise which the stove had made, and with the gang making a noise and running excitedly, and everything. That horse with a gate tied to its bridle rein probably was

worse. I thought how terrible it would be if Prince would get his feet all tangled up in part of the gate, and fall, and maybe break one of his legs and have to be killed, which is what nearly always has to be done

be too long to get it into one book and I'll have to finish it some o

ed, freckle-faced Bill Collins-and there was Mr. Black and his horse getting farther and farther up the road which was th

ing it, when a schoolhouse was on fire, or was supposed to be. I'd been so

with the sunlight which came in from the windows, shining through the bluish smoke, so that things at first weren't very clear to my eyes, but when about a half-jiffy later, my eyes were accustomed to the dark light, I saw a really crazy looking schoolhouse. There on the teacher's desk, upside down, was the teacher's great big swivel chair; and the brooms and the mop were piled on top of that, and on the blackboard written in great big letters with chal

mney but had crawled into the schoolhouse through one of the windows maybe and upset things, then had printed the poem there for our teacher to see and-well, you can gues

at the mess, when he piped up and said in a voice that sounded like he was the leader of the gang, "Hey, you guys! Let's D

their barnyard," which made me want to make a dive for the window to look too, but I didn't 'cause all of a sudden Little Jim said som

ard's still across the chim

less than a half-dozen worried jiffies, had our swing board off the chimney and tossed it out into a snow drift. When I was down again, Poetry and I whisked the ladder back behind the schoolhouse, and with our feet, covered it with snow, and also the swing board, and when we got back inside the schoolhouse, Little Jim and Dragonfly had used their hands and had taken the little fire

d down another, carefully dusting each one just like I imagine he'd been taught at home-not swishing the cloth around too fast which would make more dust. I began to try to untangle the Christmas tree from th

moke in the room for him to breathe without sneezing. The Sugar Creek School's great big u

Dragonfly said excitedly,

s little, and Pop had licked me once for reading his, and so I knew Dragonfly shouldn't have read Mr. Black's diary, so when I got to where he was and saw him looking at a

the half hard licking my pop had given me for reading his, when he told me not to, but when I got to where Dragonfly was and looked to se

Gang had the wo

his named wa

ct, it seemed like anybody who had first thought

to quit quick, which I did, only I saw one other thi

ith the boys. I know I'm going to

so I said, "I don't know, but whatever it is, I'll bet it'll hurt like everything." I reached out my hand an

r only the crackling of the fire in the stove, when all of a sudden there was a step on the schoolhou