A Big Year for Lily Read Online Free PDF Page B

squirrel or a bunny would come along and finish the last few bites of the ice cream.
    Papa stopped whistling. “Why did you throw your cone away?”
    â€œI couldn’t lick the rest of the ice cream.”
    â€œThe cone was something you could eat. And even if it wasn’t, you shouldn’t have thrown it out of the buggy.”
    Lily had thought the cone was made from cardboard. She was sorry she wasted it. She would always wonder what it would have tasted like. How sad.
    But maybe Papa would take her to town again. And maybe he would buy her another ice-cream cone. Next time, she would eat the whole thing.
    As Jim turned into Whispering Pines, with Papa whistling, Lily thought this was the most perfect day of her life. Thrown-out cone and all.

6 The Lesson of the Bumblebee
    C loverdale was having an Indian summer—unusually warm days. Today was Aaron Yoder’s birthday and he had brought in homemade soft pretzels as a treat. Salty pretzels. Under normal conditions, Lily would not accept anything from Aaron Yoder, but she had seen his mother deliver those pretzels, still warm, to Teacher Rhoda during first recess. Soft pretzels topped Lily’s list for favorite treats. She tried to save part of her pretzel for lunch but it was too delicious. It made her thirsty, too. In fact, all of the children were thirsty after the pretzels. They lined up for a turn at the water pump and drank and drank to their hearts’ content.
    During lunch recess, Lily discovered a problem. A very, very serious problem. The girls’ bathroom was not working. A small sign taped up to the door read Out of Order. Lily and her friends discussed using the boys’ bathroom, but unanimously voted against it. Too many germs.
    By the start of afternoon classes, Lily was in trouble. Justthe sound of someone at the water pump made her remember how badly she needed to go to the girls’ room. It became a very stressful situation. She crossed her legs. She squeezed her hands. She couldn’t think of anything but getting to the bathroom. Fast.
    It wasn’t until the second recess that Teacher Rhoda went out to use the bathroom and discovered the sign. She pulled it off the wall and went inside. Lily and her friends ran over to wait for her to come out. “We thought the bathroom was broken,” Lily said.
    â€œGirls,” Teacher Rhoda said, “think about it. First, it was a note written in a boy’s handwriting. Second, what could possibly be out of order in an outhouse?”
    Oh. Oh!

    Out on the front porch, Papa dipped the little paintbrush into the jar of white paint. Now that Mama had finally chosen a name for the farmette, Papa was working on a sign. With careful, elegant strokes, he painted letters on the big green sign that sat on top of two wooden sawhorses. The sign would be posted at the end of their driveway. As he finished the letter N , Lily started to giggle. If Papa stopped now, the sign would read Whispering Pin. A whispering pin would be funny. Imagine all the things a pin could tell a person: “Oh my . . . her underwear is a little threadbare!” or “Goodness gracious, she is getting rather plump!”
    Papa whistled a happy tune as he painted E and S to make it Whispering Pines. Then he started on smaller letters underneath the farmette’s name. Lily hummed along quietly as she watched him. Joseph and Dannie had wandered off to play in thesandbox. They had been watching Papa paint but quickly grew bored. Lily was glad. She liked spending time alone with Papa.
    As Papa dipped his paintbrush into the jar, a fat bumblebee circled and buzzed around Lily’s head. She jerked away, but then the bee landed on a freshly painted letter. Its fuzzy black feet were covered in white paint. It walked across the sign and made tiny bee footprints across the green sign.
    Lily wanted to swat it away but was afraid that she would ruin Papa’s beautiful sign even more