The Great Brain Read Online Free PDF

must be a way. I thought and I thought and I thought about it. When Sweyn or Tom got a disease, Mamma made sure I caught it by putting me into bed with them. That was why they quarantined people who had contagious diseases— so they couldn’t give the disease to anybody else. Now, if there was just some way for me to sneak into Howard Kay’s house and get him to infect me with the mumps, I’d have the last laugh on Tom and Sweyn. My little brain had done it! I felt like jumping out of bed and dancing round the room.
    I found that sneaking into Howard’s house wasn’t going to be easy. I decided it would have to be on a Saturday because there just wasn’t time after school with Miss Thatcher keeping me and my brothers in to make up work we’d lost.
    Saturday morning after filling up the woodboxes and coal buckets in the kitchen and parlor and helping Tom and Sweyn feed and water the chickens, our team of horses, the milk cow, and Sweyn’s mustang pony, I climbed to the top of our barn. I could see over the Olsens’ backyard. I could also see the back porch of Howard’s house. I thought Mrs. Kay would never come out of her house, but she finally did. She had on a big sunbonnet and carried some packages of seeds in her hands. She headed straight for her vegetable garden.
    I climbed down from the barn. I walked boldly down Main Street, past the Kay home, and around to an alley. I cut through the Smiths’ orchard, pretending I was taking a shortcut. In the middle of the orchard I dropped to my knees. I kept out of sight on my hands and knees until I’d crawled to the Smiths’ backyard. I couldn’t see anybody on the Smiths’ back porch. I crawled along a hedge separating the Smiths’ place from the Kays’ place. If anybody saw me, I could pretend I’d come over to play with Seth Smith. But nobody saw me. I came to an opening in the hedge, which Howard, Seth, and I used when playing Indian scout. I squeezed through the opening and ran to the side porch of the Kay house.
    I went upstairs to Howard’s room. It was empty. I peeked out the upstairs window. Mrs. Kay was bent over her vegetable garden, planting seeds. I went downstairs where I knew there were two bedrooms. I heard Howard coughing in his mother’s bedroom. I almost burst out laughing when I opened the door and saw Howard. His cheeks and jaws were all puffed up like a balloon with a funny face painted on it.
    “You can’t come in here,” Howard whispered.
    I walked over to the bed. I bent over and put my face close to his face. “Breathe on me and infect me with the mumps,” I said.
    “Have you gone loco?” he asked. “The mumps hurt like the devil. It even hurts to talk.”
    “If you are a true pal, you’ll infect me with the mumps,” I pleaded. “It is the only way I can get even with Tom and Sweyn. One of them always gets a disease first. That means they are all over it just when I’m getting sick. I want to be the first one to get well just once, so I can tub it in good the way they do to me.”
    “All right,” Howard said, “but I still think you are loco wanting to catch the mumps.”
    Howard proved to be a true pal. He put his face close to mine and breathed into it as I inhaled. We were going just great, with me getting infected, when we heard the screen door on the back porch slam.
    “Now we are in for it,” Howard whispered as he looked wildly around the room. “Quick! Hide under the bed.”
    I dived under the bed just in time. I could see Mrs. Kay’s shoes and ankles as she came into the room.
    “Are you all right, dear?” she asked.
    “I’m fine Mom,” Howard answered.
    “I just want to finish planting the radishes,” his mother said. “I won’t be long.”
    Mrs. Kay left the room. I crawled out from under the bed. I sat down on the edge of the bed and put my face close to Howard’s. He breathed into my face, with me inhaling, until we decided I was good and infected.
    “You are a real pal,” I said.
    “If