'I PEED ON HESTER!' Owen said. 'AND I'M GOING TO GET IN TROUBLE AT HOME,' he said-still walking his bike at a good pace. 'MY FATHER GETS MAD ABOUT PEEING. HE SAYS I'M NOT A BABY ANYMORE, BUT SOMETIMES I GET EXCITED.'
'Owen, I'll wash and dry your clothes at our house,' my mother told him. 'You can wear something of Johnny's while yours are drying.'
'NOTHING OF JOHNNY'S WILL FIT ME,' Owen said. 'AND I HAVE TO TAKE A BATH.'
'You can take a bath at our house, Owen,' I told him. 'Please come back.'
'I have some outgrown things of Johnny's that will fit you, Owen,' my mother said.
'BABY CLOTHES, I SUPPOSE,' Owen said, but he stopped walking; he leaned his head on his bike's handlebars.
'Please get in the car, Owen,' my mother said. I got out and helped him put his bicycle in the back, and then he slid into the front seat, between my mother and me.
'I WANTED TO MAKE A GOOD IMPRESSION BECAUSE I WANTED TO GO TO SAWYER DEPOT,' he said. 'NOW YOU'LL NEVER TAKE ME.'
I found it incredible that he still wanted to go, but my mother said, 'Owen, you can come with us to Sawyer Depot, anytime.'
'JOHNNY DOESN'T WANT ME TO COME,' he told Mother-as if I weren't there in the car with them.
'It's not that, Owen,' I said. 'It's that I thought my cousins would be too much for you.' And on the evidence of him wetting his pants, I did not say, it struck me that my cousins were too much for him. 'That was a very mild game for my cousins, Owen,' I added.
'DO YOU THINK I CARE WHAT THEY DO TO ME?' he shouted; he stamped his little foot on the drive-shaft hump.
'DO YOU THINK I CARE IF THEY START AN AVALANCHE WITH ME?' he screamed. 'WHEN DO I GET TO GO ANYWHERE! IF I DIDN'T GO TO SCHOOL OR TO CHURCH OR TO EIGHTY FRONT STREET, I'D NEVER GET OUT OF MY HOUSE!' he cried. 'IF YOUR MOTHER DIDN'T TAKE ME TO THE BEACH, I'D NEVER GET OUT OF TOWN. AND I'VE NEVER BEEN TO THE MOUNTAINS,' he said. 'I'VE NEVER EVEN BEEN ON A TRAIN! DON'T YOU THINK I MIGHT LIKE GOING ON A TRAIN-TO THE MOUNTAINS?' he yelled. My mother stopped the car and hugged him, and kissed him, and told him he was always welcome to come with us, anywhere we went; and I rather awkwardly put my arm around him, and we just sat that way in the car, until he had composed himself sufficiently for his return to Front Street, where he marched in the back door, past Lydia's room and the maids fussing in the kitchen, up the back stairs past the maids' rooms, to my room and my bathroom, where he closed himself in and drew a deep bath. He handed me his sodden clothes, and I brought the clothes to the maids, who began their work on them. My mother knocked on the bathroom door, and, looking the other way, she extended her arm into the room, where Owen took a stack of my outgrown clothes from her-they were not baby clothes, as he had feared; they were just extremely small clothes.
'What shall we do with him?' Hester asked while we were waiting for Owen to join us in the upstairs den-or so it had been called, 'the den,' when my grandfather was alive; it was a children's room whenever my cousins visited.
'We'll do whatever he wants,' Noah said.
'That's what we did the last time!' Simon said.
'Not quite,' Hester said.
'WELL, I'VE BEEN THINKING,' Owen said when he walked into the den-even pinker than usual; he was spanking clean, as they say, with his hair slicked back. In his stocking feet, he was slipping a little on the hardwood floor; and when he reached the old Oriental, he stood with one foot balanced on top of the other, twisting his hips back and forth as he talked-his hands, like butterflies, flitting up and down between his waist and his shoulders. 'I APOLOGIZE FOR BECOMING OVEREXCITED. I THINK I KNOW A GAME THAT WOULD NOT BE QUITE AS EXCITING FOR ME, BUT AT THE SAME TIME I THINK IT WOULD NOT BE BORING FOR YOU,' he said. 'YOU SEE, ONE OF YOU GETS TO HIDE ME- SOMEWHERE, IT COULD BE ANYWHERE-AND THE OTHERS HAVE TO FIND ME. AND WHOEVER CAN FIND A PLACE TO HIDE ME THAT TAKES THE LONGEST TIME FOR THE OTHERS TO FIND ME-WHOEVER THAT IS WINS. YOU SEE, IT'S PRETTY EASY TO FIND PLACES IN THIS HOUSE TO HIDE ME-BECAUSE THIS HOUSE IS HUGE AND I'M SMALL,' Owen added.
'I go first,' Hester said. 'I get to hide him first.' No one argued; wherever she hid him, we never found him. Noah and Simon and I-we thought it would be easy to find him. I knew every inch of my grandmother's house, and Noah and Simon knew almost everything about Hester's diabolical mind; but we couldn't find him. Hester stretched out on the couch in the den, looking at old issues of Life magazine, growing more and more content as we searched and searched, and darkness fell; I even expressed to Hester my concern that she had put Owen somewhere where he might have run out of air, or-as the hours dragged on-where he would suffer severe cramps from having to maintain an uncomfortable position. But Hester dismissed these concerns with a wave of her hand, and when it was suppertime, we had to give up; Hester made us wait in the downstairs front hall, and she went and got Owen, who was very happy and walking without a limp, and breathing without difficulty-although his hair looked slept on. He stayed for supper, and he told me after we'd eaten
