Free William S. and the Great Escape by Zilpha Keatley Snyder Page A

discuss.
    But on the other hand, he had to admit that she wasn’t the only one who was curious. He was curious about why in the world Clarice would be planning to run away. After all, she was the only child of very important people, like she kept saying, who apparently didn’t slap her around, and certainly bought her everything she could possibly want, and then some.
    Thinking ahead, it did occur to him that it might be possible to get Clarice to talk first, and maybe she’d get so wound up she’d keep going long enough so they wouldrun out of time before they got to his turn. It seemed like a good idea, and it began to look even better when she took Jancy and the little kids down to the basement and didn’t come back for a long time. Good. Not much time left before she’d have to leave to have lunch with her great-aunt.
    â€œI know. I’m late,” she said when she finally showed up. “Jancy asked for some soap and a scrub board so she could wash some clothes, so I had to show her how to use our new washing machine.”
    â€œWashing machine?” William asked. “You have one of those machines that washes clothes?”
    â€œSure,” Clarice said. “A new one with a big automatic wringer.”
    â€œAn automatic wringer? Hey, I’d sure like to see that. All right?” William said, heading for the door. But it didn’t work.
    â€œYou can see it later,” Clarice said, starting the hot water running into the dishpan. “Right now we have some other things to do—and talk about. Okay. You first. Start talking.” No argument or even discussion. Just “Start talking.”
    William sighed. There was the Miss Scott possibility, so he gave it a try. “Hey,” he ventured. “Did you have Miss Scott for English last year?”
    â€œSure I did,” Clarice said. “All the really good students do. Why?”
    â€œI just wondered what you thought of her. You know, the way she taught English at the junior high and drama at the high school, too. I thought she was … Well, actually what a lot people think, is that she’s … Well, a pretty good teacher.”
    Clarice shrugged. “Sure, she’s okay, I guess. I’ve known her since I was just a little kid. I told you, she’s a friend of my family.” She paused and looked at William with squinty eyes. “Yeah, I guess you would think she’s special. After all, she was the one who picked you to be Ariel.” She did a slow grin. “How did that happen?” The grin faded. “Anyway, Miss Scott isn’t what we were going to talk about. You were going to tell me how come you had to escape. I mean, what happened back there at the Baggetts’ that made you decide you had to run away?”
    Okay. He’d just see how much he could say without saying anything in particular. Picking up the dish towel, he dried several dishes before he said, “Well, my so-called father’s name is Edward G. Baggett, and he’s been married three times.”
    He paused to check Clarice. Disappointed, he thought. Nothing excitingly shocking about having three wives, as long as it’s one at a time. So he went on. “His first wife had six kids, five boys and a girl, and his second wife, who was my mother, had four. Two of each. So that makes ten kids in one family.”
    â€œAnd what happened to his first wife?” Clarice interrupted. “Did she die?”
    Actually, William didn’t know. He remembered hearing Big Ed say that her name was Mabel and she came from Texas, but he’d never said where she went. So William told Clarice that he guessed Mabel just got tired of so many kids and went back to Texas. “And after that happened,” he went on, “he married my mother, whose name was Laura Hardison, and she had me first and then Jancy, and a few years later, Trixie and Buddy. And a few days after she had Buddy, she