Patty was a skinny little thing with pigtails and freckles and forty-eight dolls.

"Forty-eight?"

"Come on over to my house and count 'em",' she challenged. Patty had an odd way of talking: fast, flippent, and almost insulting. My father couldn't stand her.

"You've been playing with that Patty again," he would grumble. "I can always tell when she's been around, because you start sounding just like her."

But in spite of Dad's disapproval, we soon became inseperable; When school was out for the summer, we managed to get into all us to play cops-and-robbers with them into all sorts of mischief.

Finnally the doctors agreed that I was fully recovered. At last I could go to school. Of course I was behind the other children my age, and that was where I got aquainted with Patty Taylor. She'd been living right next door all the time, but I never met her until I went to the Madison Academy.

The Taylor house was a tail, stone house surrounded by evergreen trees. Between our two houses was Mother's garden and then a vacant lot which became Bybee's pasture.

Yeaman and his friends wouldn't let because we were "just girls." So one day we went exploring. Behind our property we discovered a steep drop off. At the bottom was a little work shack, part of an abandoned sand-and-gravel operation. We wanted a closer look, so we clambered down the bank, scrappng our knees and getting our shoes full of sand. The tiny building was locked, but Patty found a window that could be pushed up; so , with feelings of high adventure, we climbed in. It was hot and stuffy in there and smelled of dust. Three big flies were buzzing angrily against the window panes, while polka-dotting them with hundreds of little specks. We quickly lost interest in that grimy place and climbed back out into the fresh air, but on our way, we helped ourselves to some little knick-knacks.

That evening I proudly showed Glad the small dingy pitcher I had found in the shack. She said she'd like to keep it until she showed it to my parents. I didn't think any more about it until several days later, when Glad told us that the Chief of Police was coming to talk to Patty and me about the pitcher.

The two of us were seated stiffly on a sun porch settee, and a tall imposing man was ushered in. He looked solemn and distinguished, with white hair and a dark blue uniform, complete with shiny medals. The Police Chief gave us a grave lecture about how people who entered locked buildings and stole things had to be sent away to jail.

Patty and I didn't suspect that my father arranged that visit with the city officials, and we were terri fied. Never, ever did we try any "Breaking and entering" again!

One lazy summer afternoon, with nothing to do, Patty and I started teasing my brother. He was in the sun porch playing a record on the new Victrola. That marvelous music machine was a tall piece of furniture, standing on curving mahogany legs. It was about four feet high, with compartments below to store extra records, and it had a crank on the side. Yeaman would wind it up and turn a switch to start the record rotating, and then, very slowly and carefully, he'd place the needle into the turning groove, and out would come music . . . scratchy, to be sure, but music just the same. Yeaman was enchanted. He'd wander around the room listening to the tune and keeping time with his hand, until Patty and I would tiptoe up to the Victrola and turn the switch off. Every time he started it up we would turn it off, smothering our giggles as we ran out of the room.

Poor boy, he knew that he'd get in bad trouble if he hit us, so he threatened to lock us up if we did it one more time. Well, of course we did, because it was always so much fun to watch Yeaman get mad.

That time he grabbed each of us by the wrist and dragged us through the house, across the driveway and into the garage. Yeaman was a lot bigger and stronger than we were, being five years older, so somehow he managed to drag us up the narrow stairway to the chauffeur's apartment. He slammed the door and locked it. So there we were, incarcerated, while my brother went off to play his records in peace.

Patty and I wandered around the little apartment for a while, but tnere wasn't much to see, execpt that the bathtub was dusty, with a big brown spider in it, so we concluded that the new chauffeur couldn't be taking many baths! There was a small living room, with a window facing toward the back of the house, and outside was a window-box full of geraniums.

"How are we going to get out of here?" I asked. "He might leave us in here forever!"

"How about climbing out on that window box?" suggested the ever inventive Patty.

I objected, "Maybe it won't hold us."

Patty reached out and shook it. "Oh, it's solid."

She put a foot out the window, flattening a geranium. "Come on! We can do it! And just think of all the trouble Yeaman will get into!"

So Patty go out onto the window box, and then over on to the slate roof, to make room for me. Once we were on the roof, we found that it was easier to go up than down, so we climbed up to the peak. We could see forever up there! What a view! But eight year-olds quickly lose interest in scenery. We needed some action. We wanted everyone to admire us up there, and so we started to shout.

We yelled at the top of our lungs, "Look where we are! Hey! Look up here!"

Finally Louie saw us, and rushed to the kitchen door, yelling in Italian and broken English that we were about to fall and kill ourselves.

Everybody came out to see: the cook in her long white apron, wiping flour off her hands; the maids in their frilly caps; and I suppose Nana and Mother were watching from their windows. Fred, the new chaufeur, ran for a ladder.

Glad called, "How did you get up there?"

"Yeaman locked us up in Fred's place," we shouted back, knowing perfectly well that my poor brother would get everything we thought he deserved. . . and tnen some!

Finally the ladder was in place, and Fred brought us down, one at a time.

Patty and I agreed that it had turned out to be a very satisfactory afternoon.