Runaway

room on the other and the kitchen has built-in cabinets and a double sink and the latest electric stove. There is a new washroom off the back hall and a streamlined bathroom and the closets are big enough to walk into and fixed up with full-length mirrors in the door. Golden oak floors everywhere. When I got home this place looked so poky and the wainscoting so dark and old-fashioned. I got on to Father at breakfast about how we could build a sunroom off the dining room to at least have one room bright and modern. (I forgot to mention that Wilf has a sunroom built out from the opposite side of the house to his office and it makes a good balance.) Father said what do we need that for when we have two verandahs to get the sun in the morning and the evening? So I see it’s not likely I’m going to get anywhere with my home improvement scheme.
    Apr. 1. First thing when I waked up I fooled Father. I ran out into the hall screaming that a bat had come down the chimney into my room and he came tearing out of the bathroom with his braces down and lather all over his face and told me to stop hollering and being hysterical and go and get the broom. So I got it, and then I hid on the back stairs pretending I was terrified while he went thumping around without his glasses on trying to find the bat. Eventually I took pity on him and yelled out, “April Fool!”
    So the next thing was Ginny phoned up and said, “Nancy, what am I going to do? My hair is falling out, it’s all over the pillow, big clumps of my beautiful hair all over the pillow and now I’m half bald, I can never leave this house again, will you run over here and see if we can make a wig out of it?”
    So I said quite coolly, “Just mix up some flour and water and paste it back on. And isn’t it funny it happened the morning of April Fool’s?”
    Now comes the part I am not so anxious to record.
    I walked over to Wilf’s house without even waiting for my breakfast because I know he goes to the Hospital early. He opened the front door himself in his vest and shirtsleeves. I hadn’t bothered with the office figuring it would still be shut. That old woman he has keeping house—I don’t even know her name—was banging around in the kitchen. I suppose she should have opened the door, but he was right there in the hall just getting ready to go. “Why Nancy,” he said.
    I never said a word, just made a suffering face and clutched at my throat.
    “What’s the matter with you, Nancy?”
    More clutching and a miserable croaking and shaking my head to indicate I couldn’t tell him. Oh, pitiful.
    “In here,” says Wilf, and leads me through the side hall through the house door to the office. I saw that old woman having a peek but I didn’t let on I saw her, just kept up my charade.
    “Now then,” he says, pushing me down on the patient’s chair and turning on the lights. The blinds were still down on the windows and the place stank of antiseptic or something. He got out one of the sticks that flattens your tongue and the instrument he has for looking down and lighting up your throat.
    “Now, open as wide as you can.”
    So I do, but just as he is about to press the stick down on my tongue I shout, “April Fool!”
    There was not a flicker of a smile on his face. He whipped the stick out of the way and snapped off the light on the instrument and never said a word till he yanked open the outside door of the office. Then he said, “I happen to have sick people to see to, Nancy. Why don’t you learn to act your age?”
    So I just scurried out of there with my tail between my legs. I didn’t have the nerve to ask him why couldn’t he take a joke. No doubt that nosey female in his kitchen will spread it all over town how mad he was and how I had to slink off humiliated. I have felt terrible all day. And the worst stupid coincidence is that I have even felt sick, feverish and with a slightly sore throat, so I just sat in the front room with a blanket over my legs reading old Dante. Tomorrow night is the meeting of the Reading Club so I should be way ahead of all the rest of them. The trouble is none of it stuck in my head, because all the time I was reading I was also thinking, what a silly stupid thing I did, and I could hear him telling me in such a cutting voice to act my age. But then I would find myself arguing in my head with him that it is not such an awful thing to have a little fun in your life. I believe his father was a minister, does that