d
have to finish preparing it. "Who's coming to our house for dinner?" I
asked, and Mom said, as we all started down the road toward Little
Jim's house, "A certain very fine gentleman named Little Jim Foote, of
the Sugar Creek Gang,"--and was I ever glad? But as the car glided
down the white road, I kept thinking of my pretty Snow-white in Bob
Till's cage, and I knew that Bob would maybe kill her along with all
the other pigeons and sell them at the Sugar Creek Poultry Shop....

Just that second, just as we were getting close to Little Jim Foote's
house, Little Jim said, "Hey, Bill! Look! There goes a white pigeon,
flying all by itself."

I looked out the car window, and sure enough there was, a snow white
pigeon, with its white wings flapping, and it was diving along
through the Sugar Creek sky right past our car and straight for Sugar
Creek and in the direction of our house on the other side of the
woods. All of a sudden I got a choked-up feeling in my throat, 'cause
I just _knew_ that was my very own Snow-white, and that Tom Till liked
me so well he was going to run the risk of getting a terrible
beating-up-on by his brother Bob, by opening their pigeon cage and
letting Snow-white out so she could fly home.

For some reason all of a sudden, I liked Little red-haired Tom Till so
well that I wished I could do something very wonderful for him and his
sick mother. I just kept my eyes strained on the sky above Sugar Creek
and the woods where I'd seen Snow-white disappear, when I heard Little
Jim say to me beside me, "Nearly all the snow's melted off our house
now."

I looked where he was looking, and he looked at me, and said surprised
like, "'Smatter, Bill? You got tears in your eyes."

"Have I?" I said, "I didn't know it."

Tom Till really was a great little guy, I thought; one of my very best
friends, and I remembered that before he had started coming to our
Sunday School and had become a Christian, he had been one of the
meanest boys I ever saw.

I shook my head, to knock the tears out of my eyes, like Little Jim
does when for some reason or other he gets tears in his, and doesn't
want anybody to know it, so instead of using his handkerchief to wipe
them out, he just gives his head a quick little jerk or two, and if
you happen to be looking at him, you can see the tears fly off in some
direction or other.

"Well, here we are!" Pop said, stopping at Little Jim's house for a
minute. "You'll probably want your