Gib Rides Home by Zilpha Keatley Snyder Read Free Book Online Page A

country, with a bunch of kids and lots of horses and other animals. But Jacob didn’t agree. Jacob said he was glad he hadn’t been chosen.
    “Me? Me wish that old Billy Whiskers had picked me?” he said when Gib asked him. “Not on your tintype.”
    “Why not?” Gib asked. “Don’t you ever want to live with a family like a normal person?”
    Jacob shrugged. “Sure I do,” he said. “Someday, maybe. But that old geezer had a mean look about him.”
    Gib nodded reluctantly. “Yeah, I know. But maybe ... He paused, not wanting to admit his own reaction to the man who had taken poor Georgie. “But could be he’s better than he looks. You know. Handsome is ...,” he began, and Jacob laughed and joined in to finish one of Miss Mooney’s favorite quotes. “... as handsome does.”
    “Anyway, he picked a junior,” Gib said. “That proves there’s no law against it. So maybe one of us will get picked next time.”
    Jacob snorted. “Well, they’ll have to show up pretty soon,” he said. “To get ahold of us while we’re still juniors.”
    Jacob was right about that. In October Jacob passed his ninth birthday and moved upstairs, and a couple of months later Gib followed. So they left behind forever the huge old ballroom with its thirty-some childish occupants, and joined sixteen older boys in the smaller hall on the third floor. And it very soon became obvious to Gib that Buster Gray hadn’t been fooling when he said that a senior’s life wasn’t exactly easy.
    Just as Buster had warned, the upstairs hall was cold and drafty. And the chores assigned senior boys were certainly harder, most of the heavy mopping and scrubbing indoors, and all the outdoor stuff in cold weather. But worst of all, seniors were taught by different instructors. Instead of Miss Mooney and Miss Berger, they were now housemothered by Miss Offenbacher herself. And taught, too, at least until Mr. Harding showed up.
    A thick-chested man, with a bushy beard and a shiny bald head, Mr. Harding had been hired when Miss Offenbacher began to spend most of her time in the headmistress’s office. When he first heard about the new teacher, Gib, as well as most of the other senior boys, had been pleased, or at least a little relieved. First of all, it might be interesting having a man teacher for a change. And second, the new man would have to be pretty bad to be worse than you know who.
    Gib went on trying to feel that way even after Mr. Harding started his first day by introducing his best friend. Mr. Harding’s best friend turned out to be a wide, flat board with a handle on one end. His friend’s name was Mr. Paddle, he said, and Mr. Paddle was going to be their friend, too, by helping them all to become excellent students and good, law-abiding citizens.
    On that first day Mr. Harding didn’t go on to explain just how Mr. Paddle was going to be so helpful, but Gib had an uncomfortable feeling he already knew. And during chore time that same afternoon, he found out that some of the other boys had the same feeling.
    “Shucks,” Jacob said when Gib asked him, “everybody knowed what he meant. And what’s more, he knowed that we knowed.” Dropping his snow shovel, Jacob pretended to whack Gib on the backside with an imaginary Mr. Paddle. “That’s how,” Jacob grunted between whacks. “He meant he’s going to beat the tar out of us if we don’t do to suit him.”
    They were halfway down the orphanage’s curving driveway at the time, trying to clean up after a medium-sized blizzard that had raged all night and most of the morning. Six senior boys, shoveling and shivering in their thin overcoats and frazzled-out mittens, trying to clear a passageway wide enough for the orphanage buggy and any Lovell House visitors that might happen to show up.
    “Yeah, that’s what I thought, too,” Gib said between shovelfuls of the heavy, wet snow. Then he stopped long enough to poke Jacob with the handle of his shovel. “Lucky us,