"Good thing, 'cause I got no plan to eat less."

"Well, it'll still take you ten years to make up for how much I've wasted on you up to now when you wasn't worth a hair on a pig's butt."

"So this ain't what Peggy wants us to do," said Arthur Stuart, "and we can be pretty sure Papa Moose and Mama Squirrel don't want us to do it. So the way I see it, that makes it just about our number one priority."

"I'll talk to them."

"That always works."

"It's a start."

"And then you'll sing to them? 'Cause that might do more toward getting them to move out."

"So what's the third thing?" asked Alvin. "You said three things."

Arthur had to think for a second. Oh, yes. He wanted to ask Alvin why he hadn't done anything about Papa Moose's foot. But now it seemed pretty silly to ask. Because it wasn't as if Alvin hadn't noticed Moose's club foot. He'd have to be blind not to notice it. And it's not as if Alvin didn't know what he could or couldn't heal.

And besides, there was something else.

Wasn't Arthur supposed to be a prentice maker?

"Just my suggestion about singing to them," said Arthur.

Alvin grinned. "So you changed your mind about the third thing."

"For now," said Arthur Stuart. "I already used up all my brains thinking up how you ought to talk to Papa Moose and Mama Squirrel."

But there wasn't a chance to talk to Moose and Squirrel about it, because next morning five of the children were sick, screaming with pain, shaking with chills, burning up with fever. By nightfall there were six more, and the first ones had yellow eyes.

There wasn't any school now. The schoolroom became the sick ward, the benches all stacked up against the wall. None of the other children were allowed into the room. Instead they were sent outside to play among the skeeters. They could still hear the screaming out there. They could hear it in their minds even when nobody was making a sound.