“The screaming,” Phillip ground out.
“That was Amanda,” Oliver said.
“It certainly was,” she agreed.
Phillip waited for further elucidation, and when it appeared that none was forthcoming, he added, “Andwhywas Amanda screaming?”
“It was a frog,” she explained.
“A frog.”
She nodded. “Indeed. In my bed.”
“I see,” Phillip said. “Do you have any idea how it got there?”
“I put it there,” she replied.
He swung his gaze off of Oliver, to whom he’d addressed his question, and back to Amanda. “You put a frog in your own bed?”
She nodded.
Why whywhy? He cleared his throat. “Why?”
She shrugged. “I wanted to.”
Phillip felt his chin thrust forward in disbelief. “You wanted to?”
“Yes.”
“Put a frog in your bed?”
“I was trying to grow tadpoles,” she explained.
“In your bed?”
“It seemed warm and cozy.”
“I helped,” Oliver put in.
“Of that I had no doubt,” Phillip said in a tight voice. “But why did you scream?”
“I didn’t scream,” Oliver said indignantly. “Amanda did.”
“I was asking Amanda!” Phillip said, just barely resisting the urge to throw his arms up in defeat and retire to his greenhouse.
“You were looking at me, sir,” Oliver said. And then, as if his father were too dim to understand what he meant, he added, “When you asked the question.”
Phillip took a deep breath before schooling his features into what he hoped was a patient expression and turned back to Amanda. “Why,Amanda,did you scream?”
She shrugged. “I forgot I put the frog there.”
“I thought she was going todie!” Oliver put in, most dramatically.
Phillip decided not to pursue that statement. “I thought,” he said, crossing his arms and leveling his sternest gaze at his children, “that we had said no frogs in the house.”
“No,” Oliver said (with vehement nodding from Amanda), “you said notoads.”
“No amphibians of any kind,” Phillip ground out.
