“It’s supposed to be a secret, Mrs. Hazzard,” Emile whispered. “Nobody’s supposed to know. You’re not supposed to look for them until morning. You have to go back into your house now. You go on back to bed.”
“What do you think I am, Emile?” she asked. “You think I’m a little girl or something? You give me a golden egg and I’ll go back to bed but I won’t move until you do.”
“You’ll spoil everything, Mrs. Hazzard. I won’t hide any more eggs until you go back into your house.”
“You give me a golden egg, you give me one of those golden eggs or I’ll help myself.”
Mrs. Hazzard’s voice waked old Mrs. Kramer who lived next door. Instantly alert, she installed her teeth, stepped into her slippers and went to the window. She understood the meaning of the scene at once. She went to the telephone and called her daughter, Helen Pincher, who lived three blocks away on Millwood Street. Helen woke from a deep sleep and mistook the telephone for the alarm clock. She tried to stop the ringing, shook the clock and finally turned on the light before she realized that it was the telephone. “Helen, it’s Mother,” the old woman said. “They’re hiding the Easter eggs. Right in front of my house. I can see them out of my window. Get over here!”
The ringing of the bell had not waked Mr. Pincher but the light and the last of the conversation did. He saw his wife put down the phone and run out of the room. For the last month or so Mr. Pincher had been alarmed by his wife’s conduct. She had overdrawn the checking account three times, she had run out of gasoline three times in the same week, she had forgotten to wear stockings to the Gripsers’ wedding, she had lost her snake bracelet and she had ruined his good leather hunting jacket by putting it into the washing machine. Each time she had said: “I must be going out of my mind.” When he heard footsteps outside and looked out of the window and saw that she was running down the front walk in her nightgown he was convinced that she really had become irrational. He got into his bathrobe but he couldn’t find any slippers and so he ran barefoot out of the house after her. She had a lead of a block or more and he called loudly: “Helen, Helen, come back, dear. Come home, dear.” He woke the Barnstables, the Melchers, the Fitzroys and the DeHovens.
Emile got back into his car. Mrs. Hazzard tried to open the other door and get in but it was locked. He tried to start the car but he was nervous and the motor flooded. Then into the beam of his headlights came Helen Pincher, running. Her nightgown was transparent and the curlers in her hair looked like a crown. Her mother was hanging out of the window, urging her on. “That’s them, Helen, there they are!” Behind her, her husband shouted: “Come back, darling, come back, sweetheart.”
Emile got the car started just as Helen reached it and she put her head in at the window. “I want the one for Paris, Emile,” she said.
Emile put the car into gear and as he began slowly to let out the clutch Mr. Pincher joined them shouting: “Stop that car, you damned fool. She’s sick.” Now in the beam of his headlights Emile saw the approach of a dozen or more women in nightgowns. They all appeared to be wearing crowns. He continued to move the car slowly forward but some of the women stood directly in his way and he had to stop twice to avoid harming them. During one of these stops Mrs. DeHoven let the air out of one of his rear tires.
