Mary kept laughing as she took the plate and cup to the sink. She was a NEAT person, after all. And she was still laughing when she walked back in to the dining-room to retrive her twenty-five dollars before the ex-paper-boy decided he still wanted her money.
But she quit laughing when she saw that the frog was still man-sized...or at least boy-sized, and was jumping all over her furnature, still screaming at the top of his--or its--lungs.
"HELP! HELP ME! MISS BAKER! HELP ME!" He was yelling. And he kept yelling it as he jumpped onto--and broke--her dining room table. It had been wroght iron, with a glass top and a VERY expensive vase full of fake flowers and glass marbles. Glass flew everywhere, lacerating frog-skin, and marbles tapped a bizzare tatoo across the saltido tile of Mary's floor.
He jumpped away from the glass, cutting the palms of his hands. He jumped into a wooden intable and shattered that too.
Well. This was a problem. Mary liked her things the way they were. Whole. Un-jumped.
She had to DO something about the frog.
Well...Mary had a basement, didn't she?
"Sorry, Peter." She laughed, clapping her hands together. "Just a joke, honey, just a little joke. Don't you LIKE it? Isn't it FUNNY? Why don't you calm down...you're spoiling my joke and I wanted you to like it too. I wanted you to LAUGH, darling."
She kept talking until she calmed the boy down, until he was looking at her and examining his new body at alternating intervals. She kept talking to him until she got him to talk back, until she felt that he was even enjoying this a little.
She decided to exploit that. "Isn't it fun?" She asked?
Peter looked down at himself, then tried jumping. AWAY From the glass of Mary's table. He jumped gracelfully into her couch, then jumped back.
"Maybe. Can you change it back?"
There were a billion psycological implications in that sentance, but Mary was just a secretary and she did...not...care. She nodded. This was not a lie, in that she could. But she had absolutely no intention of doing so right away. Defenately not today. Probably not until next week.
"Well...it's not every day a boy gets to be a frog." Mary said. "But yeah. I can change YOU back."
He made a face...a remarkably human expression. "My parents are taking me to Water World today...you HAVE to change me back. But we could do this later?"
He sounded whistful.
Mary nodded and walked to the basement door. "Down there. Thats where I keep the chemicals."
Peter hop-walked to the doorway, glanced inside, then twisted around until he was looking at Mary. His thick, fattened frog-skin curled over his feet and hands. "You know...this IS cool. You could sell it for a LOT of money."
Mary grinned. "I know." She said, and the second Peter was inside the room, sliding down the stairs he was really too big for, she slammed the door shut, locked it and stuffed the key into her purse.
She walked out of the house, over the glass, over the saddened remains of her furnature. She walked out the front door and locked it behind her, putting those keys with the ones to the basement.
And Peter had trusted her so completely, she was in her car before the boy even ASKED what was wrong.