Spectacles and Buckets
- Good news: The kids who didn't pass the tests got doughnuts, so no worries. And the pencil woman has been eating steadily throughout the day, so she's fine, too. And Reynie packed a lunch, which he ate between tests, so everyone's well fed. On with the testing.
- Before stage three, Reynie is brought to a room where he meets a boy named George Washington. Really. But everyone calls him "Sticky" because everything he reads sticks in his brain.
- Sticky and Reynie chat about their days so far and find two things. First the bad news: Sticky has only had a pear, and he's kind of hungry. "I think the other kids got doughnuts. Why didn't we get doughnuts?" (2.26) he asks. Hmm—could it be part of the test?
- The other thing Reynie and Sticky realize is that in addition to the lack of doughnuts, they've had many other similar experiences that day. This seems to confirm for them both that along with all the traditional testing, the stuff that happens in between tests—like whether or not they accept an offer to cheat, or help a girl recover her lost pencil, or lose it when they don't get doughnuts—is just as important as the test scores themselves.
- When a girl named Kate Wetherall, who has also progressed to the third stage of testing, joins them, they know it for sure. Kate, too, helped someone in distress and refused an offer of test answers. There's something strange going on here.
- There's also something strange about Kate that we should mention before moving on. She carries a bucket full of useful things with her everywhere, hooked to her belt: "a Swiss army knife, a flashlight, a penlight, […] a bottle of extra-strength glue, […] a bag of marbles, a slingshot, a spool of clear fishing twine, one pencil and one eraser, a kaleidoscope, and a horseshoe magnet [… and] a slender length of nylon rope coiled around the bottom and sides of the bucket" (2.77).
- And she's very agile.
- Just as Kate is explaining some of the amazing feats she performed that day thanks to her agility—and her bucket—the door to the room opens and the pencil woman sticks her head in to tell them it's time to go to room 7-B.