Magic Elizabeth Page 8

  She looked at Elizabeth sitting beneath the tree, cool and unruffled, while Tom purred in her lap. Elizabeth smiled serenely back at her, as if she understood everything in the world.

  “Then make a breeze come, please, Elizabeth,” she said aloud.

  Patience looked sideways at her, without moving.

  A small yellow butterfly seemed to spring from Elizabeth’s bonnet, though Sally knew that it must have arrived so swiftly that she had not seen it come. It sat on the brim of the bonnet, its tissue-paper wings throbbing as if a breeze moved them. A fluttering bouquet of blue and yellow butterflies settled on a sea shell near Elizabeth’s feet.

  Now, as if the arrival of the butterflies had been a signal, a pink flower dipped its head. A ripple ran over a bed of nasturtiums. A delphinium swayed. The whole garden woke up. Apple trees shook birds from their branches. Wind whispered in the empty sea shells. Sally felt the coolness of the breeze on her hand and then on her cheek, and she sighed with pleasure. Patience, who sat with her legs straight out in front of her, wiggled her toes, as if she liked it too. Now the lilac bushes enclosing the garden stirred, and beyond them, ripple after ripple ran over the surrounding fields. The blowing foxtails and grass seemed to be hurrying toward the distant hills.

  The heads of the cats lifted from their paws. Their eyes blinked. Their ears perked up. They all — except for Mrs. Niminy Piminy, who watched them through slitted eyes — leaped up and began to chase butterflies. Tom watched as the last butterfly lifted away to the sky, his tail twitching in the grass. The wind was dying down now.

  Sally bobbed her head at Elizabeth. “Thank you, Elizabeth,” she said.

  The little doll smiled serenely back at her.

  Patience spoke for the first time. “Is she magic?” she asked. Her eyes were very round.

  “I don’t know,” said Sally, which was true.

  She lowered her parasol and smiled at Patience. “Would you like to play tea party?” she asked. Patience nodded her head once. She was staring at Elizabeth.

  Sally picked up the little white china teapot from the grass in front of her and poured sugar water into one of the tiny white cups.

  “Thank you,” Patience whispered in a teeny-weeny voice as Sally handed the cup to her.

  The cup clinked against its saucer, and there came an answering clink from the back porch, where the mothers of the two girls sat drinking real tea. The far-off murmur of their voices blended pleasantly with the drowsy buzzing of the garden.

  “Oh, I’ve dropped it!” cried Patience, jumping to her feet. For she had spilled the sugar-water tea all over her pink pinafore. A stain was slowly spreading over her skirt as she stood there looking down at it in dismay. Her eyes filled with tears. Her lips began to tremble.

  “Oh dear,” thought Sally, feeling very sorry for the little girl. “Don’t cry,” she begged.

  “And I’ve broken the handle off the cup,” the girl sobbed, while tears slipped out around the edges of her eyes. She pointed to where the cup lay upon its side next to a large sea shell, its handle quite shattered. A blue butterfly returned for a moment to settle on the cup. Its fluttering wings cast a blue light on the thin china. The blue stain spread like a teardrop.

  “Oh, that’s all right,” said Sally with an effort, for she dearly loved the little set, and her heart felt quite as shattered as the handle. “There are lots more, and my papa can surely fix it.”

  Just then Elizabeth fell over with a soft plop. Sally looked up. One of the doll’s cotton hands, as she lay there, seemed to be pointing toward Tom, who was crouched, his ears flat against his head, the tip of his tail twitching. He looked just ready to spring upon a very tiny toad sitting beside the apple tree. It was hard to see the toad, because its skin so perfectly blended with the crinkly bark of the tree. It was blinking rapidly, and its throat was bulging in and out and out and in.

  “Scat, Tom!” cried Sally, clapping her hands sharply. The cat jumped, gave her a baleful look, and slunk away into the gooseberry bushes.

  But the toad still sat there, looking quite frozen with fear.

  “Look,” Sally whispered, reaching up and taking Patience’s freckled hand in her own and drawing her down next to her. “Look at the toad. I think it’s just going to hop!”

  The toad, with one last convulsive movement of its throat, jumped. Up, up, it went, and down — right into Sally’s cup of tea.

  Sally and Patience hugged each other, rocking with laughter. Bub woke up, blinked his eyes, and began to laugh too. “Salwy funny!” he crowed, pointing a fat pink finger. “Funny, funny Salwy!”

  And that made them laugh even harder.

  “What’s happening out there?” called Sally’s mother from the porch. They could see her face peering anxiously through the vines that grew up over the roof of the porch, forming a green curtain as they went.

  “ ’S all right,” gasped Sally. When she and Patience wiped their eyes and sat up at last, still weakly laughing, they saw that the toad had disappeared. All trace of the spilled sugar water had been absorbed by the thirsty dry ground. Bub was sucking his thumb and looking inquiringly at them with his clear round eyes, and Mrs. Niminy Piminy was composedly blinking her green eyes at them. Her children, except for Tom, who watched from the gooseberry bush, had all gone back to sleep.

  “Please have some pumpkin pie,” said Sally, offering Patience the center of a daisy upon a little china plate.

  “Thank you,” said Patience, and pretended to nibble at it, her eyes lowered.

  Then she began to grin again. The lashes fluttered up. A last giggle shook her body. “Jumped right into the cup,” she said.

  “Yes,” said Sally, “spilled the whole thing.”

  “Funny Salwy,” said Bub, removing his thumb from his mouth and holding it over his head. He lay on his back, gazing up at it, as if he found his thumb most remarkable.

  Sally picked Elizabeth up and straightened her bonnet. “Elizabeth saved that toad’s life,” she said. “Tom was just going to get it when she fell over. It looked just as if she was pointing at Tom to show me.” She kissed the little doll.

  “Maybe she is magic,” breathed Patience, looking with deep respect at Elizabeth.

  “Maybe,” said Sally, feeling very proud of her pretty doll.

  But Elizabeth just went on smiling her usual sunny smile.

  Tom came padding back and warily placed his head upon Elizabeth’s lap.

  “Naughty Tom,” Sally scolded. “But I guess you can’t help it. You’re just a cat. And Elizabeth seems to like you.” She placed the little doll’s hand on Tom’s head, and Tom purred and closed his eyes.

  Sally and Patience spent the rest of the afternoon quite pleasantly. Sally showed her the store of pepper boxes made from the seed containers of poppy plants that she kept in a hollow in one of the apple trees, along with some acorn cups. They sprinkled the seeds over a stew of leaves and berries they mixed together and cooked in the sun and then fed to Elizabeth. Holding Bub’s hands while he toddled along between them, they pushed through a gap in the lilac bushes and sat for a time in the field, hidden from sight by the blowing foxtails. They made daisy chains while they were sitting there, from daisies they gathered by armfuls. And they made a hat for Elizabeth from a castor-bean leaf and tied it with dandelion stems, and then they made dandelion-stem curls and hung them on their ears and tucked them beneath Elizabeth’s bonnet. When Bub begged them to do so, they placed some on his ears too.

  “What a pretty girl you’d be, Bub,” said Sally.

  “P’etty gi’l,” Bub crowed.

  Then, holding Bub’s hands again, and leaving Elizabeth behind in the garden with the cats, they even went into the cool-smelling woods. They surprised a rabbit, who jumped across their path, scattering pine needles as it went. Its white tail flashed as it vanished into the green darkness beyond the sunny clearing in which they stood.

  When Bub began to cry with tiredness, they took him back to the garden, and rather
tired themselves, flopped down on the grass and made hollyhock dolls, with twigs for arms. They danced the dolls about by blowing on them, to amuse Bub.

  Meantime the shadows were growing longer, till at last they could scarcely see each other at all. The bright roses seemed to be floating on the soft darkness, the white ones shining like moons. Their sweetness spilled over into the garden. Sally yawned and stretched. Patience’s eyes were drooping. Bub was crying again.

  The footsteps of the girls’ mothers crunched on the graveled path. Their long skirts whispered over the grass, ballooned over the sea shells, and scattered little pieces of gravel.

  “Time to go home,” said Patience’s mother.

  “Time to go in,” said Sally’s mother, and she picked up Bub and kissed his fat warm neck.

  “Please, may I light the gas plant first?” begged Sally.

  Her mother sighed. “All right,” she said, patting Bub’s shoulder and then placing him on the ground once more. He gave a loud sniff and began to suck his thumb.

  Her mother reached into her pocket, took out a match, and bent to strike it on a stone. She handed the little torch to Sally. Sally took it, and turned to the tall plant that grew at the edge of the path, its white flowers expectantly open, its pointed leaves upright and alert as cats’ ears. All around her Sally could feel the watching eyes gleaming in the dark: Bub’s, Patience’s, the cats’, and perhaps, from beneath a leaf somewhere, the little hoptoad’s. Gently, she touched the match to each bloom. Up leaped a tiny bluish flame, till the entire plant trembled with its own light.

  “Oooh,” came the whispers from all sides. “Oooh.”

  Beneath the plant, a family of ladybugs of all sizes, some so tiny that they could scarcely be seen at all in the wavering light, scattered in all directions.

  And something else showed too.

  “Tom!” cried Sally.

  “Oh, for goodness’ sake!” said her mother, laughing. “That cat!”

  For in the glow of the gas plant, Tom’s pointed face loomed from underneath a gooseberry bush. He had Elizabeth in his mouth. Her bonnet was all askew, her arms and legs were dangling, and her face, looking quite pathetically helpless, hung upside down.

  “Put her down, Tom,” Sally ordered, making a threatening dart at him.

  Tom flicked a cross green glance at Sally, dropped the doll, and began to nibble at his paws, by way of cleaning them.

  Sally straightened Elizabeth’s bonnet and adjusted her dress. “Honestly,” she said. “I think he was going to hide her somewhere! I think he really believes she belongs to him! Naughty Tom!”

  Tom blinked and mewed sleepily.

  The flames of the gas plant flickered out.

  “Time to go in.”

  Someone had lighted the lamps inside the house, and the light streamed out through the porch vines into the garden. The white glimmer of the sea shells led them along the path.

  Sally, hugging Elizabeth, followed the others into the house.

  Chapter 14 - Gingerbread Cookies

  To Sally’s immense surprise, Elizabeth, as she hugged her, gave a little squeal. But, of course, it was not Elizabeth at all, but poor Shadow, who had curled up in Sally’s lap and gone to sleep, and been awakened by that fierce, if loving, hug.

  “Oh, Shadow,” said Sally, scratching his ear where he most loved to have it scratched. “I’m sorry. I was dreaming again. But how funny! Both my dreams have been about things that the other Sally wrote about in her diary.” She looked back into the mirror, but she saw only Shadow and herself reflected there now.

  “But do you know something, Shadow?” she whispered into his ear. “They don’t seem exactly like dreams. It almost seems as if they’re really happening. And look,” she said, remembering something and reaching into her pocket, “this must be a piece of one of the shells from the garden. The shells in the cupboard used to be out there.” She stared in awe at the bit of shell in her hand, feeling almost as if she had brought a bit of the past back with her.

  Shadow reached up a paw and scratched his ear.

  “But I still haven’t found Elizabeth,” she said unhappily, putting the shell back in her pocket. “I wonder if I ever will?”

  As she was walking down the hall stairs, followed by Shadow, Sally noticed that the rain had stopped and that the sun had come out. Each trembling raindrop clinging to the window held a tiny curled rainbow. Their dancing reflections played over the stairs and along the stairway wall. She found that her gloomy gray mood of the morning had completely vanished along with the rain.

  “Well,” said her aunt when she walked into the kitchen. “Have you found Elizabeth yet?”

  “Not yet,” said Sally.

  Her aunt brought a large earthenware bowl out of the cupboard and placed it on the counter. She was wearing a white apron over her dress.

  “How would you like to ask your new friend to help us make gingerbread cookies?” asked Aunt Sarah.

  “My friend — do you mean Emily?”

  “The little girl who was with you in the sleigh.”

  “Oh,” said Sally, remembering how Emily had disappeared. “I don’t know if she — I mean, I don’t know if her mother will let her.”

  “There’s only one way to find out,” said Aunt Sarah briskly. “Ask her. That is, if you’d like her to come. You might have lunch together too, if you like.”

  “Oh, I would like it!” cried Sally. “But —”

  “Run along then, and ask her.”

  Sally hesitated for just a moment, and then she hurried out into the garden. She looked up at Emily’s window. The shade was drawn again. “Maybe they’re not home,” she told herself.

  “Emily,” she called, then louder, “Emily!”

  With a brisk snap, the shade flew up and Emily’s face appeared in the window. Her braids dangled over the sill as she leaned out. The corners of her mouth turned up in the curly smile Sally already knew so well. “Hi, Sally,” she said.

  “Hi, Emily, how are you?”

  “I’m fine. I was just hoping you’d come out today.”

  “You were?” asked Sally. “But I thought — I mean, yesterday, you were gone when I came back.”

  “I had to go,” said Emily. “My mother called me. We went shopping.”

  “Oh,” breathed Sally. She smiled her happy relief up at her friend.

  “Sally,” asked Emily in an anxious voice, “are you — will you be going home? Is your mother coming?”

  Sally shook her head. “No,” she said, “I told her I wanted to stay.”

  “Oh, I’m glad!” cried Emily. “I’m so glad!”

  “I’m glad too,” said Sally.

  “Did you find Elizabeth yet?”

  Sally shook her head. “Not yet,” she said. “But Emily, my Aunt Sarah told me to ask you if you could come over for lunch. We’ll make gingerbread cookies too. Could you? Do you think your mother would let you?”

  “I’d like to,” said Emily eagerly. “I’ll ask my mother. Wait just a minute.”

  Sally chewed on the end of a blade of grass while she waited. “Oh, I hope,” she whispered, “I hope she can.” She crossed her fingers. Like a good omen from the past, a tiny toad hopped by, looking very much like the one in her dream, and vanished into the tall grass.

  Emily’s face showed again at the window with the suddenness of a puppet appearing on stage. She was smiling. “My mother says I can come,” she announced, and then the stage was empty. The curtains stirred a little.

  Aunt Sarah had a little starched apron, white with borders of lace, for each of them, and they helped each other tie the sashes in back. “They were mine when I was about your age,” said Aunt Sarah.

  When the cookies were baked, they ate them for dessert after their lunch of peanut-butter sandwiches, carrot sticks, and potato chips. They sat for this meal at the round table in the dining room. In the afternoon Aunt Sarah left them to their own devices for the most part, but when she was with them, she did not see
m frightening in the least, and Sally felt quite proud of her. “She’s my Aunt Sarah,” she thought, and she enjoyed showing her off a bit to Emily. Showing Emily about the house after lunch was like living again through the wonder of seeing it for the first time herself, only without the fear.

  “Oh, there’s the melodeon!” exclaimed Emily as they went into the parlor. “And it does play a little tune when you walk!” They amused themselves for a time by walking back and forth, just to hear it tinkle.

  Of course Emily had to look at the shells, and hear about how they had once lined the garden paths, and finger with wonder the bit of shell from Sally’s pocket. She seemed quite enchanted with the frail little cups and saucers, and her eyes were like saucers themselves as she listened to Sally’s story of how the handle on one of the cups had come to be broken.

  “I wonder if it really did happen that way,” said Emily, staring at the cup through their two reflections in the glass front of the cupboard.

  “That’s what its says in the diary,” said Sally.

  “Could I see the diary?” asked Emily.

  Sally nodded and led the way through the bead curtains.

  “Shadow’s coming too,” said Emily.

  “Oh, he always follows me, don’t you, Shadow?” said Sally. She felt quite as if this was her own home, and as though she had lived here all her life.

  “What funny curtains,” said Emily. “They tickle when you walk through them. Oh, look at Shadow! He slipped on that rug!” She laughed.

  “Cats,” said Sally, picking him up to comfort him, “are very dignified and don’t like to be laughed at.” And then she began to laugh.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Emily.

  “Oh, nothing,” Sally answered. “Just something I thought of.”