“Now, I know you’ll all want some of my sweets,” she said. “There are blackberry tarts and blueberry cookies, and the little ones are sprinkled with black walnuts. Take your pick, my bird,” she said to the little boy on his mother’s lap.
But his mother gently pulled back his hand. “Eating at night gives him bad dreams,” she said.
“But you’re too old to dream, aren’t you, Honeysuckle?” said the little lady, sliding close to Ann, who stood by the fire.
“No, thank you, ma’am,” said Ann, looking wistfully at the tarts.
“It’s good manners to take one, child!”
“Shall I, Father?” asked Ann.
Her father shook his head. “Eating at night doesn’t agree with Ann either.”
“Look out!” exclaimed the cat.
The three old ladies immediately stopped what they were doing and looked about the room wildly. There was Pretty in a corner reaching toward a cobweb overhead, on which sat a black, rather oblong-looking spider.
“Let that alone!” shrieked Horrible, waving her arms at Pretty Spella.
“Stop! Stop,” shrilled little Scrits.
It was Hag-Chaser who gave a thin, long leap across the room toward the girl, reaching out with her clutching fingers.
Philip stepped in front of Pretty with his staff raised. “Keep back!” he cried.
“Brooms! Brooms! Help!” shrieked the three old ladies together, and instantly three brooms hopped from behind the door and made for Philip and the girl immediately and with great speed. But swifter still, a fourth broom with a red handle came hurrying up from another corner and barred their path.
While the young mother clutched her little boy, and John picked up Ann and carried her out of the way, the battle raged. The old ladies shrieked and the brooms fought, handle clashing against handle. Philip joined the defense of the red broomstick against the others, while the cat yowled and bit his ankle, and the toad came huffing and puffing through a hole in the wainscot.
But Pretty had seized the spider, web and all, and still protected by Philip and the red-handled broom, she gained the hearth and flung the oblong-shaped creature into the flames.
Instantly the fire leaped up into the chimney throat, the brooms fell with a clatter to the floor, and the candles winked low and rose again. Hop-in-the-Fire huffed and puffed back through the hole, Grimalkin returned to her cushion, and the three old ladies began to set their aprons straight, and fluff up the ribbons of their white caps.
“Oh deary me,” whimpered little Scrits. “What will become of us now?”
“No one will fear us,” mumbled the fat witch called Horrible.
“We’ll starve,” moaned Hag-Chaser.
The young mother looked troubled. “Can’t you just go on living here?” she said. “It’s such a nice cottage.”
“But how are we to maintain ourselves, Madam?” said Horrible, crossly.
“Couldn’t you weave?”
“I used to weave cloth before I wove spells,” said Hag-Chaser unexpectedly, “and Scrits made rag rugs very nicely, long ago when she was young.”
“My specialty was linen. That, too, was long ago,” added Horrible, “but I still remember.”
The three old ladies became quite enthusiastic as they talked.
“It will be a change,” said Scrits. “Anything for a change. And we’re very near the road. We should get good trade.”
“I will send you my cookbook, and you will find it much more fun than a spell book, I know,” said the young mother.
“How kind you are, Madam!” exclaimed little Scrits, making an effort to smile. “And now you’d better all be getting on. The village is only a mile beyond us. You go too, Pretty Spella, with your fine young man by your side!”
“Yes, good-bye,” said Hag-Chaser. “I always said you’d be our ruin, girl.”
“You weren’t cut out for a witch, ever,” said Horrible kindly. “This new form of life will fit you better, so run along, my dear.”
The travelers were glad enough to go. No sip nor sup had they taken. Whitey, too, was glad to leave the little cottage behind. And Pretty walked with her young man’s arm about her, carrying with her the faithful broom with the red handle.
“Oh, not for riding of course,” she assured Philip. “Pm done with all that, and the poor thing is only an ordinary broom now, anyway. But we did have some wonderful rides together. It’s not wrong for me to remember them, is it?”
“Certainly not,” said Philip. “What a good fight it put up tonight! I shall buy a silver hook for it, and it shall hang on our kitchen wall in the place of honor when we are married.”
The Wonderful Day
Robert Arthur
Ask and ye shall receive.
* * *
I
Danny was crouched on the stairs, listening to the grown-ups talk in the living room below. He wasn’t supposed to be there. He was supposed to be in bed, since he was still recovering from the chicken pox.
But it got lonely being in bed all the time, and he hadn’t been able to resist slipping out and down in his wool pajamas, to hear Dad and Mom and Sis and Uncle Ben and Aunt Anna talking.
Dad—he was Dr. Norcross, and everybody went to him when they were sick—and the others were playing bridge. Sis, who was in high school, was studying her Latin, not so hard she couldn’t take part in the conversation.
They were mostly talking about other people in Locustville, which was such a small town everybody knew everybody else, well enough to talk about them, anyway.
“Locustville!” That was Mom, with a sigh. “I know it’s a pretty town, with the river and the trees and the woods around it, and Tom has a good practice here, but the people! If only something would shake some of them out of themselves, and show them how petty and malicious and miserable they are!”
“Like Netty Peters,” Dad said, his tone dry. Danny knew Miss Peters. Always hurrying over to some neighbor’s to talk about somebody. Whisper-whisper-whisper. Saying nasty things. “She’s the source of most of the gossip in this town. If ever there was a woman whose tongue was hinged in the middle and wagged at both ends, it’s her.”
Uncle Ben laughed.
“Things would be better here,” he remarked, “if the money were better distributed. If Jacob Earl didn’t own or have a mortgage on half the town, there might be more free thought and tolerance. But nobody in debt to him dares open his mouth.”
“Funny thing,” Dad put in, “how some men have a knack for making money at other men’s expense. Everything Jacob Earl touches seems to mint money for him—money that comes out of someone else’s pocket. Like the gravel land he got from John Wiggins. I’d like to see the process reversed sometime.”
“But for real miserliness”—that was Aunt Anna, indignant—“Luke Hawks takes all the prizes. I’ve seen him come into the Fair-Square store to buy things for his children, and the trouble he had letting go his money, you’d have thought it stuck to his fingers!”
“It’s a question,” Dad said, “which is worse, miserliness or shiftlessness. Miserliness, I suppose, because most shiftless people are at least good-hearted. Like Henry Jones. Henry wishes for more things and does less to get them than any man in Christendom. If wishes were horses, Henry would have the biggest herd this side of the Mississippi.”
“Well, there are some nice people in Locustville,” Sis broke into the conversation. “I don’t care what that old gossip Miss Peters says, or that stuck-up Mrs. Norton either; I think Miss Avery, my English and gym teacher, is swell. She isn’t awful pretty, but she’s nice.
“There’s little silver bells in her voice when she talks, and if that Bill Morrow whose dad owns the implement factory, and who takes time off to coach the football team, wasn’t a dope, he’d have fallen for her long ago. She’s crazy about him, but too proud to show it, and that silly Betty Norton has made him think he’s wonderful by playing up to him all the time.”
“If he marries Betty,” A
unt Anna said, “the town won’t be able to hold Mrs. Norton anymore. She’s already so puffed up with being the wife of the bank president and the leader of the town’s social life, she’d just swell up a little more and float away like a balloon if she got the Morrow Implement Company for a son-in-law.”
Everybody laughed, and the conversation slowly died away.
Mom mentioned how much she disliked the two-faced Minerva Benson who was so nice to people’s faces and worked against them behind their backs.
Sis said that Mr. Wiggins, who ran the bookstore, was a nice little man who ought to marry Miss Wilson, the dressmaker, a plain little woman who would be as pretty as a picture if she looked the way she was.
But he never would, Sis said, because he hadn’t any money and would be ashamed to ask a woman to marry him when he couldn’t even earn his own living.
Then they went back to bridge. Danny was feeling sort of weak and shaky, so he hurried back to bed before Mom could catch him. He crawled in and pulled the blankets up over him, and then his hand reached under the pillow and pulled out the funny thing he’d found in the old chest where he kept his games and skates and things.
It had been wrapped in a soft piece of leather, and he had found it in a little space behind one of the drawers. There was a name inked on the leather, Jonas Norcross. Dad’s grandfather had been named Jonas, so it might have been originally his.
What the thing was, was a little pointed piece of ivory, sharp at the tip and round at the bottom, as if it had been sawed off the very end of an elephant’s tusk.
Only there was a fine spiral line in it, like in a snail’s shell, that made Danny think maybe it hadn’t come from an elephant, but from an animal he had seen in a book once—an animal like a horse, with one long horn over its nose. He couldn’t remember the name.
It was all yellow with age, and on the bottom was carved a funny mark, all cross lines, very intricate. Maybe it was Chinese writing. Jonas Norcross had been captain of a clipper ship in the China trade, so it might have come all the way from China.
Lying in bed, Danny held the bit of ivory in his hand. It gave out a warmth to his fingers that was nice. Holding it tight, he thought of a picture in his book about King Arthur’s Round Table—a picture of Queen Guinevere of the golden hair. Probably it was a picture like that that Sis had meant Miss Wilson ought to be pretty as.
Grown-ups’ talk wasn’t always easy to understand, the way they said things that weren’t so.
Danny yawned. Gee, though, it would be awful funny— He yawned again, and the weight of drowsiness descending on him closed his eyes. But not before one last thought had floated through his mind.
As it came to him, a queer little breeze seemed to spring up in the room. It fluttered the curtains and rattled the window shade. For just a second Danny felt almost as if somebody was in the room with him. Then it was gone, and smiling at his amusing thought, Danny slept.
II
Henry Jones woke that morning with the smell of frying bacon in his nostrils. He yawned and stretched, comfortably. There was a clock on the bureau on the other side of the room, but it was too much trouble to look at it.
He looked at where the sunshine, coming in the window, touched the carpet. That told him it was just onto nine.
Downstairs pans were rattling. Martha was up and about, long ago. And just about ready to get impatient with him for lingering in bed.
“Ho huuuum,” Henry yawned, and pushed down the covers. “I wish I was up an’ dressed aw-ready.”
As if it were an echo to his yawn, a shrill whickering sound reached him from the direction of his large, untidy backyard. Disregarding it, Henry slid into his trousers and shirt, his socks and shoes, put on a tie, combed his hair casually, and ambled down to the dining room.
“Well!” his wife, Martha, commented tartly, appearing in the doorway with a platter in her hands as he slumped down into his chair. “It’s after nine. If you’re going to look for work today, you should have been started long ago!”
Henry shook his head dubiously as she set the bacon and eggs in front of him.
“I dunno if I ought to go tramping around today,” he muttered. “Don’t feel so well. Mmm, that looks good. But I kind of wish we could have sausage once in a while.”
From the rear yard came another high whinny that went unnoticed.
“Sausage is expensive,” Martha told him. “When you get an honest job, maybe we can afford some.”
“There’s Hawks,” Henry remarked, with interest, peering out the front window as a lean, long-faced man strode past his house, with a pleasant but shabbily dressed little woman trotting meekly at his side. “Guess Millie has talked him into laying out some money for new things for the kids at last. It’s only about once a year she gets him to loosen up.”
“And then you’d think, to look at him, he was dying,” his wife commented, “just because he’s buying a couple of pairs of two-dollar shoes for two as nice youngsters as ever lived. He begrudges them every mouthful they eat, almost.”
“Still,” Henry said, wagging his head wisely, “I wish I had the money he has stacked away.”
From the rear yard came a sound of galloping hooves. Martha was too intent on scolding Henry to notice it.
“Wish, wish, wish!” she stormed. “But never work, work, work! Oh, Henry, you’re the most exasperating man alive!”
“Martha, I’m not worthy of you,” Henry sighed. “I wish you had a better husband. I mean it.”
This time the whinnying behind the house was a concerted squeal from many throats, too loud to go unnoticed. Henry’s buxom wife started, looked puzzled, and hurried out to the kitchen. A moment later her screech reached Henry’s ears.
“Henry! The backyard’s full of horses! Plunging and kicking all over the place!”
The news was startling enough to overcome Henry’s early-morning lethargy. He joined his wife at the kitchen window and stared with popping eyes at the big rear yard.
It was full—anyway, it seemed full—of animals. Martha had called them horses. They weren’t exactly horses. But they weren’t ponies either. They were too small to be the one and too big to be the other. And they were covered with longish hair, had wild flowing manes, and looked strong and savage enough to lick their weight in tigers.
“Well, I’ll be deuced!” Henry exclaimed, his round countenance vastly perplexed. “I wish I knew where those critters came from.”
“Henry!” Martha wailed, clutching his arm. “Now there’s five!”
There had been four of them, trotting about the yard, nosing at the wreck of the car Henry had once driven, thumping with their hooves the board fence that penned them in. But now there were, indeed, five.
“G-gosh!” Henry gulped, his Adam’s apple working up and down. “We must have counted wrong. Now, how do you suppose they got in there?”
“But what kind of horses are they, Henry?” Martha asked, holding to his arm still, as if for protection, in a way she hadn’t for years. “And whom do you suppose they belong to?”
Henry put an arm around Martha’s plump waist and applied a reassuring pressure.
“I wish I knew, Martha,” he muttered. “I wish I knew.”
“Henry!” There was real fright in his wife’s voice. “Now there’s six!”
“Seven,” Henry corrected weakly. “The other two just—just sort of appeared.”
Together they gazed at the seven shaggy ponies that were trotting restlessly about the yard, nosing at the fence as if seeking escape from the limited space.
No more appeared; and seeing the number remain stable, Henry and Martha gained more self-possession.
“Henry,” his wife said with severity, as if somehow blaming him, “there’s something queer happening. Nobody ever saw horses like those in Indiana before.”
“Maybe they belong to a circus,” Henry suggested, staring in fascination at the seven uncouth beasts.
“Maybe they belong to us!”
; “Us?” Henry’s jaw dropped. “How could they belong to us?”
“Henry,” his wife told him, “you’ve got to go out and see if they’re branded. I remember reading anybody can claim a wild horse if it hasn’t been branded. And those are wild horses if I ever saw any.”
Of course, Martha never had seen any wild horses, but her words sounded logical. Her husband, however, made no motion toward the back door.
“Listen,” he said, “Martha, you stay here and watch. Don’t let anybody into the yard. I’m going to get Jake Harrison, at the stable. He used to be a horse trader. He’ll know what those things are and if they belong to us, if anybody does.”
“All right, Henry,” his wife agreed—the first time he could remember her agreeing with him in, anyway, two years—“but hurry. Please do hurry.”
“I will!” Henry vowed; and without even snatching up his hat, he shot away.
Jake Harrison, the livery stable owner, came back with him unwillingly, half dragged in Henry’s excitement. But when he stood in the kitchen and stared out at the yard full of horses, his incredulity vanished.
“Good Lord!” he gasped. “Henry, where’d you get ’em?”
“Never mind that,” Henry told him. “Just tell me, what are they?”
“Mongohan ponies,” the lanky horse dealer informed him. “The exact kind of ponies old Genghis Khan’s men rode on when they conquered most of the known world. I’ve seen pictures of them in books. Imagine it! Mongolian ponies here in Locustville!”
“Well,” Martha asked, with withering scorn, “aren’t you going out to see if they’re branded? Or are you two men afraid of a lot of little ponies?”
“I guess they won’t hurt us,” the stable owner decided, “if we’re careful. Come on, Henry, let’s see if I’m still any good at lassoing. Mis’ Jones, can I use this hank of clothesline?”
Henry opened the kitchen door and followed Jake Harrison out into the yard. At their advent the seven ponies—he was glad to see the number hadn’t changed in his absence—stopped their restless trotting and lifted their heads to stare at the men.
Young Witches & Warlocks Page 3
