Susan held up the locket and chain, and the two girls looked at it in silent astonishment for a moment. Then Susan took it to the sunlight at the edge of the grotto and began to rub off the dust and dirt.
“What is it? What is it?” Dumpling wanted to know.
“A locket,” Susan said breathlessly. “A very old locket.”
“It says something on it, Susie. What?”
“A. L.,” Susan said, using her handkerchief to rub the locket clean. “They must be initials. A. L.”
“Does it open?” Dumpling wondered.
“Yes,” Susan said, “it’s got a little hinge and clasp. Maybe there’ll be a picture.” But when they had pried the locket open there was only a lock of dark hair wound in a circle and secured under glass.
After that they searched the place under the ledge very carefully, but just a few stones remained, and there were no more surprises. They selected the four best stones, and Susan put the golden treasure in her pocket. Even in their excitement they remembered to put the other stones back and leave the place neat, and then they raced into the hotel to confer with Mother.
Mother had just got her story princess to a safe place, where she dared leave her for the night, so she was glad to stop writing and listen to them. But the locket made her go dreamy-eyed again, and for a moment Susan was afraid that she would want to begin another chapter, putting a mysterious locket into it. Instead Mother shook her head gravely and said, “It seems too bad, but we’ll have to take it to the hotel manager and see if he can find the owner.”
“Of course, I know we’ll have to, Mother,” Susan said. “But really, I don’t think that anyone has lost it recently. I think it’s very old, don’t you?”
“Yes, I do,” Mother said, “but let’s go down and see what the manager says.”
The hotel manager looked at the locket and turned it over in his hand. “This is odd,” he said. “No one has reported the loss of a locket. We have not many children at the Grand Hotel Majestic et de l’Univers, and the grotto is not often used. I will keep this locket in the lost-and-found department for a leetle time. If it ees not claimed, I believe the young girls who find it should belong to it.”
So they all felt happy and excited, and the girls took Mother down to the grotto to show her just where the treasure had been found. Of course they swore her to secrecy, because of George and the birthday rocks.
“It’s really too bad the locket isn’t a jackknife,” Susan said. “Then, if it wasn’t claimed, we could give it to George for his birthday. But what would George do with a locket?”
“He would rather have a lizard,” Dumpling said.
It was very strange to have a secret from George, even for a few days.
It Happens Every Year, but Not Always the Same Way
The nights sometimes grew chilly as the autumn wore on. The days were full of sunshine, but when the sun went down, the air became brisk.
“I really must remember to ask the hotel manager about the fireplaces,” Mother said.
“Do it tomorrow, Mother,” the children begged.
“All right,” Mother said. “I’ll be sure to tell you if he says we can’t.”
But the day after that the weather turned warm again, and they didn’t need to wear their sweaters in the evening, so the fireplaces were forgotten.
As George’s birthday approached, he grew unusually silent. The trouble was that he didn’t want to remind anybody of it after what Father had said, and every time he opened his mouth he was afraid that a reminder would pop out. He was perfectly sure that everybody had forgotten his birthday but himself. This, however, was not true. Everybody remembered, in spite of not being reminded.
In the first place, Father proclaimed a general holiday in George’s honor. They would not have to work—not even Mademoiselle, who was allowed to stay at home with her knitting and her dictionary. Mother asked Jean Marie to pack them a picnic lunch, and, first thing in the morning of George’s birthday, the Ridgeways took a bus back into the hills.
It was very exciting because nobody but Father knew where they were going. But their destination turned out to be a very old town on top of a hill that was all surrounded with walls and moats and drawbridges, just as it had been when it was built many hundreds of years ago. Father took them all around and showed them where battles had been fought, and where the enemy invaders had put up ladders to climb the walls, and where the people had defended the town by shooting arrows through narrow slits in the wall or by pouring down boiling oil or hot melted lead from the towers. The Ridgeways could almost imagine that they heard the clink and jangle of armor as the knights on horseback clattered across the drawbridge. For the first time they began to see what a lot of fun history could be, and why Father was so interested in it.
They ate their lunch in a field just outside the town under olive trees which Father said were many hundreds of years old, perhaps as old as the town walls. The trees were gnarled and twisted, and many of them had big holes in the trunks so that you could see right through them. On the roads, instead of trucks or horse-drawn carts, there were small gray donkeys with baskets for carrying the olives or grapes or whatever had to be carried up and down.
“Oh, Dumpling,” Susan and George cried, “isn’t this nice?”
But Mother said, “Don’t plague her, you two. Of course this is nice, but of course for us our own true home is always better.” So that time Dumpling did not have to answer.
George was pleased with his rocks and the knife that Susan and Dumpling had bought with their money. Mother gave him a lovely pullover sweater with just three more rows about the neck to finish, and Father gave him a book in French with pictures of knights in armor and walls and drawbridges like the one they had seen.
Another good thing about George’s birthday celebration was that now the girls could tell him that they had found the mysterious locket. It was quite a relief not to have any more secrets. So it was really a superb day, or, as Susan wrote in her diary, “simply suburp!”
When they returned to the Grand Hotel and So Forth and So Forth in the evening they were happily exhausted. But there was still another surprise for George. While they were gone, Mademoiselle Beauregard had come all the way over in spite of the general holiday to leave a package for George. On it was a card that said, Félicitations à Georges.
The parcel was about the shape and size of a box of candy, and, since lunch had been a long way back and they were all extremely hungry, everybody, even Father, joined George in saying, “Boy, oh boy!”
George added, “Good old Mademoiselle!” and he was sorry that he had not always been polite and helpful to her. He tore off the paper in a hurry, and it certainly did look like a candy box, but when he raised the lid a sigh of disappointment arose from the eager watchers.
“More stones!” said Susan.
“We’ll have to get another trunk,” said Dumpling, and Mother said, “The poor boy’s back will break in two!”
Father said, “Really, it is quite impossible to carry all the stones in Europe back to America. There aren’t enough boats.”
But George said loyally, “Well, Mademoiselle certainly knew what I liked! And, Daddy, you can see for yourself that these are very small stones and not so very heavy.”
It is true that the stones were small, but they were also really quite ordinary looking. They were the little common pebbles with gray and red spots and veins in them that can be picked up almost anywhere. Still, the children were touched by the thought of poor kindhearted, muddle-headed Mademoiselle out in the hot sun, stooping to gather pebbles for George’s collection. They could imagine her eyeglasses trembling on the end of her nose and ready to fall off at any moment, and her earrings bobbing. It was amazing, but they had almost begun to feel affection for Mademoiselle.
George put the box of pebbles among his other presents, with the card propped up in it, just as if the pebbles were rare and valuable. He didn’t even mind that she had spelled his nam
e with an “s” on the end of it. Poor, dear Mademoiselle! There certainly were a lot of things that they still had to teach her.
Of course the ascenseur was not running that day, so, after examining Mademoiselle’s present, they all began to climb the stairs. But before they had reached the first landing, the hotel manager came running after them with the locket in his hand.
“No person has claimed it,” he said. “I believe the owner has been long away from here—perhaps, even, she has departed this life. So I restore it to the young girls who have found it.”
That was a pleasant way to finish off the holiday. They all examined the curious old locket and guessed who might have owned it and how it happened to be with the stones at the back of the grotto. Father promised to take it to the jeweler in the next street to have the chain mended and the whole thing polished and cleaned. Mother said that Susan and Dumpling would have to take turns wearing it, since they had found it together.
“Irene was there, too,” Dumpling said.
But Mother said no, she didn’t think that Irene should wear it, because it would be too big for her and might get lost again. So Susan made Irene a locket out of cardboard and string and Dumpling was satisfied.
When Mademoiselle arrived the next morning George showed her all his presents and thanked her very politely for the box of pebbles. She looked at the box in surprise, as if she expected it to be somehow changed since she had wrapped it up. “So. You do not like?” she said in a disappointed voice.
“Gee, yes!” said George. “It’s super-duper.”
“Supaire-dupaire, supaire-dupaire,” murmured Mademoiselle as she filed a new word away in her mind. “But, Shorsh, I am surprise zere are so many left.”
“Many left?” the children repeated. “Why, what would happen to them, Mademoiselle?”
And, as a kind of joke, George said, “You can’t eat stones.”
“No?” said Mademoiselle. “Shorsh, are you sure?” As she spoke, the governess selected one of the largest pebbles from the box, put it in her mouth, and began to crunch it.
“Oh, Mademoiselle, your teeth!” cried Susan with a shudder.
But George was entranced. “Eat another, Mademoiselle!” he begged. It was almost like watching a sword swallower swallow swords.
“But certainly,” replied Mademoiselle calmly, putting another pebble in her mouth. Crunch-crunch-crunch—down it went.
George put his hand in the box and selected a good-sized pebble, which he began slowly raising to his lips.
“No, no!” said Susan. “Remember how you hate going to the dentist, George!” and Dumpling said, “Bzzzzz!” to remind him of the dentist’s drilling machine.
But George’s scientific curiosity was aroused. He put the pebble into his mouth and began to chew. Slowly an expression of pleased surprise spread over his face.
“Supaire-dupaire, eh, Shorsh?” said Mademoiselle, but George’s only reply was to swallow and reach hastily for another pebble, which followed the first one into his mouth.
Susan and Dumpling looked on with growing bewilderment as George and Mademoiselle continued to gobble stones. At last Susan said, “Well, I do think you might be polite enough to offer me one.”
“Help yourself,” said George kindly.
“Remember the dentist, Susie,” warned Dumpling, but Susan already had a pebble in her mouth and was looking pleasantly surprised as she crunched it up.
“Try one, Dompleeng,” said Mademoiselle. “You will not regret.”
So Dumpling ate a stone, too. Her eyes opened wide with astonishment. “It’s the godmother,” she said. “She changed them into candy.”
“But they are all different,” Susan said. “They don’t look like candy. They look like stones.”
“Zat is art, Suzanne,” said Mademoiselle. “So you were really surprise, eh? You do not have ze bonbons like stones in North America?”
“No,” the children said.
“Zen I tell you a very good idea,” said Mademoiselle. “It is for Shorsh to collect leetle candy stones like zese instead of big hard ones. Zen he does not have to buy more trunks and break hees back to carry.”
“Dear me,” said Susan, reaching for another pebble, “that’s a perfectly wonderful idea, Mademoiselle, and I’m sure Mother and Daddy will be grateful to you for thinking of it.”
“Still,” George objected, “I might eat my collection before I got it home, and then where would I be?”
“You would be on the outside of it, George,” said Dumpling gravely.
Now that George’s birthday was out of the way, they had to begin explaining to Mademoiselle about Halloween. This was difficult, because it seemed that in France October thirty-first was the eve of All Saints’ Day, and was quite a serious occasion, when people decorated graves, as Americans do on May thirty-first. The children all talked at once, and Mademoiselle got quite a strange idea of ghosts playing football and pumpkins riding broomsticks and witches bobbing for apples and everybody winning prizes.
“Zis is formidable,” she said. “I sink we must quickly shut up and study ze French cats and baskets. Okay?”
“Okay,” the Ridgeways said. But afterward Susan had the bright idea of giving Mademoiselle a real American Halloween party to show her what it was like.
“May we invite Mother and Daddy, too?” asked Dumpling, and Susan said, “Of course.”
“And Irene and the little princess and the godmother?”
“Oh, Irene, naturally,” said Susan, “but I don’t see how we can invite the princess until we’ve met her, and we haven’t met the godmother either, as a matter of fact.”
“No,” said George. “We don’t want the godmother. We’ve got three grown-ups already. What kind of party could you have with four grown-ups and only three kids?”
“And Irene,” reminded Dumpling.
“Oh, phooey to Irene!” said George, but that made Dumpling very sad, because she claimed that George was Irene’s uncle and that he should at least be polite to her even if he didn’t love her. So George batted Irene’s wobbly rag head in a friendly way and said he apologized, but he refused to kiss her.
Susan did not pay any attention to them, because she was already deep in plans. “We’ll make the bathroom into a Chamber of Horrors,” she said. “It will be simply formidable.”
“You sound like Mademoiselle,” said George.
“Well, if she says ‘okay,’ I don’t know why I can’t say ‘formidable,’ ” Susan said, “and really, ‘formidable’ is the only word for what I have in mind.”
“Tell us, Susie,” Dumpling said, and as Susan unfolded her plans George began to utter Boy, oh boys of pleased anticipation.
Poor Mademoiselle accepted the invitation to the party with alacrity. She had not been to a party for some time, and her earrings bobbed and her eyeglasses trembled with excitement at the very thought. Of course, in spite of all that the children had tried to tell her about Halloween, she did not really understand what she was getting into. However, she was helpful to them later, when they couldn’t find all the things they needed.
George and Susan and Dumpling, with all the allowance money that they could scrape together, had gone up and down the streets of the town, hunting for pumpkins and marshmallows.
“If they have pumpkin soup, they must have pumpkins,” Susan had said, and everyone agreed with her. But no pumpkins were to be seen, and what they were called in French nobody knew.
As for marshmallows, they stopped first at a shop that said confections, but it turned out that when the French use the word confections they mean ladies’ dresses. Finally they found a store where candy was sold, and George and Dumpling nearly went out of their minds at the sight of so many delightful things to eat. There were wonderful little tarts and cakes, and candies of all sorts, including the famous candy pebbles, and imitation fruits and vegetables, and little candies wrapped in gold- and silver- and varicolored papers. But before George and Dumpling could rush in and spend
all their money, Susan regretfully reminded them that there was not a marshmallow in sight.
It was Mademoiselle who told them that in French pumpkins were called potirons and that she would get them one, if they really wished it—although how in the world they were going to make soup out of it upstairs in a hotel bedroom she could not understand. She also listened very carefully to their description of marshmallows and promised to get those, too, although she did not know any name for them in French. Of course, all the children talked at once, and it is no wonder that Mademoiselle became slightly confused. But they gave her their money, and Dumpling put her arms around the governess’s neck and kissed her. George and Susan thought that this was going a little too far, but Mademoiselle was pleased and had to take off her glasses and wipe the tears away.
On the morning of Halloween she arrived with a “supaire-dupaire” smile and a small yellow pumpkin wrapped in a newspaper. She also had a bag of what she described as “marzi-malos.” These certainly did not look like honest American marshmallows. They looked much more like taffy. But Susan didn’t want to spoil Mademoiselle’s pleasure by telling her so, and besides, they were all so busy preparing for the party that they didn’t really worry about it.
Susan had a plan for keeping up their studies and at the same time preparing for the party. Mademoiselle was to sit in the garden with her knitting, and every half-hour, when the clock in a nearby steeple chimed, the three children would appear on the balcony above and Mademoiselle would call up to them a sentence in French. While they prepared for the party they would keep repeating the sentence to one another until they had learned it. When the next half-hour struck, they would all appear on the balcony and shout the sentence back to Mademoiselle. Then she would give them a new one, and so it went on until twelve-thirty. It was quite an interesting game, and it seemed as if they learned more French that day than they usually learned on mornings when lessons simply bored them. Of course, Mother and Father were busily at work downstairs in the hotel writing room, so all the shouting back and forth did not bother them.
Family Sabbatical (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries) Page 5
