Family Sabbatical (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries)

by Carol Ryrie Brink

  “Yes, it is true,” the princess said. “You see, one lives so long as I do only for one thing—to get a little wisdom, maybe. So it is that I find myself preaching you a sermon. But I do not wish to bore you with this. Let me see. I have promise a picture to show you, have I not?”

  “Yes, please,” said Dumpling.

  The princess opened her desk drawer, and in it there were many more small and interesting things that the children would have enjoyed seeing and handling. But they stood back politely while she brought out a small oval portrait in a gilt frame. She held it up and smiled at them. “Here is your little princess with gold hair. Not?”

  The children came close to the princess to look at the portrait that she held in her hand.

  “Yes,” said Susan, “that is how our little princess looked.”

  “She has brown eyes,” said Dumpling, “so George and I were right.”

  “She has a rose in her hand,” said George.

  “And a locket around her neck,” said Dumpling.

  “It is much nicer than a photograph,” Susan said, “but I wonder how the painter could make it so tiny and yet so nice.”

  “Ah,” said the princess, “the painter had great skill in the painting of miniatures. She was a young woman who worked without smiling, yet with great eagerness in her face. She had a nose like a beak, and long fingers that were full of delicacy and precision. I remember her quite well, although I was so young.”

  “Were you there?” asked Dumpling.

  “When she painted this?” asked George.

  Susan began to smile. “Of course she was there,” she said. “She had to be, because she was the little princess.”

  “Are you quite sure?” asked the old lady, smiling back at Susan.

  “I think I am,” said Susan. “The brown eyes are the same. I am glad they are brown instead of blue.”

  “Yes, yes,” said the princess. “It is indeed myself, but so many years ago that I have almost myself forgotten how many. Imagine how it was to sit still so long while the portrait was painted! I was very tired and bored. I had a little dog named Fritzi, and he came beside me and begged with his eyes that I should run and play with him. But my mamma said to him, ‘Away, Fritzi. Louisa must sit very still until her likeness is made. If we do not have it made now, she will grow, and we shall forget that she was ever small and round and with golden hair.’ So there I sat, while Fritzi waited and the artist with the clever fingers painted on ivory with her tiny brushes. It was wise of my mother, I am sure, for here is the small Louisa still, as you can see. So she will ever be, although I myself grow very old and gray and no longer run or play.”

  “I wish the painter had put Fritzi into the picture,” said George.

  “I, too,” said the princess. “But at that time he would not have been quiet so long as to have his portrait painted. No, no! He would have frisked and barked and his impudent red tongue hung out. He would have tried the patience of the painter even more than I myself.”

  “What happened to Fritzi?” the children asked.

  “Ah, poor Fritzi!” the old lady exclaimed. “He was a little dog with very short legs, but he had a great soul and large ambitions. One day when my father and brothers were riding out to hunt with the pack of long-legged hounds, Fritzi heard the barking and baying of the hounds. He slipped out of the house and ran to join them. But after he had run a mile or two his short legs grew very tired and he lagged behind. Presently he was lost in a field of grain which stood very tall and shut off his view of home. It was several days before one of the farmers found him and brought him back to us. I had been crying for him all the time that he was gone. Now I clasped him in my arms and he licked my cheek with his tongue. But after that he would run no more, but lay on his cushion and had a painful wheezing in his breath. I tempted him with dainty things to eat, but he only looked at me sadly, as if to say his life had been a failure.

  “I said to him, ‘Fritzi, my dear, I do not care that you cannot hunt. I do not care that the antelope and deer are too swift for you. I love you very much just as you are!’ But, whether from disappointment or fatigue, I do not know, poor Fritzi closed his eyes one day and died.”

  “And did you cry a lot?” asked Dumpling.

  “I am afraid that I did,” the princess said. “Yet my father and brothers made my grief less by giving him a noble funeral. And when Fritzi was in his grave, my kind father a beautiful tombstone caused to be made. It was twelve inches tall and four inches broad, and on it was carved the name FRITZI and other words, which meant ‘Louisa’s darling.’ This comforted me very much.”

  “Is the little tombstone still there?” Dumpling asked.

  “I wish I could tell you,” said the princess sadly. “I have not seen my old home in many years now. They tell me that it has been turned into a kind of museum and park, and that many people walk there and enjoy what once belonged only to us. Perhaps that is best. I really do not know. But I hope that the little children who play there now will find Fritzi’s grave and care for it, and perhaps sometimes they will weave a daisy chain or a wreath of clover blossoms to lay upon it as I used to do.”

  “We would if we were there, wouldn’t we?” Dumpling said, and George and Susan said, “Yes.”

  The children all talked at once when it came to telling Mother and Father about the portrait and Fritzi and the beautiful agate paperweight and all the things they had seen and heard in the room of the old princess.

  When they were alone together on top of the rock grotto, the children still continued to discuss their adventure.

  “Did we ever find out what kind of dog Fritzi was?” asked George.

  “Short legs,” said Dumpling.

  “I think he was a dachshund,” said George.

  Susan had been looking very thoughtful, and she had the same gleam in her eye that Mother had when she was busy helping Angus McAngus solve a mystery.

  Susan said, “Did you notice anything in particular about the princess’s things?”

  “There were lots of pictures,” George said.

  “To keep her from being lonely,” said Dumpling.

  “Yes,” Susan said, “but something else.”

  “There were stones,” said George.

  “That’s what I meant,” Susan said. “There was the piece of crystal and the little green stone carving and the beautiful agate. She knew to pick that up when she saw it by the stream in Switzerland, even before it was cut open to show the beauty inside. Does that make you think of anything?”

  “You mean she collects stones?” shouted George.

  “Well, we don’t really know,” Susan said, “but we have these clues. And another thing. Do you remember anything special about the portrait?”

  “Fritzi wasn’t in it,” George said, “but she had a rose in her hand.”

  “She had brown eyes,” Dumpling said.

  “Something else,” Susan said. “What did she have around her neck?”

  “She had a locket,” Dumpling said.

  “You see?” said Susan triumphantly. “And she used to come to this hotel when she was a little girl. She told you that the first day you talked with her. Don’t you see? Just let your imaginations run a little bit, like Mother and I do.”

  “You mean,” said George, “that she was the one who hid the stones in the grotto?”

  “And lost the locket?” asked Dumpling. “Then we—”

  “Exactly!” Susan said. “I think we’ve got the locket that was on the little princess’s neck in the portrait. Remember the initials on it? A. L.—that could be Adelaide Louisa.”

  George and Dumpling looked at Susan with open mouths and wide eyes.

  “Well, don’t stare,” Susan said. “It could be, couldn’t it?”

  “In a fairy tale it could,” said Dumpling.

  “It isn’t scientific,” George said. “Remember, you all thought she was a godmother.”

  “So did you,” said Susan. “Anybody can be mistak
en once in a while. But when there are clues—even scientists use clues, George. It’s the way they make the great inventions and things.”

  “We can ask her,” said Dumpling.

  “If you ask her and find the locket is hers,” George said sensibly, “you’ll have to give it back to her.”

  “Oh, Susie,” said Dumpling, “why did you think up clues?”

  “I expect she doesn’t really miss it anymore,” George said.

  “Well,” said Susan slowly, “maybe this is something we’ll have to think about for a while. There’s no use being in a hurry.”

  She had a great deal of interesting material to write in her diary that night. But when she came to the part about the clues and the locket she sat still for a long time with the end of the pencil in her mouth. Finally she drew a dash and stopped writing altogether, so that the end of her page looked like this:

  Different Thanksgiving

  Thanksgiving is coming,” Mother said. “It will certainly seem very strange not to be roasting a turkey and making mince pies this year.”

  “No roast turkey?” shouted George. “But won’t the Grand Hotel and So Forth and So Forth give us some?”

  “I hardly think so,” Father said. “Thanksgiving is a day we celebrate in the United States. It will be like any other day in France.”

  “No Thanksgiving?” the children cried in dismay.

  “We can be thankful in our hearts,” said Mother.

  “But without turkey, that won’t be so much fun,” George said.

  “We had an American Halloween,” Dumpling said. “Maybe even in France we can figure out how to have an American Thanksgiving.”

  They all turned and looked at Dumpling, and the light sparkled on her glasses and made her look wise.

  “That’s a good idea,” said Susan. “But how?”

  “I don’t know,” Dumpling said.

  “It’s an idea you can all work on,” Mother said. “I’ll appoint a committee of three to look into this matter. The committee will be called The Committee to Look into the Matter of How Americans Can Celebrate Thanksgiving While Living in France. Susan shall be the chairman of the committee, and George and Dumpling can be the other members. When you have drawn up some plans, your parents will be glad to consider them.”

  “But no bats, please,” said Father.

  “The bats were accidental the other time,” Susan said. “We didn’t plan for them. But I understand what you mean, Daddy.”

  “And can we plan whatever we want to do to celebrate Thanksgiving?” George asked.

  “Yes,” Mother said, “within reasonable limits, of course. As Daddy says, no bats, and no chartered planes to the United States, and no free turkeys for all the dogs and cats of France. Just be reasonable, that’s all, and we’ll do our best to cooperate.”

  “How do we begin?” asked Dumpling.

  “I am the chairman,” Susan said, “so I begin by calling a meeting, right away, on top of the grotto.”

  Mother had always made the Thanksgiving plans before. It was she who decided whether the turkey should be stuffed with plain dressing or oyster dressing and how many little sausages should be draped across the turkey’s breast and anchored with toothpicks. Whenever people who didn’t know George’s tastes asked him whether he preferred the light meat or the dark meat of the turkey, George always said, “I prefer the sausages.” Of course he liked the breast of the turkey, too, as well as the drumstick, the thigh, and the liver. He even enjoyed the neck if that was all that was left on the day after Thanksgiving.

  “But no turkey this year,” the children said gloomily when they were seated on top of the grotto, and George added, “If there’s no turkey, is there any use planning?”

  “Of course!” Susan said. “The fun of making plans is that they can be different. We like Thanksgiving days very much, but they’re all alike. Can you really remember one from another? For instance, was it last year or the year before that we had plum pudding instead of pumpkin pie?”

  Neither George nor Dumpling could remember.

  “You see?” said Susan. “I’ll bet you can’t even remember whether it was two or three years ago that Grandma Ridgeway couldn’t have dinner with us as usual because of her rheumatism.”

  “Grandma Ridgeway!” cried George and Dumpling together. “We can’t have her either!”

  “What shall we do, Susie?” asked Dumpling.

  “Well,” said Susan, “all I mean to say is this: if we can make this a very different kind of Thanksgiving, we’ll remember it. Years and years from now we’ll say, ‘Do you remember that year we had Thanksgiving in France?’ and every one of us will say, ‘Yes! That one was different!’ ”

  “So what do we do, Susie?” repeated Dumpling.

  “The important thing is to be thankful, of course,” Susan said. “But just how—”

  “We could put on a pageant,” said George gloomily.

  “That’s a wonderful idea,” Susan said. “But I thought you hated pageants, George.”

  “Most pageants I hate,” said George, “but at Thanksgiving there could be Indians.”

  “Ah,” said Susan, thinking. “Indians. Let me see—”

  “And little Pilgrims going to church,” said Dumpling.

  “I don’t know,” Susan said. “It’s very hard to get costumes when you’re traveling, and who would see us if we had a pageant?”

  “Mother and Daddy, of course,” said George, “but they’ve seen us be Indians before. It wouldn’t be very different for them.”

  “It would be different for Mademoiselle,” Dumpling said. The other two looked at her and saw how wisdom sparkled brightly on the surface of her spectacles.

  “Boy, oh boy!” said George. “I’ll bet Mademoiselle doesn’t know an Indian from a Pilgrim. What we could teach her about American history!”

  “Remember, Daddy will be there, too,” cautioned Susan. “We can’t get too romantical about American history with Daddy sitting there knowing all the dates and things.”

  “Mother wouldn’t mind if we mixed the dates,” George said.

  “But Daddy would want it to be right or not at all,” Susan said.

  “And another thing,” said Dumpling, “if we can’t have Grandma Ridgeway, why couldn’t we have the princess?”

  They looked at her again, and really, sometimes it did seem as if Dumpling were a kind of genius or a prodigy or something.

  “Well, why not?” said Susan. “Thanksgiving is a time for making other people happy as well as ourselves. And we could give her the locket then, too, and I would be thankful to get that off my conscience, because it kind of worries me that we still have it when we think it belongs to her.”

  “But what would we eat?” asked George. “There would have to be food. You can’t have Thanksgiving and no food.”

  “Why, of course,” said Susan, “we’ll just have a regular Grand-Hotel-and-So-Forth-and-So-Forth kind of meal, the usual thing, that Daddy’s already paid for. Unless . . . unless . . .” Susan’s voice trailed off, and her eyes grew dreamy. “Unless . . .” she said again in a very small, faraway voice.

  “Unless what?” the others wanted to know. Susan’s “unless”es were often very fruitful.

  “Well, it was just a sort of idea,” Susan said. “Just a kind of thing that popped into my head, and I suppose it wouldn’t be what Mother calls ‘within reasonable limits.’ Still, it’s a lovely thought, and maybe it wouldn’t do any harm to ask.”

  “What, Susie, what?” asked George and Dumpling. It is very maddening to see somebody getting a bright idea and not telling about it. And now Susan was very maddening indeed, and, instead of giving them her idea, she began to sing.

  “Oxtail, black-bean, consommé,

  Clam chowder, chicken gumbo, hey-hey-hey,

  Vegetable with alphabet, vegetable with beef,

  Scotch broth, mushroom, purée of peef.”

  “What is peef, Susie?” Dumpling asked. “I forgot
what you said is peef and what is hey-hey-hey.”

  But George began to prance about and shout, “Boy, oh boy!” and, “Do you think they will?”

  “We can try,” Susan said. “Let’s go and ask them.”

  The Ridgeways always did remember their Thanksgiving in France because, as Susan had predicted, it was different from all the other Thanksgivings they had ever had.

  First of all, of course, there was no turkey. But there were so many other things that nobody counted the missing drumsticks.

  The day began in an unexpectedly different way because when Father got out of bed in the morning he stepped on a lizard that George was keeping in a cardboard box under the bed. It seems that the lizard had found a way out of the box and was just starting to explore the room, when this large human foot came down on it—kerplump!

  Lizards don’t cry out, but Father did. “What in tarnation and tunket is crawling around under my bed?” he howled. “I won’t have reptiles under my bed at any time of day. I won’t—I won’t—I won’t—”

  He made so much noise that everybody woke up at once, which, of course, was a very nice way of starting Thanksgiving. So the children all came running from their beds and stood in the doorway and said, “Happy Thanksgiving Day, Daddy!”

  “Let me see,” said Father, pulling himself together, “do I really have anything to be thankful for?”

  “You have us,” said Susan and George and Dumpling.

  “That’s right,” Father said. “I remember. And I have lizards, too, and bats. And, if I recollect correctly, at one time there were also turtles.”

  “The poor little turtles wanted to get out,” Dumpling said.

  Mother was very calm, and she said to Father, “Darling, as long as we have George, we’ll have lizards and bats and turtles. We have to be reasonable about it. You know we couldn’t do without George.”

  So then Father said, “Well, happy Thanksgiving Day, George,” and the day began.

  It was a beautiful, sunny day—more like summer than it would have been in Midwest City at that time of year. Mademoiselle came as usual in the morning, wearing her best costume de visite in honor of the tea party to which she had been invited. Because of the American holiday there were no lessons, so Mademoiselle helped them make costumes for the pageant Susan had written.