by Peggy Bacon
Grandpa awarded the prizes. The first went to Andrew — to his joy, for he loved animals — and it proved to be the Easter Bunny himself, a live white rabbit in an ample hutch.
Jasper took second prize, a handsome set of battledore and shuttlecock. And Molly won third prize, an Easter egg of crystallized white sugar, as big as a football, plastered with ribbons and artificial flowers. It had a little glass peephole at one end through which you saw a wee Arcadian landscape, sheep and shepherdesses in a meadow with a romantic castle in the distance.
There were also consolation gifts for Colin and Sophy — papier-mâché squirrels with hollow bodies full of jelly beans.
Now everybody was happy except Sophy, whose nose was out of joint. Andrew was her special enemy. How she resented his winning the first prize! These cousins, for whom she had such great contempt, had baskets full of candy and all the prizes, while she had nothing but a toy squirrel and half-a-dozen hard-boiled eggs. The squirrel she considered cheap and childish, and jelly beans were hardly worth eating. She wouldn’t have cared for the game that Jasper won, and she certainly didn’t want a live rabbit; but she hated to be outdone, she loved sweets, and she was also consumed by envious longing for Molly’s great white egg.
Molly was very generous with her egg. She invited everyone to look inside it, and she let them all feast their eyes as long as they pleased. When Robert, Lucy and Fudge had finished napping and came outdoors, they too were shown the egg and permitted to play with it all afternoon. It wasn’t until the little ones’ suppertime that Molly took possession of her trophy, carried it upstairs to her own room and placed it on the table beside her bed.
The Bannisters were to stay for the rest of the week and during the following days the Montague children amused themselves playing battledore and shuttlecock and hovering around the Easter Bunny. They petted him and fed him grass and carrots and any greens that they could get from Cook. Andrew named the rabbit Hominy, hominy being his favorite breakfast cereal and absolutely white. They carried Hominy and the rabbit hutch out to the orchard under the cherry tree, so as to be able to enjoy Hominy, the tree house and the pigs at the same time.
Meanwhile the grown-ups noticed with vexation that Sophy moped and strolled about alone. The older Montague children were scolded repeatedly and rather unfairly for this state of things.
“You must include Sophy in your games,” Ned declared severely to his sons.
“But Father, she won’t play anything we like,” Jasper protested.
“Then play whatever she likes. She’s your guest.”
“She doesn’t like to play anything,” Andrew said sulkily.
“Of course she does! Everyone has preferences. You simply haven’t bothered to find out hers. Jasper, go to Sophy right away and ask her to play with you. She’s in the parlor.”
Jasper had to do as he was told. He sought out Sophy who was listlessly peddling the pianola.
“Sophy,” he said stiffly, “you don’t like anything we’ve suggested so far. You’re our guest so we’ll play whatever you want. It’s up to you.”
There was a pause.
“Well? Don’t you want to do anything?” Jasper hoped that Sophy would say no, so that he could inform his father of the fact.
Pressed for an answer, however, Sophy admitted to a liking for musical chairs.
“Very well!” Jasper marched off, collected the others, who were far from pleased at having to quit a good game of cops-and-robbers. But orders are orders when issued from on high. So they followed Jasper to the parlor where they kicked back the rugs and lined up the little gilt chairs. Then they all slid and scrambled and stumbled about halfheartedly, taking turns at pumping the pianola, till Grandma Emily suddenly pounced in.
“Mercy on us! What’s all this racket about? And why are you all indoors on this glorious day? Put back those chairs and straighten the rugs immediately, and get yourselves out of the house, for goodness sake!”
Grandma, who was busy baking bread, hurried back to the kitchen. The Montague children, having obeyed commands twice in succession, felt they had fulfilled their obligations. Pelting out to the happy hunting grounds, they resumed their merry game.
Molly was the next one to be criticized. Pelley Montague took his daughter to task: “I can’t understand why you never play with Sophy. Before she came you seemed so happy to think that you were going to have a girl to play with. You could hardly wait. You talked of nothing else! And now she’s here, you run off and play with the boys.”
“But Daddy, Sophy doesn’t like to play. We tried to get her to do things but she won’t.”
“Well, Molly, Sophy is an only child. She has been brought up differently from you. She probably isn’t used to the rough-and-tumble sort of games that you and the others play. But there are things that girls can do together, that Sophy might enjoy very much.”
“What sort of things, Daddy?”
“Goodness, Molly! Why ask me? You should know what girls like — playing with dolls, I suppose, having dolls’ tea parties, making doll clothes. Take Sophy up to the attic and show her the dolls that Granny has in the toy trunk, why don’t you?”
“I did, and she doesn’t like them because they’re old.”
“She doesn’t, eh? Well, make some paper dolls. Colin brought his box of paints, I think. He’d let you use them, I’m sure. Anyway, I don’t care what you do; but you’re the hostess and Sophy is your guest! So stop behaving as if she didn’t exist.”
It is very hard to be forced to play with someone you detest and it’s quite impossible to play with someone who feels the same way about you. When Molly, wishing to obey her father, suggested that they make some paper dolls, Sophy looked down her pretty nose at Molly and said: “I should think we’re rather old for that! Really, Molly, try to act your age!”
Though Colin was barely a year younger than Molly, nobody bothered him on Sophy’s account. Grown-ups and children alike accepted the fact that Colin was “the Cat that Walks by Itself.” He joined in the fun when he chose or he went his own way. Colin wasn’t expected to take the lead in entertaining a guest or in anything else. Jasper, Andrew and Molly were the ones who bore the blame for neglecting Cousin Sophy. Since matters failed to improve, those three were lectured more than once.
By now there was not one of the Montague children who could endure Sophy. Jasper had given up thinking of her romantically as on a par with the Maid of Astolat. Lucy no longer likened her to a princess, in spite of her fine raiment. Neither Lucy nor Fudge could forgive Sophy for not loving the pigs. Sophy had always made Colin nervous, so he contrived to dismiss her from his mind. Robert had never liked her and Andrew hated her. The atmosphere grew worse from day to day.
The separation between the Montague children and Sophy Bannister was now complete. If they were in the orchard, she loitered in the garden. If they were in the garden, she sat indoors. If it rained and the Montagues were playing in the house, Sophy stayed in her room. No effort on the part of the various grown-ups to change the situation had any effect.
It was her own fault that Sophy was lonely, yet she felt ill-used. She was encouraged in this by her aunts and uncles who often expressed chagrin and disapproval of the manner in which their children were behaving. Only Grandma thought to herself that Sophy must have been extremely disagreeable to be avoided by every one of her cousins.
Wandering around in solitude, Sophy was bored and angry. She brooded over her fancied grievances and tried to think of ways to take revenge. Her cousins seemed to be enthralled by Hominy. One day, when they had gone to the woods for wild flowers, she had a bright idea. She ran to the orchard, opened the rabbit hutch, prodded Hominy out and shut the door so that he couldn’t get back. Then she followed him for quite a distance, driving him along with a little stick, until he was out of the orchard and down the hillside and headed for the outskirts of the forest.
Great was the grief and loud were the lamentations when the Montague children returned from t
heir expedition and found the rabbit gone. They hunted everywhere that they could think of, throughout the Montague property and beyond. They ran all over shouting “Hominy! Hominy!” as though the foolish creature knew his name.
Everyone was puzzled by the incident. Through carelessness, the door to the rabbit hutch might have been left unfastened; in that case, Hominy might have been able to push it open; but how could he have closed the door behind him?
Had the wind blown it shut?
There was no wind.
Had somebody let the rabbit out intentionally?
No one in the world could be so mean!
When night fell and Hominy was still missing, the Montague children had to give up the search and go to bed, which they did with heavy hearts; and all the little ones cried themselves to sleep.
To my mind, a rabbit is a contemptible creature, lacking courage, dignity and brains. It wasn’t for Hominy’s sake, I can assure you, that I decided to exert myself and restore him to the arms of his sorrowing friends. No, not for him, but for Emily Montague who had been my chum when she was a child. Grandma Emily was always troubled when any of her descendants were unhappy. As a matter of fact, I was fond of all the Montagues and willing to do the children a good turn. This was easy enough because I knew where Hominy could be found.
In the dark I floated out of the house and down the hill to the spot where the wretched rabbit cowered trembling in a clump of sumac. He was frightened at being out in the world; everything seemed weird and unfamiliar. To pry him out of there and get him going, it was unnecessary for me to assume any monstrous or grotesque disguise. I could be unaffectedly myself. Simply the glowing ghost of a big white cat was quite enough to scare him out of his wits and send him hopping out from under the bushes. All I needed to do was to keep behind him and head him off if he went in the wrong direction.
Easy it was, but it took a long, long time!
Having been born and raised in a rabbit hutch, Hominy wasn’t accustomed to exercise. He was a great, fat, soggy slowpoke. His leaps carried him forward by a few inches, and most of his leaps were sideways. Unable to make up his mind which way to go in order to elude my kind attentions, the jittery idiot blundered from right to left, from left to right. I too was forced to flit this way and that, hissing commands and nudging him along. In this manner we zigzagged up the hill, weaving through the long grass, moving forward at an exasperatingly sluggish pace.
I had a few things to worry about, believe me! I knew that I couldn’t open the door of the hutch. Ghosts have no muscles and no mechanical knack. The best I could do would be to steer the animal into the orchard where the children could find him; and this, alas, was taking hours and hours!
After the laborious minuet we had been treading up the hill together, we finally reached the top and crossed the cornfield. Here only the Montagues’ vegetable garden lay between us and our destination. But our trip had taken all night. Dawn was coming. The eastern sky grew pinker every second. At sunrise I would fade away from sight, and without the influence of my spectral presence, foolish Hominy might wander off and lose himself again.
I rushed the rabbit as fast as he would go, which was about as fast as a measuring worm. The cultivated soil was stitched in rows of tender seedlings sprouting from the earth. As the light grew stronger, I grew ever paler. Hominy began to lose his fear of me and even paused to nibble an onion shoot.
The sun bounced up like a big red rubber ball, and at that anxious moment, as luck would have it, I caught sight of the gardener, Mr. Green.
Old Mr. Green was always an early riser. There he was on the far side of the garden, busily planting beans. With a frantic hiss and a last flicker of light, I shifted Hominy into his line of vision, and the next instant I had the satisfaction of seeing Mr. Green lunge at Hominy, seize him by the ears and bear him away.
Taking him to the hutch, old Mr. Green locked the rabbit in and returned to his beans. And so the job was done. After breakfast when the Montague children went out to hunt for Hominy, there he was in his hutch safe and sound, and everyone was happy except for Sophy.
The time came for the Bannisters to leave and no one was very sorry to see them go. It had been an unsatisfactory visit.
Grandma Emily was distressed to find that she couldn’t love her little granddaughter Sophy as much as she loved her other grandchildren.
Alice and Harold Bannister were disgruntled to discover that Sophy, for all her winsome ways, was very unpopular with the younger set.
The aunts and uncles were ashamed to think that their sons and daughters had not behaved as well or displayed as polished manners as their niece.
And the Montague children suffered from their parents’ irritated disapproval; they also suffered from a sense of injustice, knowing as they did that Cousin Sophy was not the little angel that she seemed.
Although Sophy herself was glad to go home where she could have her own way in everything, be petted and spoiled and the center of attention, she was in a discontented mood. She had tried to make her cousins miserable by depriving them of their darling Hominy, but the rabbit had been found, and she couldn’t think of another way to punish them.
And Sophy was restless for a second reason: she had never stopped yearning for Molly’s Easter egg. Sophy was used to having whatever she wanted and she was determined to secure the egg. She pondered and schemed and finally hit on a plan.
She would steal the egg at the last possible moment while everyone else was downstairs saying good-bye, so that it wouldn’t be missed till after she left. She would pack it in the handsome leather hatbox that her parents had given her for her Sunday hat. The hat had come from Paris — a pale pink straw like spun candy, trimmed with tiny rosebuds, forget-me-nots and layers of ruffled lace. The egg could lie in a nest of tissue paper beneath the crown of the hat. In her bedroom at home there were hiding places where the egg would escape her mother’s notice. And whether or not the Montagues suspected her, they couldn’t accuse her of theft without any proof.
I had retrieved Andrew’s rabbit Hominy, but I was unable to thwart this wicked plot. I couldn’t perch on Molly’s Easter egg to frighten Sophy away, because the Bannisters would be leaving in broad daylight, when I would be invisible. I could do nothing to save the situation, and it looked to me as though that naughty girl would be triumphant and carry off the egg.
The Bannisters’ luggage was piled in the front hall. Once again the Montagues had gathered, this time to bid their relatives farewell, by now as pleasant a duty as bidding them welcome had been a week before.
“You must come to us next time, and sample some of our southern hospitality,” Harold Bannister said, making it sound as though the hospitality of his in-laws was of an inferior quality.
His wife was looking over the bags and bundles to make sure that nothing was missing — as Sophy had foreseen that her mother would do. It was the moment for which Sophy was waiting.
“I don’t see your hatbox, Sophy,” said her mother, “Run up and fetch it. And please hurry, dear. I hear the carriage coming up the drive.”
Sophy ran back upstairs. The carriage arrived. The luggage was carried out. Farewells were said.
“Whatever is keeping the child?” asked Harold Bannister.
“Sophy! Sophy! Be quick! We’re waiting for you!” Alice Bannister called from the foot of the stairs.
Sophy came running down, a bit out of breath, lugging her hatbox.
“Here, let me have it!” Alice reached out her hand.
Sophy shied away, tightening her grasp on the handle. “I’ll carry it, Mother.”
“Give it to me!” said her father, stepping forward. “That box looks heavy.” So saying, he took it from her. “It is heavy. What have you got in here?”
“Oh, Sophy!” cried Alice. “I told you never to pack anything else in with that lovely hat! It will get crushed. Whatever you put in there must come right out and go into something else.” Seizing the hatbox from Harold, she dumped it do
wn and stooped to open it.
“Don’t, Mother, don’t!”
But Alice snapped the catch and threw back the lid. Removing the hat, she lifted the tissue paper and held up the gorgeous egg. “Why! What in the world!”
She stared at the egg and the others stared at Sophy who blushed and pretended to be unconcerned.
“That’s Molly’s egg!” Fudge shouted — unnecessarily for everyone present recognized the egg.
“Why, Molly!” Alice Bannister exclaimed, “I suppose you mean this for a peace offering. It’s rather late in coming; still, I’m glad to see one of you trying to make amends for the way you children have treated your cousin Sophy — the poor little girl who came so far to see you!”
During this speech Grandpa Austin was watching Sophy and Molly, glancing from one to the other. Sophy’s mouth was set, her eyes were wary. Molly’s eyes and mouth were wide with wonder.
“Wait a minute, Alice,” Grandpa said. “I think you’ve gotten off on the wrong tack. Molly, did you give that egg to Sophy?”
“No, I certainly didn’t, Grandpa! I wouldn’t give it to her! I gave it to Fudge. I told him he and I would share the egg.”
Fudge, standing close to his sister as usual, slipped his hand in hers and looked proud.
“Then Sophy stole the egg,” Andrew declared.
“Stole it!”
“Sophy wouldn’t do such a thing!” Sophy’s parents protested in outraged tones.
“That’s what she did,” Grandpa stated flatly. “It’s no use mincing words.” Taking the egg from Alice he gave it to Molly.
Harold Bannister appeared to be stunned. He gazed at his daughter in horror.
Alice put the French hat back in the hatbox, closed the lid and stood up.
“The carriage is waiting, dear,” Grandma said gently. “I’m afraid if you don’t go now you’ll miss the train.” She leaned over and kissed her daughter’s cheek. “Pretty manners aren’t everything,” she whispered. “Another kind of training is more important. You and Harold had better watch out for your child.”
