Nancy and Plum, Page 2

  Nancy said, “Oh, don’t worry, she locked up everything but the prunes and the oatmeal. Oh, look down the road there, Plum. Two little lights and they’re moving. It must be a sleigh. Someone going to the Christmas entertainment.”

  Plum said, “Quick, help me open the window so we can hear the bells.”

  They pushed open the window and leaned out into the still, cold night air. Far off down the road, through the lazily drifting snowflakes, they could hear the merry sound of sleigh bells. Their gay little tinkling flying ahead of the sleigh and lighting up the night with sparks. “Oh, what a Christmasy sound!” Nancy said, her red braids bobbing excitedly.

  Plum said, “Let’s run out to the gate and watch the sleigh pass.”

  “Oh, yes,” Nancy said. “Here, I’ll shut the window. Come on, hurry!”

  Like little ghosts, they ran from their room, down the long, cold, dark corridor, down the long, dark winding stairway, across the drafty hall, out the front door and down the walk to the great iron gates.

  Breathless and laughing, they grabbed the bars of the gates and turned their faces in the direction of the sleigh bells. Snowflakes lit on their eyelashes and made them blink. Snowflakes lit on their hair and turned them into white-haired old ladies. Snowflakes lit on their tongues when they stuck them out; and they swallowed the drop of icy water they left.

  Nancy said, “Snowflakes are like tiny pieces of clouds. Maybe a cloud exploded and caused this snowstorm.”

  Plum said, “Everything is so soft tonight. The darkness, the air, the snow, everything. I’d like to throw myself down and make an angel.” Above their heads the snow hit the lanterns on the gateposts and dissolved with a gentle hissing sound. The gate groaned sadly as they leaned against it.

  Then, from down the road, came the shrill trilling of the sleigh bells, the thud of hooves, the shshsh of runners on snow, peals of laughter. Then suddenly as though they had leapt through a black curtain, the horses burst out of the snowy darkness, manes and forelocks crested with snow, heads high, eyes glowing like hot coals. For a moment they were so close the children could see their white breath and could smell their warm, horsy smell.

  “Merry Christmas!” Plum called out excitedly.

  “Merry Christmas!” Nancy echoed her, and voices in the sleigh answered, “Merry Christmas!” Then they were gone into the blackness again and nothing was left but the tinkling of the bells and the hiss of the snowflakes as they hit the lanterns.

  “Oh, Plum,” Nancy said, “imagine going to the Christmas Eve entertainment in a sleigh!”

  Plum said, “Someday we’ll go in a sleigh and I’ll drive.”

  Nancy said, shivering, “Not tonight though, and I’m cold. Let’s go back in the house.”

  So they ran up to the front door but when they turned the handle they found it locked. Locked tight.

  “The night latch must have been on,” Plum said, “and the rest of the house is locked up like a safe.”

  “What will we do?” Nancy asked through chattering teeth.

  Plum said, “We’ll sleep in the barn.”

  Nancy said, “But what about Old Tom?”

  Plum said, “He’s gone to the MacGregors’ for supper. He told me he was going yesterday when I was helping him feed the chickens. He’s not coming back till milking time tomorrow morning. Come on, let’s run. I’ve got snow down my neck and my feet are like ice.”

  They ran around the house, unlatched the lattice gate that shut off the kitchen gardens and stables from the front lawns, ran across the barnyard to the big red-brick barn, rolled back the door and slipped inside. The barn was very dark but not as cold as the house. They closed the door quickly and began to grope around for matches and a lantern. As they carefully felt along the shelves, they could hear Buttercup and Clover, the milk cows, chewing their cuds, the plow horses shifting their weight on their big feet, the pigs grunting in the box stall and mice scuttling around in the granary stealing the grain. They were friendly, comforting sounds, and Nancy said, “Even in the dark, the barn isn’t nearly as lonely as the house.”

  Plum said, “I should say it isn’t. I think I just grabbed hold of a mouse. Oh, here we are. Here’s an old candle stub and some matches.”

  She struck a match and lit the candle. As the candle flame reached up and cast a circle of light, a black mother cat and three black kittens filed out of Buttercup’s stall and came over to the little girls. “Mrooow,” said the mother cat and the kittens squeaked, “Mrrow.” Plum knelt down and stroked the mother, who rubbed against her legs and purred. Nancy went over and scratched Buttercup behind her horns and she licked Nancy’s hand with her sandpaper tongue. Clover leaned out of her stall to see what was going on and as Nancy scratched her head, she stuck her tongue out about a foot and searched with the tip of it in the corners of her feed box for stray oats. Then Plum called out, “I found the lantern and it’s full of coal oil. Here, hold the candle while I light it.”

  Both girls knelt down and worked with the lantern until they finally got the wick adjusted and the smoky chimney wiped off. The lantern gave quite a lot of light and they hung it on a nail while they patted the horses, poked the pigs and played with the kittens. Then Plum had an idea. She said, “Let’s go in the harness room. There’s a stove in there and we can build a fire and roast potatoes.”

  Nancy said, “Where’ll we get the potatoes?”

  Plum said, “From the root cellar. I know where it is and it’s not locked because I helped Old Tom get apples one time!”

  Nancy, who was shaking with the cold and very hungry, thought this sounded like a wonderful idea until they went into the harness room and found it tight against the storm but very harnessy smelling and quite chilly. “It’s really nicer in the barn,” she said.

  But Plum, who had already opened up the door of the big black stove and was busily poking around in the ashes, said, “You just wait until I get this fire going. Oh, boy, here’s some hot coals from Old Tom’s milking-time fire. Hand me some of those shavings, will you, Nancy?”

  Nancy did and Plum threw them in, tossed in some kindling and some lumps of coal and in no time had a bright crackling fire that blew its warm breath into the little girls’ eager faces.

  “Now that the fire’s going,” Plum said, rubbing her cold hands together, “let’s go out to the root cellar.”

  “And,” Nancy said, “then we can go to the milk room and get some milk and butter. Oh, this is going to be fun, Plum, and I’m so hungry.”

  “So am I,” Plum said. “I’m starving and freezing. Let’s hurry.”

  So, carefully shutting the door on the cat and her kittens, who had followed them into the harness room and intended to follow them everywhere they went, they ran through the barn and across the snowy barnyard to the root cellar. The root cellar, a little low house built into a bank by the back of the house, had a thick heavy door that was very hard to open but finally, after both girls had almost pulled their arms out of the sockets, they were able to squeeze through. It was very dark until Plum lit her candle stub and the air was pungent with the smells of the apples, carrots, potatoes, cabbages, squashes and rutabagas that were stored in the bins and shelves that lined the walls. The girls filled their aprons with four big potatoes, four dark red apples, some pears and a jar of peaches.

  As she reached up to the high shelf where the canned fruit was kept, Nancy said, “I don’t feel that it’s wrong to take these peaches without asking because it is Christmas and everybody should have something special for Christmas dinner.”

  Plum said, “Of course Mrs. Monday’s idea of something special is fried mush or boiled beans with rocks in them. Say, let’s take some carrots and apples for the animals. They’d like to have something special for Christmas, too.”

  So they added more things to their already bulging aprons. Apples for the horses, carrots for the cows and rutabagas for the pigs.

  When they got back to the harness room the stove was blazing merrily and giv
ing off so much heat that the cat and her kittens were stretched out on the floor in great comfort. Nancy and Plum washed the potatoes in the snow and put them in to roast, fed the animals their Christmas dinner, got butter and milk from the milk room, then settled down to enjoy themselves. First they took off their shoes and stockings and put them to dry, then sat down in front of the stove to thaw out their icy toes and fingers. Outside a wind had come up. It blew snow against the window and moaned and sighed in the eaves but the children played with the kittens and thought how cozy the wind sounded.

  After the potatoes had been in about ten minutes, Plum began poking them with a sharp stick to test them and the minute she could pierce the skin she took the coal shovel and the poker and got out the first ones. They were really quite raw but they were hot and when covered with fresh butter and washed down with gulps of cold sweet milk they were simply delicious. The second potatoes were only raw in the middle and tasted even better than the first ones. For dessert the girls opened the jar of peaches with an old jackknife of Plum’s and ate the peaches in their fingers in big bites.

  “No wonder Mrs. Monday and Marybelle have peaches so often,” Nancy said as she reached down inside the jar for the last one. “They are the best things I’ve ever tasted.”

  Plum said, in an imitation of Mrs. Monday, “My deah child, surely you don’t prefer peaches to my delicious soggy bread pudding with glue sauce or my special kind of stewed prunes with sticks in them?”

  Nancy said, “It isn’t that I prefer the peaches, dear Mrs. Monday, it is just that after I have eaten your soggy, tasteless, lumpy, doughy lead, oh, I’m sorry, I mean bread pudding, I have to walk bent over for the rest of the day.”

  Plum said, “Would you like the recipe for my special prunes?”

  Nancy said, “Oh, please.”

  Plum said, “Well, first you buy the tiniest, most dried up, most solid pit and skin prunes you can find, then you dump them into a huge kettle of water, about two prunes to a gallon of water, you never wash them first, of course, because the sticks and sand give them such a good flavor. Then you boil and boil and boil and boil them, add one teaspoon of sugar to each enormous kettle of juice and there you are. Stewed prunes à la Marybelle.”

  Nancy said, “Oh, look at the kittens. I think they are hungry.”

  Plum said, “Their saucer is in the barn. Hand me my shoes and I’ll go get it.”

  After they had fed the kittens and picked up their own mess, Nancy and Plum made themselves a nice bed of straw spread over with empty feed sacks, stoked the fire, turned the lantern down and lay down side by side in front of the stove. The only sounds were the clunks and hisses made by coals breaking open and bursting into flame, the moaning of the wind and the rustling of the straw when they moved.

  Nancy was watching the round glow of the lantern on the ceiling and thinking about the school entertainment when she heard a little sniff and a hot tear fell on her arm. She said, “Why, Plum, you’re crying. That’s not like you.”

  Plum said, “It’s Christmas Eve and I hate Uncle John. He’s supposed to take care of us and he never writes to us and he never comes to see us and he never even sends us Christmas presents. I wonder how he’d like to spend Christmas Eve eating raw potatoes and sleeping in a barn?”

  Nancy said, “Never mind, Plum, dear. At least we’re warm and we’ve had something to eat and I’ll pretend for us.”

  Plum said, “Oh, Nancy, I’m sick of pretending. I don’t think I can pretend any more.”

  Nancy said, “Well, I’m ten and you’re only eight and pretending is easier for me, so I’ll pretend out loud for both of us.”

  She began, “We live in a lovely little white house on a broad quiet street shaded with big trees. We have a beautiful mother, a handsome father and twin baby brothers, one for each of us. It is Christmas Eve and we have just decorated the Christmas tree. It is a very large tree and takes up lots of space in our living room but it is a pine with long needles and it smells so delicious that our mother says that it is well worth the space. Now that the tree is decorated, you and I go upstairs and put on our white satin angel costumes with the silk gauze wings and our gold halos, then we all go to the schoolhouse entertainment. Our mother and father are very proud of us because we sing all the Christmas carols for the whole school. We stand by the Christmas tree with a big spotlight on us and first I sing a solo and then you sing a solo and then we sing duets. When the spotlight first shines on us everybody in the schoolhouse just gasps, our costumes are so beautiful.”

  Plum said, “Who is going to play our accompaniments? Not Mrs. Swanson, I hope.”

  “Our mother plays our accompaniments,” Nancy said. “She plays for all the school entertainments and she has never made one single mistake. After the Christmas entertainment is over, Miss Waverly distributes the gifts and she is certainly surprised to find a huge package for her from you and me.”

  “What’s in the package?” Plum asked.

  “Violet perfume, violet toilet water, violet powder, violet bath powder, violet bath salts and violet soap and there is a bunch of real violets tied to the outside of the package,” Nancy said.

  Plum said, “Just like that picture we cut out of the magazine. I bet Miss Waverly never had such a beautiful present. Why don’t we ask her to our house for Christmas dinner?”

  Nancy said, “Oh, that’s a good idea, especially as I know how sad Christmas is at the Wentils’ where she boards because Charlie Wentil told me that his father believes that Christmas trees or holly or any kind of Christmas presents are wicked and signs of the devil. Charlie told me that last year they all had to pray straight through from milking time to lunch because Charlie brought home a piece of tinsel from school and put it around the clock on the mantel.”

  Plum said, “I guess right now we’re probably having twice as much fun as Charlie Wentil. Oh, look, Nancy, here come the kittens. They want to get in bed with us. Let’s name them and pretend they belong to us. They can be our Christmas present. Let’s name the mother St. Nick and the children Prancer, Dancer and Vixen.”

  Nancy said, “Those are good names, Plum. Here, St. Nick. Bring your children over here. We’ll be gentle to them.”

  So St. Nick came over and settled herself and her children on the straw bed between the two little girls and when they stroked her sleek black fur she purred loudly and rubbed against their hands. Then Plum said, “Go on, Nancy, pretend some more.”

  So Nancy said, “Well, after the Christmas entertainment is over we go home and after we have put our baby brothers to bed, we hang up our stockings and then we all sing Christmas carols. Our father sings off-key but he has such a nice loud voice we don’t care. After the carols we turn off all the lights but the ones on the Christmas tree and then we gather around the fireplace and drink hot cocoa. It is snowing and very stormy outside but so Christmasy and cozy inside.

  “Earlier today, you and I made mince pies and Christmas cookies while mother stuffed the turkey. Tomorrow morning we will get up early and rush downstairs and there will be a crackling fire in the fireplace and our mother and father will hug us and say, ‘Merry, merry Christmas,’ and then we will start to open our bulging stockings and the heaps of presents under the tree. I have made mother a beautiful checked apron and you have embroidered her two guest towels. We have made the babies some stuffed animals and we have knitted our father some mufflers.”

  “Let’s pretend we buy everything,” said Plum. “I’m tired of all those old homemade things. Anyway, I make too many mistakes when I knit.”

  Nancy said, “All right, we’ll buy the presents this year but I do think that we should earn our own money so that we won’t be too big a burden on our parents.”

  Plum said, “I don’t want to work. I want rich parents. I want a father who says, ‘Here, Pamela, is a hundred dollars. Your allowance for the week.’ ”

  Nancy said, “Oh, Plum, when you’re that rich it takes all the joy out of pretending. I don’t want to
be rich. I just want to be happy.”

  Plum said, “All right, I won’t be rich but I won’t knit that old scarf. I’ll give my father a spy glass. Then Christmas morning I can go up on the roof and look around and see what everybody in the neighborhood got for Christmas.”

  Nancy said, “Well, I’m going to knit him a scarf and then every time he wears it he’ll think of me.”

  Plum said, “He certainly will when the wind whistles through all those holes where you dropped stitches.”

  Both girls laughed and then suddenly they were asleep and their dreams must have been sweet ones for the wind howled, the stove shifted its coal and the kittens woke up and began to play but they slept quietly.

  3

  What Was in the Box?

  THEN IT WAS MORNING and Nancy and Plum woke to find Old Tom building up the fire and Dancer, Prancer and Vixen playing tug of war with one of Nancy’s red braids.

  Plum said, “Merry Christmas, Tom!”

  Old Tom said, “Whatcha doin’ out here in the barn?”

  Plum said, “We got locked out last night.”

  Old Tom said, “Why didn’t you go home for Christmas—why did you stay here?”

  Plum said, “You know we always stay here for Christmas. You know we haven’t any place to go.”

  Old Tom said, “Hmmmmph!”

  Nancy said, “Come on, Plum, let’s go see if we can get in the house. Perhaps if we had a ladder we could get in one of the upstairs windows.”

  Old Tom said, “Ladder out in the barn. Heavy. I’ll carry it for you.”

  Plum said, “Thank you, Tom. Wow, I’m hungry.”

  Tom said, “Warm milk in the milk room. Tin dipper by the door.”

  So the girls ran into the milk room and drank several dippers of the warm fresh milk. Then feeling very frisky, they went out to see if they could find an unlocked window.

  My, but it was a beautiful morning. The sky was clear as a lake and the snow, which the wind had heaped against the buildings and fences in great swoopy drifts, sparkled and glittered in the bright sunshine.