Margaret and the Moth Tree (11 page)

“There will be no supper tonight,” she said, “and unless I change my mind, no food in the morning, either.”

Lacey had just flashed her wide, hyena-like smile at the dregs when the Switch continued.

“No supper for
any
of you.”

And turning again, she disappeared up the stairs.

Lacey's hyena grin melted off her face in disbelief.

In the whole history of the Hopeton Orphanage, only three Pets had ever been punished by Miss Switch.

The first was a sweet little lad called Milton Pinkrich, who had scribbled all over Switch's magazines thinking they were coloring books. When she saw what he had done, Switch scrawled “PEST” across his face in a rage, and it didn't wash off for a month.

The second was a delightfully handsome boy called Henry Fitzflatterly, who made the mistake of saying that Switch must have been the most beautiful girl in the world “in her youth.” Switch taped his hands over his eyes and left them that way for three days, causing him to stumble around bumping into things.

And on the third occasion, a precious little girl called Agnes Primrose had the misfortune of calling the Matron “Mother” by accident. Switch made her walk around with a bar of soap in her mouth for a week.

But this latest punishment was entirely unprecedented.

Along with fashion, horoscopes and egg whites, you see, Switch was a great believer in cause and effect. Every bit of punishing the Switch had ever ordered had been, in her mind, exactly fitting to the crime of the offending orphan. But starving the lot of them for something they hadn't done wasn't fitting in the slightest. It was, for all but one of them, an effect without a cause.

So as the orphans stared up after their furious Matron, Pet and dreg alike wondered nervously what was going on in her head. Because each of them knew that a rule-breaking Switch was a very dangerous Switch indeed.

CHAPTER 23
Troubles Great and Troubles Small

When the orphans climbed into their beds that night, not a single one of them fell asleep easily. The Pets tossed and turned with grumpiness, angry that their stomachs were growling just as much as the dregs'. The dregs tossed and turned in worry, anxious about the prospect of so many grumpy Pets. And everyone tossed and turned thinking about the furious and unpredictable Switch.

Because she had to wait for all the tossing and turning to quiet down, Margaret was later than usual slipping away to the yard.

And as she approached the grassy lawn, she found that things were uneasy there, too.

Instead of the shouts and cheers of tiny playful voices, the sounds that drifted toward her were sounds of alarm, and the scene that met her eyes as she drew nearer was one she had never seen before.

“Oh no!”

“Not again …”

“Moth down!”

A cluster of moths was flying across the lawn, carrying a leaf suspended by long silken threads. On the leaf was another, twitching moth. It was Flitterwing.

“Flit!” cried Margaret. “What's happened?”

She followed the moths through the tunnel and into the tree, where Flit's leaf was laid carefully down on an exposed root. A few fuzzy caterpillars came creeping down the tree bark, and from all over the tree, moths were hurrying from their nooks. They all began talking at once.

“He's had a bad one,” one of them said.

“I was winning, you know!”

“Oh, be quiet!” said Rimblewisp, coming to land at Flit's side. “And don't crowd him.” He paced along the leaf, looking down at his friend.

“Rimb, what happened?” said Margaret. “Is he very badly hurt?”

“Hmph!” grumbled Rimb. “It's his own fault. Silly twitterbug gobbled a bad one before smelling it properly.”

“But
what's
he gobbled?” cried Margaret.

“A Nimbler,” said Pip with a sigh, crawling onto Margaret's knee. “The good ones have dried up again! They've all gone sour.”

The feelers of every moth drooped sadly as the moths fell to whispering, and Margaret leaned against the great wrinkled trunk, her mind whirring.

Chances are, you've already guessed what Margaret was thinking, because you are thinking it, too.

After Switch had been made ridiculous on the roof, and the children had slept happily in their beds after so many unhappy nights, the Nimblers had been suddenly sweet and good. But now, with the Switch more terrifying than ever, the dreams of the orphans had turned all to nightmares.

When the tree began to hum with talk again, Margaret looked up to see that Flit had stopped twitching and was sleeping peacefully.

The mood of the tree had shifted as though a storm cloud had passed overhead, and the moths were soon laughing and fluttering as though nothing had happened. They must, Margaret realized, have done this many times before.

“Whirlawhoomps?” someone called a few minutes later.

“Just the thing!”

“Games afoot!”

One by one, the moths flew off, hurrying out to the grassy lawn to begin a new game.

You see, there are as many different ways of dealing with trouble as there are people in this world. Some people choose to bury their heads deep in the sand. Others prefer to plug their ears and sing loudly until the hardship has passed.

But moths are different. Rather than run from trouble, or sit in a corner and mope, moths will throw themselves into their games. Moths prefer to believe that no matter what the trouble, every bad thing will come right in the end, and in the meantime you ought to try to have a good time.

“Come on, Margaret!” said Pip.

Margaret smiled. Then shaking her worries from her head as best she could, she rose to join them.

CHAPTER 24
A Very Important Visit

Miss Switch, when faced with life's troubles, would always react in the same way: she would hold a grudge. In fact, grudge holding was one of her greatest talents, and ever since the disaster of the hair tonic she had decided to hold one against the entire world.

An anxious silence had fallen over the orphanage, broken only by the sound of the Matron's moody footfalls coming around a corner and of orphans scampering out of sight like skittish rabbits.

There was no sign that anything would disrupt her nasty mood until two days later, when the telephone rang.

“Good morning, Hopeton Orphanage. This is the Matron speaking,” said Miss Switch in her syrupy telephone-answering voice.

“Good morning! It's Hannah calling,” said the soft voice of Hannah Tender.

“Hannah. How nice,” said Miss Switch. “Does this mean I'm to expect a new arrival at the orphanage?”

“No, I'm calling because I have some rather exciting news,” said Hannah.

“Oh?” said the Switch, examining her nail polish.

“I'd love to come by and tell it to you in person.”

“Of course. It's always a pleasure.”

“Wonderful! I'll see you soon,” said Hannah, and she hung up.

Rolling her eyes, Switch went and found her thin, golden whistle. She gave it a halfhearted blow, then yawned. Hannah always did such tiresome things, like talking about philanthropy and hugging the orphans.

Half an hour later when Hannah pulled up to the house in the C.L.C.'s pink car, Miss Switch ushered her onto the porch where an elaborate tea had been laid out.

“How lovely! You really didn't have to, just for me,” said Hannah.

“No trouble,” said Switch, slouching into her chair. People often say “no trouble” to be polite, but in this case it really had been no trouble. Five dregs had run themselves ragged preparing the tea while Switch took her time selecting the day's outfit. She had settled upon one of her plainer aprons and accessorized it with a dusting of soot across her arms.

“I've just been cleaning the fireplaces,” she told Hannah. “The darling orphans are playing in the garden.”

This was true, as the orphans had indeed been ordered to play Duck, Duck, Goose by the rosebushes. But whenever the Pets chose a dreg to be “goose,” they would whack them on the head as hard as they could, giving the dreg a nasty headache.

Margaret had already been picked, so as she sat there holding her throbbing head, she concentrated on eavesdropping.

“Wouldn't the children like some of this?” Hannah was saying.

“They've already eaten. Chocolate pancakes with bacon,” Switch said. “And fruit,” she added.

“Oh, I see,” said Hannah, with just a hint of a frown. “Well, I won't keep you in suspense any longer. I'm happy to be the one to tell you, on behalf of the Concerned Ladies' Club, that you have been chosen to receive an Award of Service. You are the Caregiver of the Year!”

At these words, Switch looked up at Hannah in surprise.

“What does that mean?” she said.

“Well, in a few days you'll be given a special medal, and there'll be speeches. All the members of the C.L.C. will be there, and the Mayor, too.”

“Oh, Hannah!” said Switch, sitting up straight and beaming. She seemed suddenly much younger. “Goodness me! How very, very kind. How unexpected! Do you think there'll be a photographer?”

Miss Switch had several different smiles. She put them on at different times as it suited her, just like her collection of tattered aprons. There was her motherly smile, which she used in front of the Concerned Ladies and on adoption days. There was her carnivorous smile, which she used to terrorize dregs before bringing them to tears. And there was her dazzling smile, which she used to stupefy clueless members of the public. But this one, rarely seen, was a genuine one. And a genuine smile, especially on someone so beautiful, is hard not to return.

“That's a marvelous idea,” said Hannah, smiling back.

A less kind person than Hannah might have felt jealous that she wasn't the one being rewarded for her hard work. But Hannah was the sort of person who felt glad for other people's good fortune. This unselfishness, in Switch's view, was one of her more irritating qualities.

“GOOSE!” came Lacey's violent scream from the garden, followed by a loud cry of pain.

“Well! I'd better let you get back to the children,” said Hannah, finishing her tea.

“Yes, they can get a tad boisterous, dear things.”

Hannah and Switch said their goodbyes. And Hannah, her head full of ideas for Switch's big day, headed back to the pink car.

But when Hannah looked back over her shoulder to wave, she saw that Switch hadn't moved. The Matron was still standing on the porch, staring out in front of her with a strange look in her eyes.

The youthful look of happiness that had lit up her face a moment before was gone. The look she wore now was fierce and triumphant. It only lasted a second or two before Switch glided down the porch steps toward the garden. And as Hannah drove away down the dusty road, she thought she must have imagined it.

CHAPTER 25
Two Orphans

A long time before our story takes place, another little girl lived in the very same orphanage where our Margaret found herself a prisoner. Just like Margaret, she was not a child praised for her looks, but she had a sweet little heart. Her name was Hannah Tender.

The orphanage was a very different place in Hannah's time. The biggest difference was that there was no tyrannical Matron tormenting children at every waking hour. Instead, the elderly and well-educated Professor Thrumble ran things.

Switch, as you may have noticed, didn't teach the orphans much of anything. The Master, however, thought that textbooks, appendices and dictionaries were the most important things in life.

He had been quite an old man already when the orphanage was built, and by the time Hannah arrived, his bushy eyebrows had turned bright white and his voice was even more gravelly than before. The unfortunate thing was, the older the Master became, the longer and more random his lessons were.

“You there,” he would say to Hannah. “Shannon, isn't it? Come along, it's time for a lesson.”

Every day he would gather Hannah and the other orphans together, and every day they would have to sit through dreadfully dull lectures about things like the history of the cabbage. He would go on for hours, sometimes long into the night, until the children laid their heads on their desks and fell fast asleep from boredom.

But aside from Professor Thrumble's never-ending lessons, the children of the orphanage were mostly left to themselves. 

As Hannah grew older, she began to notice that the pretty little girls and handsome young boys were adopted and taken away from the orphanage while she, for some reason, was always overlooked.

“It is clear to me based on my education that if you were better looking you'd have parents by now,” the Master said absently one day. “Why don't you try looking better?”

So Hannah tried to stand up straighter, and comb her hair, and smile as much as she possibly could. Yet still no one chose her. But just like Margaret, Hannah tried to make the best of her situation.

Hannah's best friend was another overlooked girl called Angelica. Angelica had stringy, mud-colored hair, spotty skin and crooked front teeth that were far too big for her mouth. And while beauty may be in the eye of the beholder, there wasn't a single parent who would behold her for more than a few moments before moving their gaze to a more attractive child.

But neither Hannah nor Angelica cared what the other looked like. Together they found little ways to make life in the orphanage more bearable, like passing silly notes to each other during Professor Thrumble's lessons and playing make-believe for hours on end. Their favorite game was imagining what it would be like to be adopted by loving parents and taken to wonderful homes.

“Maybe I could be adopted by a king,” Angelica would say. “And I would become a princess.”

“Maybe I would have a baby brother or sister who could be my friend,” Hannah would say. “And I'd never have to be lonely again.”