Margaret and the Moth Tree (3 page)

“Fine,” said Gertrude, making checkmarks on the clipboard. “I'll just finish up this paperwork, and we'll be on our way.”

“Are you sure you won't stay for tea, Gertrude?” said Miss Switch, turning from Margaret to the dining table.

“We shouldn't … Procedure, you know,” said Gertrude, reaching for a piece of poppyseed cake.

Margaret gazed out the window, where the red- and blue-clad children had begun a game of tag on the lawn. She had never seen so many children before, and her eyes darted from one to the other excitedly. As she watched, one pretty dark-haired girl ran past a smiling scrawny boy, smacking him hard across the back. A look of pain crossed the boy's face for a split second, but was quickly replaced by a new, even wider smile.

Margaret thought this seemed a little strange, but before she could glimpse any more —

“All done!” said Gertrude, wiping her mouth and snapping the clipboard shut.

“Such a pleasure, as always, ladies,” Miss Switch said, ushering Gertrude out the door.

“It's time for us to go, Margaret,” said Hannah, dropping to her knees. “Good luck,” she whispered. “And call if you need anything.”

“Thanks,” said Margaret. “But I don't think I will.”

Hannah pulled her into a gentle hug.

Bleeeeeeeep
. The car horn blared outside, making them both jump. Then with a last smile, Hannah ran to join the others.

Trailing behind, Margaret was just in time to see the shiny pink car start off down the road, raising a cloud of dust behind it. Miss Switch was waving a handkerchief, and Margaret stood beside her and waved, too.

“Goodbye!” she called out. “And thank you!”

She watched the dust settle on the road and hoped that soon she, too, would be settled.

Gone were thoughts of bossy old ladies, and crowded buses, and mysterious signs on quiet streets. From now on, this wonderful place would be her home, and these wonderful people, her family.

CHAPTER 5
Philanthropy

At this happy and hopeful point in our tale, let us leave Margaret to enjoy herself for just a moment. Let us leave that important day and go back to one that came long before it.

If you have passed enough time in this world, you will have noticed that every great event is the result of many smaller things that happened before it. Had Cousin Amos put more stock in washing his socks, for instance, he might never have caught antisanitosis. Had Margaret not run out of parents and relatives to take care of her, she might never have come to the Hopeton Orphanage. And had a certain town meeting not taken place many years before that, the Hopeton Orphanage might never have come into existence at all.

“Order!” cried the Mayor to the townspeople, at this very meeting.

The young Mayor, who was called Harold Picklewort, banged a small gavel against his podium. There was very little noise in the town hall, since the people of Hopeton prided themselves on manners, but Mayor Picklewort greatly enjoyed banging his gavel.

“Order!” he cried again, with three more bangs for good measure.

He cleared his throat loudly.

“We are here today to discuss
philanthropy,”
he said, pausing to let the grandness of this word sink in.

“As you all know,” he continued, “over in Munsfield, they've recently turned their general store into a soup kitchen.”

Angry mutterings rose from the crowd.

“Yes,” said the Mayor. “Once again, Munsfield is trying to show us up. Trying to make us look bad. Which is why we need to figure out what sort of philanthropy we're going to do in return. We can't let them get away with this.”

The crowd of heads nodded in agreement.

True philanthropy is a wonderful thing. If you have ever reunited a baby with its lost teddy bear, or helped an old granny cross the road, or returned a missing wallet to its owner, then you have done a bit of philanthropy yourself — so long as you didn't take any money from the wallet, granny or baby. True philanthropy is doing something kind for someone else without giving the slightest bit of thought to yourself.

Unfortunately, true philanthropy is not quite what the Mayor had brought the Hopetoners together to discuss.

A woman in the front row raised her hand. “How about a homeless shelter?” she asked.

“Definitely not,” said the Mayor. “The hobos might start sleeping in it. The last thing we want is a bunch of hobos mussing up our philanthropy.”

Mutters of agreement came from around the room, and the woman in the front row sank down in her chair.

“Why don't we build a soup kitchen, too?” someone said. “An even bigger soup kitchen!”

The Mayor shook his head. “No, no. If we do that, the Munsfielders will just say we copied them. There's got to be some philanthropy we can do that will really make them squirm in their boots!”

The townspeople furrowed their brows and fell to thinking about squirming Munsfielders.

“What about something for children?” came a voice from the back of the hall.

The Mayor's face lit up. “Yes!” he shouted. “Something for children! Everybody likes children, don't they?”

“An orphanage!” cried a thin, birdlike woman with a long pointy nose. “Somewhere we can put all the stray ragamuffins nobody wants. And far away from here, so they won't hang around our nice town.”

The room began to buzz with excitement.

“Bingo!” said the Mayor. “An orphanage is much more philanthropic than a stuffy kitchen! That'd show those soup-sniffing Munsfielders!”

“I quite agree,” said a gravelly voice, and everyone turned to look at an important-looking old gentleman with bushy eyebrows, whose name was Professor Thrumble.

Professor Thrumble was the most well-educated man in town, having spent many years reading long and serious books, and many more years putting the schoolchildren of Hopeton to sleep with long and serious lectures.

“An orphanage,” said Professor Thrumble, “is the perfect place to educate the excess population. It will prepare them for useful roles in society, should they ever cease to be children.”

“Indeed!” said the birdlike woman, pleased that someone so well educated had approved her idea. “As chairwoman of the Knitting Society,” she said, “I will take charge of rounding up the orphans. I am very concerned for these pitiful foundlings.”

“So am I,” said a dumpy woman with large bulgy eyes. “Very concerned.”

“Shush, Prudie,” said the birdlike woman, who, if you hadn't guessed, was Gertrude.

“Allow me to say a few words,” said the Professor, and several of his listeners got ready to take a short nap. He was known for making long and serious speeches to people whether they were children or not. On that particular day, he gave a speech on the dangers of uneducated orphans.

“In conclusion,” he finished fifteen minutes later, “if you should need a noble mind to guide these stray youths, I shall be happy to offer my wisdom.”

The Professor gave a deep bow, Gertrude burst into applause, and Mayor Picklewort, who had dozed off, shook himself awake and gave several loud bangs of his gavel.

“It's settled then!” the Mayor shouted, waking up the rest of the hall. “Professor Thrumble will take the post of Master of the new orphanage.”

And with the Mayor banging his gavel, the townspeople chose a site on the very edge of the town limits on which to build their orphanage.

“We'll build a place for misplaced infants!” they cheered.

“A home for homeless tots!”

“Ooo, I can't wait to see the looks on the Munsfielders' faces!”

After the meeting, the townspeople trundled back to their cozy houses, and most of them never thought of their philanthropy again, except to inform any Munsfielder who hadn't heard of it.

This meeting led to quite a lot of paperwork, which led to quite a lot of money from the town treasury, which went to Gertrude and Prudence and was then mostly forgotten. And a few years after that, on an unwanted plot of land on the very edge of the town, the Hopeton Orphanage opened its doors.

They were the very same doors, in fact, that opened many years later to Margaret Grey. The same doors that led her to a home filled with happy laughing children, piles of wonderful things to eat, and the beautiful, smiling Miss Switch.

CHAPTER 6
The Switch

When last we saw Margaret Grey, she was waving goodbye to a pink car, watching the dust settle on a long dirt road and hoping great hopes about her new life.

Just at that moment, a firm hand gripped her shoulder, making her turn around. Miss Switch was towering over her, her eyes following the pink car as it disappeared over a hill.

“Come now, dear,” Miss Switch said, placing her other hand on Margaret's back and pushing her into the house.

The rest of the children filed in behind them. Margaret smiled, hoping to make a good first impression, but no one smiled back.

“Would you like help laying out the tea?” she asked, having always been taught to be a helpful houseguest.

There were several moments of empty silence. Margaret looked around, wondering if perhaps no one had heard her.

A change seemed to have come over the house, though Margaret couldn't quite put her finger on what it was. All around the entry hall, the other children were looking at her very strangely. One small mousy-looking girl shook her head solemnly from side to side, her eyes wide.

“Um,” said Margaret. “Miss Switch?”

Miss Switch didn't answer. Instead she did a very odd thing. She reached into her apron pocket and pulled out a thin, golden whistle. She put the whistle in her mouth and blew.

Tweeeeeeeet!

At the sound, the entire house seemed to come alive.

The children scattered in all directions. They ran into the kitchen and the dining room and the entryway, grabbing and pulling at everything around them as they went. Within moments the silver trays of cookies and tarts had disappeared into boxes, which disappeared into the kitchen. The lovely plush carpets and velvet drapes were yanked from their places and rolled up into tight little bundles that were carried away. Large white sheets were draped over the soft chairs, and splintery wooden stools were set around the table instead.

And the orphans were changing, too. They were helping each other out of their bright coveralls to reveal shabby gray clothes that looked as if they had been made from potato sacks.

“Hey!” Margaret cried, for several children had surrounded her and were pulling away her new shawl.

It may be that you do not understand what was happening, and if that is the case, you know exactly how poor Margaret was feeling. Before her eyes, the orphanage was changing from a beautiful, warm home to a cold, dingy house.

And Miss Switch! Miss Switch, who only moments before had been wearing a tattered flower-print apron, had transformed. She had pulled off her apron and unbuttoned the plain gray dress to reveal a luxurious red silk one underneath. Children had come running down the stairs carrying jewelry — strands of pearls and glittering stones — which they were draping one after the other around Miss Switch's long neck.

And another change had taken place, an even more terrible change. Miss Switch's beautiful face, which moments before had been filled with tenderness and motherly affection, was now sinister and cold. Her smile had hardened and turned positively carnivorous.

Margaret stared at her in horror. “What's going on?”

Miss Switch looked down at her in a way that made Margaret feel very small indeed. “I am Matron here,” she said with a sneer. “And you, dreg, will call me Miss Switch.”

She snapped her long fingers, and a pretty blonde girl who looked about thirteen stepped forward.

The girl was smiling at Margaret, but it was not a warm smile of welcome. It was the type of smile a hyena might give a tasty mutton chop right before devouring it.

“Every morning, dreg,” the girl said, “you will wake up at sunrise and make your bed. You will gather the laundry and sweep the floors, then you'll go to the kitchen and make breakfast for your superiors. After that, you get four minutes to eat your breakfast mush. Then you will scrub the bathtubs and polish the toilets.”

The girl went on, listing chore after chore to be done, while Margaret looked around in shock. From the faces of the other children, she could see that they, too, were forced to pluck weeds and scrub floors and wash dishes every hour of the day.

She turned desperately to Miss Switch, who was admiring her own glittery reflection in a large mirror on the wall.

“Miss Switch,” she said, reaching out to touch the Matron's dress. “Please, I don't understand — ”

Miss Switch spun around, slapping Margaret's hand from her dress with a loud clap.

“You will do as I tell you,” she said fiercely. “You're a worthless dreg. Nobody wants you. Nobody likes you. And if you don't do what I say, I'll throw you out of your bed in the middle of the night and you will be gobbled up by rabid raccoons.”

Margaret cradled her hand, her eyes filling with tears from the slap.

But instead of apologizing, or kissing it better, or doing any of the things a mother should do, Miss Switch began to laugh. It was a cold, harsh sound, like the screeching of a crow. And with a last grin at Margaret's disbelieving face, she swept out of the room.

For you see, every story has a villain. And in case you hadn't guessed, the villain of this story is Miss Switch.

CHAPTER 7
The Home of the Dregs

On her first night at the Hopeton Orphanage, Margaret cried herself into a fitful sleep.

When she awoke the next morning in her lumpy bed, several moments passed before she remembered where she was. But when a scowling boy with chestnut curls appeared and shook her roughly by the shoulders, the events of the previous day came rushing back.