Seven-Day Magic (10 page)

What he was holding was the hand bell from the schoolhouse.

The young teacher who was really Grannie looked from the bell to Barnaby with a peculiar expression, rather as if she didn't know whether to be angry or glad.

"Taking school property without permission is against the rules and you must be punished," she said finally, in a voice that was just as peculiar as her expression. "Hold out your hand."

Barnaby held out his hand.

The teacher who was Grannie looked around rather distractedly as if she expected to find her ruler somewhere in the air. Then she slapped Barnaby's palm once with her own strong hand. Then she looked sorry.

"All the same," she said, "it was a very good idea, and I should have thought of it myself." And she shook the hand she had struck warmly.

"And now," she went on, turning to the others, "everyone stay safe inside here while I ring the alarm from the doorway."

"Can't I ring?" said Barnaby. "I thought of it."

"We could take turns," said John.

And in the end that is what they did. But Grannie, as teacher in charge, made a rule that the person ringing the alarm mustn't wander out of sight of the doorway and mustn't stay outside for more than five minutes at a time by her watch, for fear of freezing.

When it was Susan's turn to ring the hand bell, she gasped as the wind of the blizzard struck her. She had forgotten for a moment how cold and loud it was. Surely no one would hear her ringing through all this howling. But she swung the hand bell as hard as she could. Then she listened. Was that a sound, far away, beyond the wind's uproar? She rang again and listened once more. The sound, if it was a sound, seemed nearer.

"It's my turn again now," said Barnaby, surprising her by appearing at her side and shouting in her ear.

"Listen," shouted Susan. She let Barnaby swing the hand bell this time. Then they both listened.

"Sleigh bells!" cried Barnaby. "Someone's coming! Better get inside in the warm and tell the others!"

And "Sleigh bells!" Susan cried, running into the sod house. Now Grannie and the others crowded round the door, and everyone took turns ringing as loud and strong as each one could. Always when the hand bell stopped, the sleigh bells seemed closer.

At last a sleigh loomed big and darker than the snow around it, and someone called, "Quick! Hop in!"

"Why, forevermore!" cried Grannie. "Carl Ingoldsby! What are you up to, catching your death of cold gallivanting around in this weather?"

Susan looked at John and John looked at Susan.

Carl Ingoldsby had been the name of Grannie's husband, the grandfather Susan and John had never seen, who had died and been buried out on the Western plains long ago. And yet here he was, young and come a-courting, or at least a-rescuing!

"Save your breath and get in!" shouted Carl Ingoldsby, just as snappily as Grannie had shouted at him.

And somehow Grannie and all the children crowded into the sleigh.

Carl Ingoldsby turned the horses, and they went trotting off into the whirling blackness. Apparently Carl Ingoldsby knew the way, even in a blinding snowstorm. Or perhaps the horses had a sense that would guide them home.

Whichever was true, before long the lights of the little town on the prairie showed faintly ahead. Carl Ingoldsby seemed to know where each child in the school lived, and the sleigh stopped at house after house until only John and Susan and Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka were left. And of course Grannie.

Susan was just wondering what would happen to
them
and whether they would be set down on a cold dark Main Street, to find their way home through the years to the future, when the horses dashed into the open doorway of a stable. She could see it was a stable because a lantern hung by the door, but once inside, darkness reigned again and Susan could hardly make out the forms of Grannie and Carl Ingoldsby, where they sat looking at each other. Neither one made a move to get out of the sleigh.

"Thanks for the sleigh ride," said Grannie, rather airily Susan thought.

"Don't mention it," said Carl Ingoldsby. "Happy to oblige. Anytime."

There was a silence.

"I suppose..." Grannie's voice broke off and hesitated. "I suppose you saved all our lives, in a way."

"Oh, I don't know," said Carl Ingoldsby. "The storm might have stopped. Or somebody else might have found you."

"Well, thanks anyway," said Grannie.

There was another silence.

"What," said Carl Ingoldsby, "if I were to ask you to ride home again someday?"

"Why not try asking," said Grannie, "and see?"

Carl Ingoldsby gave a chuckle. "Independent, aren't you?" he said.

"Yes," said Grannie. "I am."

"What," said Carl Ingoldsby, "if I were to ask you to ride home with me someday and
stay?
"

This time the silence lasted a long while. Susan's eyes were accustomed to the darkness of the stable now, and she could see that Carl Ingoldsby's arms were around the young Grannie, and she was not resisting. And Susan noticed something else.

All through the school day and all through the storm and the sleigh ride Grannie had held the magic book clutched in one hand. Now the book fell from her grasp as she put her hand up to touch Carl Ingoldsby's cheek.

And Susan picked it up.

As she said afterwards, anybody could tell the adventure was over.

And of course once the book was in Susan's hands, it left off being the true Western story it had been for Grannie and became the old familiar magic book the five children had come to know and distrust so well. And Susan wished.

This time there were no colors to run together and shoot up like fireworks. The dark stable merely became darker. And then it was as if someone had switched the light on again.

There were Susan and John, at home in their living room, and there was Grannie, rocking and dozing in the chair across from them.

As Susan watched, Grannie woke with a start. Then a smile spread slowly over her face. "I must have been dreaming," she said.

Susan and John felt very much the same. And yet if it had been a dream, how had the book come from Grannie's hands to Susan's, where it now sat safe and fat and red and mysterious?

Grannie was still smiling. "I was dreaming of your grandpa," she said. "He was a fine-looking man. Fine pair of hands with a team of horses, too. Fine man, generally." Then she struggled up from her chair. "Time for bed," she announced. "Where's that book I was reading?"

Susan held the magic book concealed and went to fetch the book of Western reminiscences from the library. "You mean this one?"

Grannie took the book. "It'll do. It's not the one but it'll do." And she suffered herself to be helped upstairs.

Later on John caught Susan alone for a moment in the upstairs hall. "Do you suppose Barnaby and the others got back, too?" he wondered. "Do you suppose they think it was a dream, too? Or would they know?"

It was too late to call, for Barnaby's father always went to bed early when he had a big television show next day, and the bell would wake him.

But at that moment John and Susan's telephone rang. Susan got there first.

"Oh good, you're back, too," said Barnaby's voice. "So are we."

"That was nice, wasn't it?" said Susan.

"Yes it was," said Barnaby.

There was a remembering pause.

"We'll be over early tomorrow with the book," Susan told him. "Is it your turn next or Abbie's?"

There was another pause, this time as of inner struggle. Then Barnaby's better nature asserted itself. "Ladies first," he said. "I'll go tell her." And he hung up.

Susan reported this conversation to John, and then stopped in for a good-night look at Grannie.

Grannie was already asleep. Apparently she was really dreaming now, for there was a smile on her face. And as Susan watched, she murmured in her sleep.

"Mrs. Carl Ingoldsby," she said.

Susan smiled, too, and switched off the lamp.

When Barnaby came into Abbie's room, she was already in bed (for he had tiptoed downstairs to the telephone in his stocking feet, after all the lights were out and their parents were asleep).

But once he'd whispered the news that it was her turn next, she stayed awake thinking for a long time. The adventure with Grannie had been the best yet, maybe because part of it had been serious as well as fun. Where could she wish them tomorrow that would be even better?

So far the book's magic had been sort of bookish, the adventure that was more or less Oz and the
Half Magic
one, and then the Little House books mixed up with Grannie's own life. Maybe that was the book's secret. Maybe it made only book magic because it was a book itself.

Abbie went over her favorite reading in her mind. There were the Betsy-Tacy series and
When Molly
Was Six
(which had been her mother's own favorite when
she
was a girl). But somehow Abbie felt that Barnaby and John and Susan and even Fredericka would not appreciate a visit with the classic heroines of these.

Poetry usually held the answer to most things.

"
Hiawatha
?" No, Abbie had had enough of primitive America for a while. "
Evangeline
" was too sad. "
The Lady of the Lake
" had a good story and "
The Eve of Saint Agnes
" was thrilling (though full of hard words) but neither wildest Scotland nor romantic Italy seemed quite perfect for a day's outing. And thinking dreamily of Roderigh Vich Alpine and jellies soother than the creamy curd, Abbie fell asleep.

Wondering a lot about tomorrow the last thing at night often makes a person wake early and eager to begin it. You might try this plan the night before your next arithmetic exam. Of course, sometimes it works the other way and you toss on a sleepless pillow only to turn slothful with the dawn. This is not advised, before an exam or at any other time.

But for Abbie on Wednesday morning the former was the case, and she was up and around and down by half-past six with her bed made and her own breakfast eaten. So that when her mother came downstairs ten minutes later to get breakfast for her father, coffee and eggs were already bubbling on the stove, and the toast was in the toaster and the honey in the pot.

Her mother thanked her and said she could come along on the ride to the station, a thing Abbie always liked to do, for her father was a very special person to her, and indeed to all the family.

This morning, when he came into the kitchen all dressed up in his city clothes, Abbie thought again how handsome he was and how nice, and with that beautiful voice, and wished, not for the first time, that the important television people would discover this about him, too. (But she did not have the book in her hands at the moment, as it was still at Susan's house; so the wish did not count as a magic one.)

If the important television people discovered how wonderful her father was, maybe they would let him sing solos all by himself and he would make more money and her mother wouldn't have to work so hard selling houses and could stay home, and maybe her father could be home more, too.

Of course if he were a solo singer, he would still have to work hard, but maybe it would be at more reasonable hours, and he wouldn't always be running for the seven-twelve and not getting home till the eight thirty-four, just in time to kiss Abbie good night.

And there was more to it. Her father seemed happy in his work and was almost always cheerful and fun, but Abbie knew that standing in the background and singing in the chorus, or a quartet, wasn't really what he had studied for all those years and hoped to be.

The reason she knew this was that she and her father had a secret.

"
Why
won't they let you sing by yourself, ever?" Abbie had said once, when they were alone. "You're just as good as any of them."

"Well," her father had said, "I don't know about that. But in the first place, I'm too short." To be a leading man, he told her, a person had to be tall, or at least above middle height. Unless he were a comedian, and Abbie's father, while often funny around the house, was not that.

"But don't say anything about it to the others," he went on. "Let's have it be a secret between you and me."

The reason for not telling the others was that Barnaby was too short, too, and his father didn't want him to worry about it. Probably he would choose a career where it didn't matter.

"What about
me
?" Abbie said. "I'm short, too. So's Fredericka."

But her father told her that for a girl being too short wasn't a bad thing and was even at times considered to be a good one. It didn't seem fair.

This morning, as they stood on the station platform (for the seven-twelve was late for once and her father didn't have to run), Abbie thought to herself that he didn't look too short to
her.
And she made one more try.

"Daddy, you know where the microphone is. Why don't you just walk straight down to it and
sing
? Then they'd
know!
" she said.

"All right, I'll remember that. Maybe I will," said her father. But Abbie could tell from the loving note in his voice and the way she felt him exchanging a smile with her mother above her head that he was only humoring her. And then the seven-twelve screamed twice and came into the station, and her father kissed her and her mother good-bye and went gallantly off, holding himself straight and looking as tall as he could, as if he were in front of the television cameras already.

But Abbie went on thinking about him all the way back to the little white house.

Barnaby and Fredericka were up by this time and busy with their own breakfast and chores, and Abbie helped them, but her mind wasn't on her work and she served Barnaby Rice Krispies, which he wholly detested, instead of Bran Flakes, and let Fredericka make her bed without any hospital corners at
all.

And then their mother went off to her office and Susan and John arrived, and Susan handed over the book, and for the next half hour all was squabble and shove as four eager voices surrounded Abbie, advising her what to wish and how to wish it. Abbie's mildness had that effect on people.