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Authors: Edward Eager
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steps, he saw John and big Pete come from the other house and wander toward the side yard. So he went indoors again.
"Where
is
everybody? What about the magic?" said Fredericka, happening through the hall.
"There isn't going to be any. Some people would rather go fishing instead," said Barnaby bitterly. And he went upstairs and into his room and slammed the door.
"The master is cross," Fredericka informed Abbie, which so touched that tender heart that she rapped on Barnaby's door and offered him the rest of her grape No-Cal, which he refused with bare civility.
It wasn't till afternoon that Susan, driven from the house more by sorrow than by anger, was pacing morosely along the road to town when she ran straight into Barnaby, wandering in the opposite direction and kicking a stone ahead of him moodily with the toe of his tennis shoe.
The two eyed each other, at first warily and then with surprise.
"Where's the book?" were the words that sprang to the lips of both.
And it all came out.
Now it was Susan's turn to feel guilty. How could she, always the calm, sensible one, have left their most precious possession on the porch all this time, a prey to the whim of every passing stranger? Needless to say, it was not there now when they ran to look.
Who could have taken it, and what might he have wished?
A conference was called, and both houses were ransacked in vain. John and big Pete Schroeder appeared, without any fish and without the book, either, but this was a surprise to no one. Big Pete Schroeder would be the last to look at a book in any way, shape, or form.
"The thing is," said Barnaby, when big Pete had ambled away homeward, "to make a list of every single person who was on that porch yesterday."
"And then interview them all, like detectives in movies!" cried Fredericka, who could enjoy almost anything so long as it wasn't tame or dull.
Pencils flew, telephone wires hummed, delegations visited this house and that, but the book, as Barnaby put it, remained a thing of the past.
Little Stevie Wynkoop, who was five years old and a very secretive child, caused a false alarm by admitting to having found an old, ancient book and taken it home without permission, but when asked what the book
was,
he declined to say. But Fredericka tracked him to his lair and hounded and harassed him and told him he was adopted (which was untrue) till at last he dug the book out from under a pile of toys and showed it to her. It was a battered copy of
Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour
that had come down to Susan from a defunct aunt.
So it seemed the only clue was a fizzle.
"Do you suppose that's all the magic we're going to get?" wondered Abbie. "Did it come into our lives to gladden an hour and then fade like a dream?" (For she had been reading the romantic poets lately, to see how they did it.)
"It can't be," said Fredericka. "It wouldn't be fair. We've hardly had our first magic taste, even."
"Who said magic was fair?" said Barnaby. "It almost never is. But I think it's prob'ly biding its time, just to show us. It'll prob'ly turn up in plain sight some moment when we least expect it."
Susan said nothing. She was too busy feeling remorseful. But Barnaby patted her on the back, which at any other time might have seemed rather insulting but right now was a comfort. And Abbie said, "There, there," and even that helped.
By common consent the five children parted early after dinner and spent a quiet evening. Or at least it started out that way. Susan and John sat in their living room, and Susan hemmed a skirt while John fiddled with a crossword puzzle, which shows how low their spirits had sunk. Grannie sat across from them reading.
Grannie often read in the evenings, tutting to herself when she came to the dangerous parts. Mostly she read anything she could find about the West, not the wild and woolly West of television shows, but the real West she had known as a little girl, seventy or so years before.
Susan had
"Where
is
everybody? What about the magic?" said Fredericka, happening through the hall.
"There isn't going to be any. Some people would rather go fishing instead," said Barnaby bitterly. And he went upstairs and into his room and slammed the door.
"The master is cross," Fredericka informed Abbie, which so touched that tender heart that she rapped on Barnaby's door and offered him the rest of her grape No-Cal, which he refused with bare civility.
It wasn't till afternoon that Susan, driven from the house more by sorrow than by anger, was pacing morosely along the road to town when she ran straight into Barnaby, wandering in the opposite direction and kicking a stone ahead of him moodily with the toe of his tennis shoe.
The two eyed each other, at first warily and then with surprise.
"Where's the book?" were the words that sprang to the lips of both.
And it all came out.
Now it was Susan's turn to feel guilty. How could she, always the calm, sensible one, have left their most precious possession on the porch all this time, a prey to the whim of every passing stranger? Needless to say, it was not there now when they ran to look.
Who could have taken it, and what might he have wished?
A conference was called, and both houses were ransacked in vain. John and big Pete Schroeder appeared, without any fish and without the book, either, but this was a surprise to no one. Big Pete Schroeder would be the last to look at a book in any way, shape, or form.
"The thing is," said Barnaby, when big Pete had ambled away homeward, "to make a list of every single person who was on that porch yesterday."
"And then interview them all, like detectives in movies!" cried Fredericka, who could enjoy almost anything so long as it wasn't tame or dull.
Pencils flew, telephone wires hummed, delegations visited this house and that, but the book, as Barnaby put it, remained a thing of the past.
Little Stevie Wynkoop, who was five years old and a very secretive child, caused a false alarm by admitting to having found an old, ancient book and taken it home without permission, but when asked what the book
was,
he declined to say. But Fredericka tracked him to his lair and hounded and harassed him and told him he was adopted (which was untrue) till at last he dug the book out from under a pile of toys and showed it to her. It was a battered copy of
Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on an Auto Tour
that had come down to Susan from a defunct aunt.
So it seemed the only clue was a fizzle.
"Do you suppose that's all the magic we're going to get?" wondered Abbie. "Did it come into our lives to gladden an hour and then fade like a dream?" (For she had been reading the romantic poets lately, to see how they did it.)
"It can't be," said Fredericka. "It wouldn't be fair. We've hardly had our first magic taste, even."
"Who said magic was fair?" said Barnaby. "It almost never is. But I think it's prob'ly biding its time, just to show us. It'll prob'ly turn up in plain sight some moment when we least expect it."
Susan said nothing. She was too busy feeling remorseful. But Barnaby patted her on the back, which at any other time might have seemed rather insulting but right now was a comfort. And Abbie said, "There, there," and even that helped.
By common consent the five children parted early after dinner and spent a quiet evening. Or at least it started out that way. Susan and John sat in their living room, and Susan hemmed a skirt while John fiddled with a crossword puzzle, which shows how low their spirits had sunk. Grannie sat across from them reading.
Grannie often read in the evenings, tutting to herself when she came to the dangerous parts. Mostly she read anything she could find about the West, not the wild and woolly West of television shows, but the real West she had known as a little girl, seventy or so years before.
Susan had
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