Mary Norton - Bed-Knob and Broomstick

The three children stood quiet. In silence and misery they stood while the puddles deepened round their feet and the drips from the eiderdown ticked off the heavy seconds. At last Carey moved. She pushed back her wet hair.

"Come, Paul," she said huskily. "Let's go to the bathroom and wash." "What I don't understand," said Aunt Beatrice for the fourth time, "is from where you got the water. The bathroom's right down the passage, and there isn't a jug." The children gazed back at her. They were in the study. Aunt Beatrice sat at her desk turning a little sideways so that she could face them as they stood in a row on the carpet. There was a closed look in their faces, though their eyes were round and candid. "Whatever happens" Carey had warned them, "we mustn't give away Miss Price. Except for that, it doesn't matter what we say because nothing could be worse." Carey cleared her throat. She did not reply but stood staring unwaveringly at her aunt's face.

"The charitable attitude to adopt, Carey," said Aunt Beatrice in her precise, cutting voice, "is that you are not quite right in your head. This story about a South Sea island, cannibals . . . lagoons. ... If it were necessary to lie, a child of three could do better." Carey swallowed. -•"A magic bed. . . ." Aunt Beatrice smiled acidly. "It might interest you to know, Carey, that I bought that bed myself in 1903, quite new, from Baring & Willow's-a most reputable firm," she added, "and not given to innovations." Carey changed her weight from her left foot to her right.

"What I still don't understand," reiterated Aunt Beatrice, "is from where you got the water." "From the sea," said Paul suddenly. "Carey told you." Aunt Beatrice raised her almost hairless eyebrows. She picked up her pen and turned back to her desk. Her thin smile was far from reassuring.

"No matter," she said. "I have wired your mother, and Elizabeth is packing your things-the last service Elizabeth will perform for me. After all these years she has given me notice." "But it's true, Aunt Beatrice," Carey burst out. "It was the sea. You can prove it." Aunt Beatrice half turned, the pen delicately suspended in her birdlike hand.

"How, may I ask?" she inquired ironically.

"By licking the blanket, Aunt Beatrice," said Carey politely.

Aunt Beatrice's pink-rimmed eyes became like agates.

"You are not my children," she said coldly, "and I am not as young as I was; there is no reason at all why I should put up with this sort of thing! Your mother, job or no job, must make other arrangements for you. I have finished. You may go." They crept to the door. At the threshold they paused; Aunt Beatrice was speaking again. "As there are no taxis," she was saying, "Mr. Bisselthwaite, the milkman, has very kindly consented to pick you up at eleven forty-five at the end of the lane. Your train leaves at twelve." Gently, gently they closed the door.

1O FAREWELL The milkman was late. "Perhaps," said Carey, as they stood in the grass by the side of the lane, "we could just run in and say good-by to Miss Price." "One of us had better stay," said Charles, "to look after the bags and wait for the milk cart. You and Paul go." Carey hesitated. "All right," she said, after a moment. "And you can come along in the cart." Miss Price was in her front garden. When she saw Carey and Paul in coats and hats, she looked surprised. She set down her wheelbarrow and waited between the shafts. Carey ran up to her.

"Miss Price," she said, "we're going." "Going where?" asked Miss Price. Her face looked tired and rather pale except for the sunburn on her long thin nose.

"Home. To London." "Oh, dear," said Miss Price. She looked distressed. She began to pull off her gardening gloves.

"It was the bed and the water and everything. We're being sent away. But we did keep our promise, Miss Price. We never told about you." "Oh, dear," said Miss Price again. She sat down on the edge of the wheelbarrow.

Paul, very subdued, began to collect dead flower heads from the rubbish.

"We came to say good-by," went on Carey.

"Oh, dear," said Miss Price for the third time. "I feel very much to blame. We shouldn't have gone to that island, but," she went on, "I thought a nice quiet day, a breath of sea air . . ." She paused.

"Look," Paul broke in. "A pink cabbage." Carey looked down. There it lay among the rubbish, Miss Price's giant rosebud! "Oh, Miss Price-" exclaimed Carey, staring at it. It must have weighed a couple of pounds.

Miss Price colored. "I have done a lot of thinking since yesterday, Carey. I've been thinking about last night and what you said about the flower show-" She glanced at Paul as if to include him in her observations. "I've been thinking that magic may be a kind of cheating. It looks good to start with, but perhaps it doesn't bring good results in the end." Paul frowned. "I've had wonderful results from cheating," he said stubbornly.

"I don't suppose I'll give it up altogether," went on Miss Price, ignoring Paul and holding on to her gentle smile. "But I thought I'd try to give it up for a while." They were all silent. "Oh, Miss Price," murmured Carey rather sadly. She shared Paul's disappointment.

"It gets such a hold on one," said Miss Price.

There was an awful pause. Paul had turned back the leaves of the pink cabbage. A sweet dry smell of sun-warmed deadness rose from the barrow.

"I have decided," went on Miss Price, watching Paul's fingers, "in future to regard witchcraft-not as a hobby" -she paused-"but as a weakness." "Darling Miss Price," cried Carey suddenly, "you're such a good sport." She flung her arms round Miss Price's neck. She felt the wetness of a tear on Miss Price's long nose. "Thank you, Miss Price, for everything, even the cannibals." It was a moving moment. Paul looked glum, a little bewildered. He had an uneasy feeling that Miss Price was turning over a new leaf before he had finished with the old one. It was almost a relief when the milk cart rattled up to the gate. Miss Price wiped her eyes.

"Now you must go," she said, straightening her hat as Charles jumped down off the milk cart to shake her hand. She tried to smile. "Good luck, dear children, and good-by. Keep your warm hearts, your gentleness, and your courage. These will do," said Miss Price, sniffing audibly, "just as well as magic." She turned away hurriedly; squaring her shoulders, she picked up the handles of the wheelbarrow and trundled it off toward the rubbish heap.

The milkman cracked his whip, and they clattered away amid the cheerful jangle of empty cans.

"She won't keep it up," said Paul, who, unobserved, had edged himself into the place nearest the pony.

In the train, Charles frowned through the narrow square of window. Carey had told him of the conversation with Miss Price.

"Magic may be just a weakness," he said, "but it's better than some weaknesses." "I know," agreed Carey.

"If we still had the bed, I think I'd use it," Charles went on. "Sometimes." "Yes," said Carey. "Just sometimes." "The bed wasn't magic," put in Paul consolingly. "It was only the bed-knob that was magic." "Well, it's the same thing," said Carey, turning irritably from Paul, who, kneeling up on his seat, was breathing in her face. "One thing's no good without the other." "Couldn't you use a magic bed-knob on another bed the same make?" "Oh, I don't know, Paul." Carey edged away from him, closer to the window. "What's the good of talking about it if we haven't got either. Do sit down properly!" Paul meekly put his legs down, so that they dangled just above the floor. He leaned back, sucking his cheeks in. One hand was in his pocket, fidgeting. He looked worried. "But," he protested, after some moments of silent thought, "I did bring the bed-knob." II BONFIRES AND BROOMSTICKS LOST AND FOUND Two years went by. Aunt Beatrice died and the house was sold, so they did not go back to Much Frensham. The memory of that summer became a secret thing, seldom spoken of-and never with Paul. "He might tell, you see," Carey pointed out. "We must let him just think it's a dream. . . ." Sometimes in company Paul could become a menace. "When we were in prison-" he would exclaim, and Carey, blushing, would correct him quickly with "When you dreamed you were in prison, Paul!" After a while, Paul grew confused; he would say-one eye on Carey-things like: "Yesterday, when I dreamed I had an egg for tea-" "But you did have an egg for tea," his mother would point out.