and told he was a good boy.
‘As if I was a dog!’ he told Bethany indignantly later that day.
The reason for the Seddon’s visit soon became clear. Mr Seddon admitted to Great Aunt Mary that their finances were not in a very robust state.
‘Why doesn’t he just say we are broke,’ Bethany hissed to her mother, who hushed her.
‘So I would like to borrow your lawnmower,’ Mr Seddon went on. ‘I know you have a new one. That way Bethany and Stephen can spend their evenings and weekends mowing other people’s lawns and make us some money.’
‘What!’ Bethany nearly fell off her chair. Stephen moaned but felt too unwell to protest.
‘I’m not spending all my time mowing lawns,’ shrieked Bethany. ‘Why don’t you do it, if you’re so keen.’
‘Now Bethany,’ frowned her mother. ‘Your father is going to work an extra day at the office to help out the situation. It won’t be for too long, but we do have a debt to pay off.’
Bethany refused to cheer up.
‘Lawn mowing,’ she wailed.
‘I don’t mind mowing lawns,’ Stephen admitted.
‘Good. You can do it all then.’ Bethany crossed her arms and scowled.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ quavered Great Aunt Mary. ‘I have a man come in to mow my lawns and he won’t be able to do it if I don’t have a mower.’
‘I’ll rent it from you. That will give you enough money to pay the man to bring his own mower.’ Mr Seddon had an answer for everything. His powers of persuasion would have taken someone of much stronger will than Great Aunt Mary to withstand. Soon the mower was duly stacked in the boot of the car and the children were told to get in.’
‘Might as well hurry back and make the best of this weather,’ Mr Seddon announced.
Stephen refused to wear the ribbon and succumbed to carsickness when they were barely halfway home. Bethany concentrated on reciting her time’s tables to stop herself being sick in sympathy.
As soon as they arrived home Mr Seddon told his daughter to go and knock on all the houses in Pukeko Street and offer to mow their lawns. ‘We need about ten lawns each for you and Stephen. Off you go.’
‘At least I know everyone here,’ Bethany thought, ‘and they all know what Dad is like.’
As she worked her way down the street she met sympathetic looks when she explained her mission. All Pukeko Street had watched the building of the boat with extreme interest over the past few months.
‘Short of money, are you?’ asked Mrs Baker. ‘I’m not surprised. Your father really goes overboard on his ideas at times. But my husband usually mows our lawns himself. We are going away next weekend though, so if you’d like to do it then I will pay you for it,’ she added kindly.
‘Thanks,’ said Bethany miserably.
She continued up and down the street. Mr Besson mowed not only his own lawn at number nine, but also number sixteen. The empty house at number ten was very overgrown but Mrs Leopold told Bethany that the real estate people sent someone around to do it from time to time. By the time Bethany got home for tea she was hot and cross and had only arranged four lawns to mow.
‘It’s just the start,’ her father assured her. ‘Once people see how well you do it, you and Stephen will be rushed off your feet mowing lawns.’
‘Yeah, whatever,’ muttered Bethany in disgust.
‘There must be better ways to earn money,’ Bethany complained to her friend Sally the next day.
‘Like finding treasure,’ agreed Sally.
‘Or rescuing someone from dire danger.’
‘Or finding a stolen fairy princess.’
‘It’s easy in stories. Not so easy in real life,’ Bethany remarked.
‘Let’s go and see Rosie. She has good ideas.’
The girls wandered down the street towards number seventeen. As they reached number eleven, Sally glanced at the gate. A small printed card was pinned there.
Help wanted. Good wages paid.
Bethany read the notice and went pale.
‘I can’t go in there. She’s a witch.’
‘She’s a good witch though,’ Sally pointed out. ‘She might want someone to help her with her magic spells.’
‘You go then if you’re so keen.’
‘Not me.’ Sally shuddered. ‘I’d be far too scared. Anyway, I’m not the one who needs the money.’
Bethany thought about this for a few minutes.
‘Whatever it is, it can’t be worse than mowing lawns. I’ll go in and see,’ she decided eventually.
‘Be careful,’ Sally called after her as Bethany marched up to the shiny blue front door and rang the bell.
Mrs Myrtle opened the door. She was tidily dressed in her usual grey skirt, with her white hair pinned in a knot at the back of her head. She sniffed slightly as she looked at Bethany with piercing green eyes.
‘Can I help you?’
‘Actually, I thought I could help you,’ stammered Bethany nervously, pointing towards the notice on the gate. Mrs Myrtle looked at her for a moment then nodded her head.
‘Yes. You’ll do,’ she said. ‘Wait here a moment.’
Bethany waited by the door and soon Mrs Myrtle appeared carrying two buckets.
‘I have a lot of plums to be picked,’ she said calmly. ‘They are on the tree beside the fence.’ She led the way around the side of the house where a tree was bowed down under the weight of hundreds of plums. They glowed a dark ruby red and the flesh inside was a melting yellow, as Bethany found when Mrs Myrtle offered her one to eat. There was an old wooden ladder propped against the tree and Bethany climbed up it and began to fill the buckets.
‘This isn’t too bad,’ she said. ‘Even though I forgot to ask how much she would pay me.’ She filled the buckets and carried them to the front door. Mrs Myrtle took them from her and emptied them in the kitchen then handed the buckets back.
‘That is all I need, thank you Bethany. But I would like all the plums picked from the tree so you may have the rest for yourself.’
Bethany was dismayed. No money, but plums! She bit back a protest and climbed the ladder and began picking plums again.
‘I don’t know what we’ll do with all these plums,’ she told a grey cat who watched her from one of the branches. The cat yawned and closed its eyes as it settled on the branch in a patch of sunlight. Beth filled the buckets and carried them home.
‘Oh good. I’ll make jam,’ exclaimed Mrs Seddon. ‘These are wonderful plums and it is so kind of Mrs Myrtle. Are there more of them Bethany?’
‘Heaps,’ said Bethany. She made trip after trip and gave up counting how many buckets she had filled. The Seddon’s kitchen was filled with basins and containers of plums as Mrs Seddon began to make jam.
All that day Bethany picked plums while her mother made jam and Stephen mowed lawns. The smell of plum jam wafted around Pukeko Street and Mrs Seddon rapidly ran out of jars. All the other ladies rallied around and gave her their empty jars and the stack of jam grew and grew. Mr Seddon made a stall at the gate from a couple of sawhorses and a board from the shed, and Bethany painted a large notice.
Plum Jam $2 each jar
The jam sold amazingly well. Whether it was Mrs Myrtle’s plums or Mrs Seddon’s talent at jam making Bethany couldn’t decide, but once people had tasted the jam they couldn’t get enough of it.
‘We’ll soon have enough to pay off our debt,’ said Mrs Seddon with a beaming smile, as she bustled off to bank the coins and buy some more sugar.
‘It must be an amazing tree,’ said Sally, as she and Bethany rushed home from school so Bethany could pick more plums. ‘Isn’t it running out yet?’
‘Nope,’ said Bethany. ’It doesn’t seem to matter how many I pick. There are always plenty more.’
Finally the last two buckets of plums were picked and Mrs Seddon announced with a smile that thanks to Stephen’s lawn mowing and the jam sales they had earned enough money to pay off their debt.
‘Thank goodness,’ said Beth
any. ‘Now I can have my life back.’
‘We’ve all worked hard,’ her mother pointed out.
‘Now I can stop doing overtime,’ grinned Mr Seddon. ‘We’ll take Great Aunt Mary her lawnmower back and give her a couple of jars of jam as a thank you present.
‘You said you’d pay her,’ Bethany reminded him.
‘Oh, I’ve done that,’ Mr Seddon said airily, which made Bethany sure that he hadn’t. ‘But I’ll go by myself this time. I can’t bear the way you two fight in the back of the car.’
This was so grossly untrue that Bethany and Stephen were speechless, but they were too relieved at missing the journey to complain.
‘I’ll bet he’s up to something, though,’ Stephen whispered to his sister.
‘He’s too cheerful,’ Bethany agreed. ‘But as long as it doesn’t involve plums I think I can stand it.’
She skipped happily down the road to number eleven to return the buckets.
‘Thank you for all the plums,’ she said when Mrs Myrtle answered the door.
’I still have one more job for you,’ said Mrs Myrtle, taking the buckets and handing Bethany a large broom from behind the door. ‘I would like you to sweep the path for me.’
‘Sure,’ said Bethany, her heart sinking. Sweeping a path? Surely Mrs Myrtle could do that herself? She took the broom and walked down the steps to the path. The broom was perfectly normal looking, though a little tatty at the edges. Bethany began to sweep the path. It was harder than it looked, as the broom didn’t seem to want to go in the direction she pushed it. Bethany tried pulling it but that was no better.
‘Try standing over it,’ suggested Mrs Myrtle, who had been watching with amusement from the