A Ghostly Idea
It was while Susan was “sitting” with the Terrible Torrences that she got her idea for decorating the Tower.
“Tell us a story, Susie-Susie-Susan!” cried the Terrible Torrences. “Tell us a horrible, terrible story with lots of blood.”
“I will tell you about a girl named Alice who went to Wonderland,” suggested Susan.
“No! No! No!” cried the Terrible Torrences. “That’s all about little rabbits and getting big and little. We want a horrible, terrible story.”
“I can tell you about Hopalong Cassidy,” said Susan.
“No! No! No!” they cried. “That’s on the radio. You tell, Susan!”
“Well,” said Susan, thinking rapidly, “Halloween was coming, and there were two little boys who decided to dress up in sheets and go out pretending that they were ghosts.”
“What were the two little boys’ names, Susan?” Alvin asked, and Rudy said, “Their names were Rudy and Alvin, weren’t they, Susan?”
“Yes,” said Susan, “the two little boys were named Rudy and Alvin, and they were invited out to a Halloween party.”
“Will there be candles on the cake?” asked Alvin.
“Rudy and Alvin were very nice little boys,” continued Susan.
“Oh, Susan, make them bad little boys,” begged the Terrible Torrences.
“No,” Susan said firmly. “They were very nice little boys, and brave, too, and please don’t interrupt so much or you’ll never find out what happened to them.”
“All right, Susan,” said Alvin, cuddling down in bed, and Rudy said, “Tell!”
“Well, because they were so nice, people loved to ask these little boys to parties, and because they were so nice, their mother was just delighted to let them have her best sheets to dress up in, and so Rudy and Alvin dressed up in sheets, like ghosts.”
“Like this,” said Alvin, pulling the sheet up over his head; and, pulling the sheet over his head, too, Rudy cried, “Look, Susan, no eyes.”
“And so,” said Susan, “these little boys started off to the Halloween party on Halloween night, and it was very dark, and the wind went woo-oo! woo-oo! but they were brave and they were not afraid. When they had gone about a block, ahead of them they saw a great big terrible black cat with green eyes. And everyone else was afraid of the cat and ran away, but Alvin and Rudy were not afraid and they went right on.”
“We were not afraid!” the Terrible Torrences said.
“And when the terrible cat saw two white ghosts coming who were not afraid, the cat made her tail and her back all arched and bristly, and she jumped sideways on her stiff legs, and then she ran away, clippety-clippety-clap! And Alvin and Rudy went along to the party. And when they had gone another block, what do you think they saw?”
“A witch!” cried Alvin, and Rudy said, “Susan, they saw a witch!”
“Yes,” said Susan. “She was riding around on her broomstick by the light of the moon, and she was having quite a lot of fun, because it must be very great fun to ride a broomstick.”
“We ride broomsticks,” Alvin said.
“Yes,” said Susan, “but only on the ground. This was in the air.”
“But they were not afraid, Susan, were they?” said Rudy. “Because they were very nice—I mean bad little boys, weren’t they, Susan?”
“These little boys were very nice little boys,” said Susan firmly, “and when the witch saw them she screamed: ‘Ghosteses! Oh, my stars and garters! Ghosteses!’ And because the two little ghosts were not afraid of her she made her broomstick go high, high, high, whooshity-whoosh! whoosh! And she went far away where there were other people she could frighten. So Alvin and Rudy went along to the party.”
“And, when they had gone another block, Susan,” said Alvin, “what did they see?”
“Well,” said Susan, “in the next block they had to pass a very, very old cemetery, and sitting on five of the very oldest graves were five little ghosts waiting for someone to come by so they could haunt them.”
“Were Rudy and Alvin afraid?” asked the Terrible Torrences uncertainly.
“Of course not,” Susan said, “not the least bit. So the five little ghosts came all around Rudy and Alvin, and they poked them and felt of them. ‘Ghosteses!’ the little ghosts said, ‘just like us! Hello, brothers.’ But Rudy and Alvin said, ‘We are Rudy and Alvin.’ And all the little ghosts laughed, and when they laughed it sounded like oo-oo-oo-oo, very sad and mournful. And one of the ghosts said, ‘These ghosteses are not made of mist, they are made of sheet.’ And another said, ‘When they laugh, it sounds ha-ha-ha! not oo-oo-oo!’ And another said, ‘They are only pretending to be ghosteses. We will have to punish them!’”
“But Rudy and Alvin were not afraid,” said Alvin, “were they, Susan?”
“No, indeed,” said Susan. “They saw that the real ghosts were very thin and frail and all made of nothing but mist, and so Rudy and Alvin began to huff and puff, and puff and huff—”
“Just like the big bad wolf, Susan?”
“They huffed and they puffed,” Susan said. “And before the five ghosts could do a thing to punish Alvin and Rudy for pretending to be ghosts, Alvin and Rudy had blown the thin, misty ghosts all away, so that they just dissolved like smoke, and there was the moon shining through again, and Alvin and Rudy went on to the Halloween party, and they had a wonderful time.”
“And they ate all the candles off the cake, didn’t they, Susan?” said Rudy.
“No,” said Susan, “they were much too kind and polite to do a thing like that. They just ate cake and candy and cocoa and whatever the lady who was giving the party passed to them, and they didn’t grab or snatch.”
“No candles,” Rudy said, and Alvin, who had been wondering, said, “Why were there five ghosts, Susan?”
“I don’t know,” Susan said. “I just said five, I guess. There are five windows in our Tower.”
It was after the Terrible Torrences, looking like angels, had fallen asleep that Susan thought, Five ghosts, five windows in our Tower. A sheet like a ghost hanging out of each window. A sign that says, ‘Midwest Makes Ghosts of Its Enemies.’ That’s it! It will combine Halloween with Homecoming! George will like it.
They began right away, the next afternoon after school, to make the five ghosts to hang out of the Tower windows, because, of course, George was enthusiastic. Dumpling was pleased, too. “Now, Irene honey,” she said to her rag doll, “you won’t have to worry about a pain in your neck.”
First of all they had to persuade Mother to let them borrow five sheets.
“Five?” Mother said. “But there are only three of you. Or have I forgotten how to count noses?”
“It’s not for us to wear, Mother,” Susan explained. “We want to decorate the Tower for Homecoming. We want to hang a sheet out of each window, and we’ll be very careful of them.”
“But won’t it look as if we take in laundry or something?” Mother said. “I’m sure Father would think that Dean Ambrose would think that professors’ children should not hang their laundry out of the window on football days.”
“Mother,” Susan explained patiently, “we’re going to make the sheets look like ghosts, not laundry.”
“Very well,” Mother said. “In the attic you’ll find some old, clean sheets that are piled up waiting until I finish my mystery novel and have time to mend them. Treat them with gentle, loving care. And don’t fall out of the Tower window!”
Susan said, “We will” to the first, and George said, “We won’t” to the second, and they dashed away to the attic.
Next they collected five wire coat hangers, some drawing paper, scissors, and colored crayons, and, spreading everything out on the floor of George’s room, they set to work. Terence wanted to help, too, and he put his feet on the drawing paper and picked up the crayons in his mouth and whammed the coat hangers off the bed with his tail. But, in spite of all this helpfulness, Susan and George made good progress with their i
dea.
They drew and cut from the drawing paper five life-sized ghost faces. Dumpling, who was watching, with Irene clasped tightly in her arms, asked, “Do ghosts have faces?”
Susan and George stopped working and looked at her. Then they looked at each other. “Do ghosts have faces, Susan?” George asked, worried.
“Ours do,” Susan said firmly. So they went on working. “But we must make them have ghostly expressions,” Susan continued, “with mouths open or turned down at the corners, and eyes rolled up in anguish, and all that sort of thing. And we must not put in red cheeks, but just leave the paper white except for terrible mouths and burning eyes.”
“How do you burn eyes, Susie?” Dumpling wanted to know. And Susan said, “Honey, why don’t you and Terence and Irene just go and play house somewhere and let George and me work?”
After a good many trials, Susan and George finally made five ghostly faces that were horrible enough to suit them.
Then they folded the sheets around the coat hangers in such a way that the hook of the hanger would be at the back and would serve as a means of hanging the ghost out of the window. In front of this they pinned the ghost face with a corner of the sheet draped around it like a hood. The five ghosts looked very real and very terrible when they were finished, and Susan and George were pleased. “What shall we do with them until Homecoming?” George asked.
“We can hang them up at the back of the hall closet on the five hooks that we use in winter for our heavy coats,” Susan said.
Nobody stopped to think what a shock it might be to Father when he came home and hung up his hat in the hall closet to be confronted with a row of five ghosts with burning eyes. “Chelonians in my bath!” he cried. “Ghosts in my closet! What is a poor man to do in a house like this?”
But the children all came around him to show him that they loved him. Susan and George each took a hand, and Dumpling caught hold of his jacket from behind, and Terence jumped up and kissed his nose from in front.
“Come, Daddy darling,” they said, “Mother’s got fresh doughnuts!” So away they all went to the kitchen, singing,
“’Twas Friday night when we set sail,
And our ship not far from the land—”
Free as the Air
For more than a month now the birds had been gathering in the trees, in great twittering flocks, and then winging away toward the south. Dumpling had watched them with interest and anxiety. They had a long journey ahead of them, but they knew the way, and before winter came they would all be gone. Time was running along very swiftly, and already there were only a few birds left.
Every day as Dumpling fed and cared for Dickie she thought of this. She thought of the turtles, too, and how joyously they had gone swimming away to live their own lives.
“Dickie is my bird,” Dumpling said to herself. “I can do anything I want to with him. I would like him to be happy.” Dickie shook his wings at her and scolded. He fluttered and cheeped. It seemed to Dumpling that he could not be very happy in his cage or he would behave better than he did.
“I will let him out,” Dumpling said to herself, “while there is still time for him to go south with all the rest of the birds.”
No one happened to be around when Dumpling reached this tremendous decision, but having made up her mind, Dumpling acted quickly. She climbed on a chair and unhooked Dickie’s cage from the bracket which held it. Carrying it firmly against that part of her which stuck out farthest, she went through the front door and around the side yard behind the carriage house. There was a tree growing there that any bird should enjoy. Dumpling set the cage on the ground and unfastened the clips that attached the top of the cage to the bottom. In the mornings, when she changed the paper on the floor of the cage, she had always been careful not to let Dickie escape; but now she deliberately turned the cage on its side with the bottom of it wide open.
Dickie stopped his nervous fluttering and cheeping. He looked at her as much as to say, “For goodness sake! Do you really mean it?” Dumpling made a little shooing motion with her hands. There was an instant’s pause, and then with a rush of yellow wings Dickie was out and away. Dumpling followed his movements for a few moments with her eyes, but the tree was full of yellow leaves, and Dickie’s yellow wings were soon lost to sight. Dumpling left the cage lying where she had first set it down. She felt satisfied. I am a P-R-O-D-D-D—one of those things. I am very, very, good, she said to herself.
Dumpling returned to the house and climbed the stairs to her room. She took her rag doll, Irene, out of the wastebasket which made a nice place to park her when she was not in use; and, sitting down on the bed, Dumpling cradled Irene in her arms. Irene never struggled and tried to get away. Irene was happy and comforting. Dumpling recited a poem she had learned.
“The world is so full of a number of things,
I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.
Robert Louis Stevenson.”
And Irene smiled at her with a painted rag smile that turned up the corners of her painted mouth.
Dumpling was still happy and contented when she came down to dinner. She climbed into her chair and shoved her neatly folded bib onto the floor. “I would like a napkin, please,” she said.
“Well, of course, honey,” Mother said, “you’re getting too big for a bib, aren’t you? Get Dumpling a napkin, will you please, Susan?”
“Bib,” mused Professor Ridgeway, “a word derived from the Latin verb bibere, meaning to drink, sip, tipple.”
“Bibo, bibere, bibi,” said Dorothy, and Susan added, “Hic, haec, hoc, huius, huius, huius!” which was the only Latin she knew.
“That would make a good football yell,” said George. “Hic! Haec! Hoc! Tucker! Tucker! Tucker!”
“How about, Huius, huius, huius, we make our rivals fuius?” asked Susan.
“What means fuius?” asked Dumpling.
“It means furious, of course,” said Susan, “but I want it to rhyme with huius.”
Just then George glanced up from his Irish stew with real dumplings in it to the spot where Dickie’s cage usually hung. Something was wrong there. He was still thinking about football yells and how good Irish stew with dumplings could be as Mother cooked it; but his eyes opened wider in surprise, and another thought began to seep into his mind. When he had managed to swallow his mouthful of stew, he asked, “Where’s Dickie?”
The others looked then, too, and Susan cried, “The cage is gone!”
There were all sorts of wild speculations.
“The Gimmicks’cat!”
“But it wouldn’t eat the cage!”
“The Terrible Torrences!”
“But they never did a thing as bad as stealing a canary!”
It was quite a while before anyone heard Dumpling’s small voice saying, “Dickie wanted to get out. I let him. He’s gone, like the turtles.”
They looked at her aghast. “Dickie!” they cried.
“But he’s always been in a cage,” wailed George. “He wouldn’t know what to do.”
“He knew to fly,” said Dumpling.
“But winter’s coming,” George said. “Will he know to go South? He hasn’t any friends. Will he know to go South all alone?”
“I thought he would know like the turtles,” Dumpling said. “He wanted to get out.”
Everybody looked at Dumpling, and only George could think of anything to say. “I don’t believe he wanted to get out,” George cried. “It’s just the way he acts. You might have given him to me, if you didn’t want him, Dumpling. I liked him. I would have fed him—”
“I was thinking about Dickie’s feelings,” Dumpling said sorrowfully.
“You never think about my feelings,” cried George.
“George, dear—” began Mother.
But George had reached the boiling point. “Dumpling is not so wonderful after all,” he cried. “She gave me a birthday present, and then she made such a fuss about how they wanted to get out that we let them out. And now
she’s gone and let out the canary bird, the only, only bird we had in our zoo.”
Suddenly George began to cry, and that surprised the others very much. George had not cried in public since he was Dumpling’s age.
“Dear me!” said Professor Ridgeway in alarm. “But, George, Dickie is free; he has his liberty. Liberty is the crown and glory of life, George. If Dickie has found true liberty we must all rejoice. We must imagine him winging his way in sunlight through the trees, wafted by the winds of heaven, singing his sweet song high in the sky of blue—”
“George, dear,” Mother said, “there’s butterscotch pudding for dessert.”
George’s sobs grew less violent. Finally he ate two helpings of butterscotch pudding, but his mouth did not turn up at the corners.
“It isn’t just letting things out, Dumpling,” he said. “You have to think. Will it be good for them?”
Dumpling thought, and she was not as pleased with herself as she had been. Because she wished to be kind to animals, she found that she had been unkind to George, perhaps even to Dickie, who would not know how to protect himself as the turtles had known.
After supper the children went out behind the carriage house and looked around. There was the yellow tree, and there Dickie’s empty cage, but Dickie had gone. And no sound of bird note or flutter of wings came from the branches above them. They had not thought until now how much they really liked Dickie.
“It is almost November,” Susan said. “I think the other birds have all gone South.”
“Dickie has gone South, too, Susie,” Dumpling said with more confidence than she really felt.
George was unusually silent, and he still had teary splotches on his face. Terence sat close beside George as if he understood that George was sad. He looked up into the trees, too, because the children did, but Terence did not know what he was looking for.
“We might as well take the cage indoors,” Susan said. “Perhaps someone will give us a canary bird again sometime, and we will need a place to keep it.”
“No!” George said. “You leave the cage there, Susie. It’s his home. If Dickie should come back, looking for a place he knows, he’d find his cage waiting.”