Family Sabbatical (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries)

  “They have taught you!” cried the children’s father in great distress. “But I have been paying you to teach them, Mademoiselle.”

  “It is not so very okey-dokey zat I say to zem ‘shut up’?” asked Mademoiselle anxiously.

  “Not at all okey-dokey—I mean admirable,” said Professor Ridgeway severely. “In fact, it is very disappointing indeed, Mademoiselle.”

  “I have great sorrow and regret,” said Mademoiselle with tears in her eyes. “Perhaps it is better now zat I am-scray and say ‘Abyssinia.’ ”

  “You are right, Mademoiselle,” said Professor Ridgeway sternly. “It’s all you can do under the circumstances. For I see now that while you have taught my children practically nothing, they have been busy teaching you a lot of poppycock and destroying the beautiful English that you learned from the dictionary. Believe me, Mademoiselle Beauregard, it is better for you as well as for them that you should part company.”

  Poor Mademoiselle burst into tears at this dismal news. “Hélàs! Hélàs!” she said. “They were like my own keeds!”

  “Kids! Kids!” repeated Professor Ridgeway. “I’m sure you mean ‘children,’ Mademoiselle.”

  “Yes, yes, monsieur, I see zat you are right. It is better I go,” said Mademoiselle sadly. “But zis lovely poppycock zey teach me, I shall never—no, never—forget how sweet it was.”

  One never misses a governess until she is gone. All the times the Ridgeway children had been bored and annoyed with Mademoiselle seemed like nothing now that they knew they would lose her.

  “Daddy,” explained Susan, “all those things she said to you—it was our fault. We taught her.”

  “Yes, my dear child,” said Professor Ridgeway, “I understand that quite well. But what I have been trying to find out is what she taught you.”

  “Le chat joue avec le ballon, Daddy,” Dumpling said hopefully.

  “Oui, oui, oui!” chimed in Susan and George, just like the little pig who cried “we-we-we!” all the way home.

  But Professor Ridgeway was firm. “We all love and respect Mademoiselle,” he said, “but you simply can’t waste a whole six months and not learn anything.”

  “It is very educational to travel, Daddy,” Susan said hopefully.

  “Besides,” said Professor Ridgeway, “think of Mademoiselle. Before she met you, she used fine, noble words that she had learned from the dictionary, and now she speaks the most horrible garble of slang and nonsense. It really isn’t fair to her, or to you either.”

  Even Mother was not to be won over. “You’ll see,” she said, “there will be very interesting schools in Paris, with boys and girls of your own age. And how about giving Mademoiselle a nice present of some sort before you leave her? Wouldn’t that be fun? And you can write her long letters—in French, of course.”

  So they gave Mademoiselle a quilted silk bed jacket in a very wonderful shade of purple. Susan had picked it out because she adored that color.

  “It’s pretty,” George said, “but I don’t know what she’ll do with it.”

  “Why, she’ll eat her breakfast in bed now that she doesn’t have to get up and teach us,” Susan explained. “And, of course, she’ll wear it.”

  “Who will get her breakfast for her?” asked Dumpling practically.

  “Well, I suppose she’ll have to get up and make it herself,” Susan said. “But please don’t be so practical. A little luxury and elegance is what poor Mademoiselle needs, and you must admit that it is a perfectly wonderful shade of purple.”

  Mademoiselle wept with joy when they gave her the bed jacket, and called them “very precocious and adorable children,” which pleased Father because, as he remarked later, she might just as well have said “okey-dokey and supaire-dupaire keeds.” He said that this showed that she was already getting away from the unfortunate influence of the Ridgeway children, and that he hoped in time she would completely recover from the effects of being their governess.

  Mademoiselle kissed them all fondly—even George, who seemed to have a fatal attraction for kind and kissing ladies. They all promised to write often and never, never to forget one another. And so Mademoiselle Beauregard went down in the ascenseur for the last time, and the Ridgeways turned sadly to their packing.

  The packing really presented quite a problem, because there were all George’s rocks to be carried along.

  “George,” Mother said, “I hate to be stern about this, but you really must dispose of some of those rocks. We can’t—we simply can’t—carry all of them.”

  It was always Mother who was stern in matters of packing and Father who was stern in matters of education. So Father didn’t seem to mind too much about George’s rocks, as long as there were no lizards or bats among them. But Mother was very firm. “You must select only the very best ones, George,” she said.

  George brought all his rocks out from the cardboard boxes under the bed and on the closet shelves and in the bureau drawers and laid them out on the carpet of the salon. They covered almost the entire floor of the small room. George walked among them and looked, trying to choose. But every rock was precious to him. He no sooner decided to discard one than it became extremely beautiful and dear to him and he felt that he really would have to keep it. Then he would decide to throw away another one, and at that moment he would see that it had a little vein of crystal in it, or that it contained a fossil or a bit of iron ore, and his heart would fail him.

  While he was in this quandary, there was a tap on the door, and it was the Princess Adelaide Louisa von Mettnock-Hohenwürtzel. She had come all the way up to thank them again for restoring her locket to her and to bid them all good-bye.

  They could hardly open the door of the salon for her because of George’s rocks. But Mother hastily pushed the rocks aside and drew up a chair. “I am afraid you must excuse us, Your Highness,” she said, “for the appearance of the salon. We are in the midst of packing.”

  “Packing?” said the princess, poking among George’s rocks with her stick.

  “Making the trunks,” Mother explained, remembering the phrase Europeans use for packing.

  “But no,” said the princess, “this is like a museum—a museum of rocks. Have you so many trunks?”

  “No, we haven’t,” Mother said. “That’s our present difficulty.”

  “George is trying to make up his mind whether he can part with any of them,” Susan said.

  “Oh, poor George!” said the princess. “My heart bleeds for you, my poor George.”

  “Well,” George said, “it’s not easy.”

  “Perhaps I could lend you a trunk,” the princess said. “Yet still, I believe, you would have to leave some behind you.”

  “Some of them are yours,” said Dumpling. “Perhaps he could give them back to you.”

  “Mine?” said the princess. “Ah yes, from the grotto, you mean. Oh, how it broke my heart to leave my stones in the grotto! I said to myself, I shall hide them very far back. Someday again I shall come for them. But no, no! You must not give them back to me. For many, many years now I have done very well without them. It would be too bad to begin to carry rocks again at my age!”

  “Do you have any practical suggestions, Your Highness?” Mother asked.

  The princess looked very grave. She reached out her stick, like a godmother’s wand, and spanked George on the behind with it. “There is yet the grotto,” she said.

  They all looked at her, and George wailed, “But I don’t expect I’m ever coming back here again.”

  “One never knows,” the princess said. “One can never be sure. Life is very uncertain. That is one of its charms, I find. Do you not?”

  “You mean I should leave all the rocks here?” George said. “At the back of the grotto?”

  “It is only an idea,” the princess said. “Do not adopt it unless you think it wise. Yet to me the idea is very appealing. You see how it would be. Your rocks might be hidden at the back of the grotto for years—oh, for many years, like
a buried treasure. Then one day would come children, children who collect the stones and the rocks. And, even as they are carelessly playing in the grotto, they come upon this marvelous collection that George has made for them. Imagine the shouts of glee, the joyous cries of surprise! Ah, George, that would be very fine. Not?”

  “George could even put a note in with the rocks, to tell his name,” Susan said eagerly. “Then the children would know how the rocks got there.”

  “Or clues,” said Dumpling, “like the locket.”

  “Well, George,” said Mother, “it’s an idea, isn’t it?”

  George looked all around him at the sea of stones and rocks. He heaved a sigh. Although he loved them, they really were a great responsibility. “I expect I could collect more,” he said.

  The princess laughed and poked him again in a friendly way with her stick. “Ah yes, George. The world is full of interesting rocks and stones, and many more things also. It is quality as well as quantity that counts. One must learn to select, I find—always to look for the finest and the best. Eh, George?”

  George could not bring himself to make a decision at once. He slept on the matter overnight. In the meantime, the other Ridgeways were patient with him and continued to step over the heaps of stones in the salon and hope for the best.

  But the more George thought about the ease and pleasure of traveling without his rocks, the more the idea appealed to him. Without his collection he could pack up his personal belongings in ten or fifteen minutes. With them it would probably take hours. For there was another thing that Mother was firm about—each child had to pack his or her own personal treasures. Even Dumpling packed her own toys and paper dolls and Irene’s wardrobe. If a few strings and ribbons and bits of paper hung on the outside of her small suitcase after it was closed, nobody minded. The important thing was that she had done it herself.

  So, when George finally decided to leave his collection in the grotto, his principal emotion was relief.

  Susan and Dumpling helped him carry all his rocks downstairs again, and it was really great fun, after all, to hide them away at the back of the grotto. At George’s request, Susan wrote out a history of the collection. She wrote that some of it had been hidden many years ago by the Princess Adelaide Louisa von Mettnock-Hohenwürtzel, and that that collection had been discovered by Susan and Irene (Dumpling) Ridgeway and given to George Skidmore Ridgeway on his birthday to add to the large collection which he had already made. She wrote the date, and George signed his name. Under his name George drew a skull and crossbones and wrote, “Finders Keepers.”

  “If you want the finders to be keepers, I don’t think you should make a skull and crossbones,” Susan said.

  “You put one on your diary,” George said. And that was the way he wanted his to be. The history of George’s collection was then sealed in a bottle and half hidden among the stones, where some lucky child would find it in times to come.

  The Ridgeways, especially George, were a trifle sad when this ceremony of hiding the treasure was completed.

  “I think we should tell the princess,” Dumpling said. This seemed a good idea, so they knocked on the old lady’s door and told her what they had done.

  “It is good,” said the princess. “I think you will never regret. You have done well.”

  She took the cover off a beautiful china dish that was painted with cupids and garlands of roses. The dish was filled with lemon drops. “Fill your mouths and your pockets,” she said. “You will regain your good cheer, I believe. Yes?”

  “Yes, thank you,” the children said.

  So they went upstairs again, and this time they really got busy and packed.

  As they were packing, Dumpling said, “Susie, I think she is a godmother, too, isn’t she?”

  Susan knew what Dumpling meant. “Yes, Dumpling,” she said. “She is wise as well as royal. Do you know what I wrote in my diary last night? I wrote what she said about quality being better than quantity, and that ‘one should look for the finest and the best.’ ”

  “You have done well,” said Dumpling. And, whether she intended to or not, she sounded just like the godmother-princess.

  First Stop on the Journey

  One cannot be sad for long on a journey. Even the sad thoughts of a foreign school ahead and Mademoiselle and the collection left behind were soon lost in the novelty of travel. The Ridgeways rode away on the very train that they had so often watched from the top of the grotto. Compared to an American train it seemed like a toy. It had a small engine with a shrill whistle, and each car was divided into small sections in which were two long seats facing each other. The Ridgeways occupied one of these seats. They sat in a row, and opposite them sat an old man with a newspaper, an old woman with a basket of eggs, and a boy with a cardboard box punched full of holes. It didn’t take George long to find out that there was a kitten in the box and that the boy was taking it as a present to his grandmother in Marseilles.

  Even the few things that they had learned from Mademoiselle came in handy here. George made a small ball of paper and tied it to the end of a string, and then he said to the boy, “Le chat joue avec le ballon.” The boy understood at once and took the cover off the box and let the kitten play with the paper on the string. It was quite remarkable. Even Father was impressed.

  So the time passed very pleasantly until they arrived in Marseilles, where they intended to spend a couple of days seeing all the historical sights.

  “Our journey north,” Father said, “will be a kind of historical pilgrimage. We’ll take in all the castles and dungeons and places where things happened that we can in the short time at our disposal.”

  “Yes, Daddy,” the children said. So the first day in Marseilles they went out to look at the Old Harbor, which was full of boats and very old houses and history and the smell of fish. They had a kind of fish soup for luncheon that was called bouillabaisse. Dumpling and George really preferred Mr. Campbell’s vegetable-with-alphabet soup. Whenever anyone offered George fish, no matter how nicely it was cooked, he would say, “Fish is for cats.” But Susan enjoyed the fish soup because Father read them a famous poem which had been written many years ago by William Makepeace Thackeray. The poem was all about the bouillabaisse of Marseilles.

  George, not being interested in either poetry or fish, thought that it would be nice to put all the fish he didn’t eat into a piece of paper and take it out to some poor hungry cat who would welcome such a treat.

  But Mother said, “No, darling. If you won’t carry it inside, I’m certainly not going to let you carry it outside.”

  “Besides,” said Father, “we have another historical pilgrimage to make.”

  They all sighed at this news, because their legs were tired, but it turned out that this excursion was to be somewhat different.

  They took a boat and went out to a place called the Château d’If; and, while this place now looked like a very small island full of broken stone walls, Father explained that it had once been a fortress prison. He got quite pink in the face and happy telling them about all the famous men who had been imprisoned here. The prisoner the children liked best was the mysterious man whose face had been covered with an iron mask. Father said that the mask was probably only velvet instead of iron, but so many different people had wondered about this strange prisoner, and so many different writers had imagined things about him, that the whole story had got out of hand. Even the historians didn’t know what was what.

  Mother said she understood perfectly how a story could get out of hand, and she wished that a man named Dumas hadn’t already made up such a good story about the prisoner in the iron mask, because she would have enjoyed taking a crack at it herself.

  “I think it would be hard to crack a mask of iron, Mommy,” Dumpling said.

  George said, “I’m hungry.”

  “It’s because you didn’t eat your fish soup,” Susan said crossly.

  The wind was blowing very bleakly over the broken stones of the Ch?
?teau d’If, and everybody felt that there had been enough history for one day. So they were glad to take the boat back to Marseilles and get into the warm hotel.

  Father had what the French call a “complete tea” sent up to their room. This meant tea for parents and hot chocolate for children, with great quantities of bread and butter and little cakes. Mother had bought oranges at the market down the street to take care of vitamins and so forth. They all thought this the nicest kind of meal, and very cozy.

  Afterward Dumpling bounced on the beds with Irene, and Susan and George played Authors with Susan’s deck of cards. They had been reminded of this game by the fish soup and the poem by Thackeray. William Makepeace Thackeray was in Susan’s deck of cards, but between themselves, George and Susan usually called him William Speak-a-piece Whackery.

  George and Susan loved to play Authors, but they did not play it in the usual way. Instead of asking for the authors and books by their right names, they changed the names just a little, so that the other player had to guess what was wanted. For instance, if George said, “I want a card called ‘The Heck of the Resperus’ by Henry Wads-of-gum Tall-fellow,” Susan would reply, “I’m sorry, I don’t have ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’ by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, but please give me ‘Snow-Plow’ by John Whiteleaf Greenier.”

  George would scratch his head a minute, trying to think, and then he would reply, “Okay, here is ‘Snow-Bound’ by John Greenleaf Whittier, and don’t ask me if I’ve got ‘Barbara Itchy’ by the same guy, because it isn’t fair if you take away all the cards I’m saving.”

  Being an author herself, Mother thought that they were not very respectful to authors, especially the ones with long white beards. Still, George and Susan laughed so much and had such a hilarious time that she didn’t have the heart to beg them to be more serious.

  After the children had gone to bed, Mrs. Ridgeway said to her husband, “We had quite a lot of history today, didn’t we, dear?”