Half Magic (14 page)

Jane looked round the room, at the colored pictures on the lemon-yellow walls and the gay printed curtains at the window and the bright rugs on the floor and the smiling faces around the table.

"This is a wonderful family to belong to," she said. "It's the best family to belong to in the whole world!"

Then she smiled at Mr. Smith.

"I think
you're
going to think so, too," she said.

"Who gets the charm today?" said Martha, early next morning. "We've all had a turn now. Do we start over and take seconds, or should we agree on something and wish it together?"

"I think we ought to give it a day of rest," said Katharine. "After all, today's Sunday."

And once the other children thought about it, they agreed that magic on Sunday didn't seem quite right. Or at least there was a chance that it wouldn't be, and the four children were taking no further chances, now they knew how difficult the charm could be when roused.

So Katharine spent the morning reading
The In-goldsby Legends,
which she had just discovered, and Mark built derricks with his Meccano set.

Jane humored Martha by playing dolls with her, a pursuit Jane usually scorned, but she was still feeling kindly toward her family, as a result of yesterday's adventure. Her true nature reasserted itself during the course of the game, however, and many a doll was stabbed to the heart or burned at the stake before the morning was over.

The four children all hated big noon dinners on Sunday; so when hunger reared its hideous head they just had soup and toast, and it was right after that that Mr. Smith arrived, and asked if they and their mother wouldn't like to come for a drive with him, and a picnic supper afterwards. He said he knew of a wonderful picnic place with a river and swings and a meadow and woods, and he had had six box lunches made up at Meinert's Pastry Shop.

Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha could hardly wait to start.

"What is it that makes box lunches always sound so delicious?" Katharine wondered. "It makes you think there might be almost anything inside. Duck eggs and nectar and kinds of sandwiches nobody ever had before!"

Their mother said she had a headache and thought she'd better stay home, which didn't sound like her at all. The four children stared at her.

"You never have headaches," said Mark.

"You never want to stay home and spoil things, either," said Katharine.

"It won't be any fun without you," said Jane.

And of course after that the children's mother had to give in, and five minutes later away they went.

The picnic place proved to be all that was ideal, as Mr. Smith had said it would. Martha went picking butterfly weed in the meadow, only it seemed to be beeweed, too, and one stung her, and Katharine wandered romantically through the woods, and was almost sure she saw a snake, and Jane and Mark tried to build stepping stones across the river and fell in with all their clothes on, and altogether it was a typical happy family outing.

The box lunches turned out not to contain any duck eggs or nectar, but the sandwiches were sufficiently unusual, and there were deviled eggs and potato salad and lots of little assorted cakes that the children had fun with, deciding which ones they liked best and trying to trade off the others.

Supper was eaten round a bonfire deftly constructed by Mark and Mr. Smith, and stories were told and songs were sung, until what with one thing and another, it was long after nine o'clock when they packed themselves into the car once more, and drove home through the purple darkness.

And the four children were all so tired and happy and sunburned and sleepy that they went straight to bed with almost no ado.

Martha, as sometimes happens, was so tired that she couldn't seem to go to sleep, and she noticed that Mr. Smith didn't go home right away, but sat talking to their mother for what seemed like hours and hours.

And much later, in the middle of the night, she woke up, possibly as a result of too many cakes, and was almost sure she heard their mother crying.

This couldn't be, of course. Martha had never heard of a mother who cried, and certainly not
their
mother, so happy and strong and busy and sensible, and the pride of the Toledo
News-Bee
!

She tiptoed to the door and listened, but there didn't seem to be any sound now. She decided with relief that she must have been mistaken, and went back to bed and to sleep.

But in the morning their mother hardly said a word at breakfast, and her cheeks looked pale and her eyes looked tired, and Martha began to wonder again.

After breakfast, when their mother had gone to work, Jane, whose new family devotion continued to shine forth, volunteered to do the dishes alone and unaided, and this brilliant example so bestirred the finer feelings of Mark and Katharine that they insisted on helping.

Martha followed them out into the kitchen, and sat watching, and wondering whether her worries about their mother were too farfetched for her to mention them.

"Does everyone realize we've had the charm a week now?" Jane was saying, scraping toast crumbs off plates and then plunging the plates in soapy water.

"Really?" said Katharine. "It seems like months, at least."

Mark began counting it out. "The fire was Tuesday and the desert was Wednesday, we met Launcelot on Thursday and went to the movies on Friday, Jane belonged to that other family on Saturday, and we rested on Sunday."

"And today's Monday," said Jane. "The seventh day. I read somewhere that seven's a magic number. Maybe today'll be the biggest wish yet."

"When you come to think of it, no great big lasting thing has happened so far," said Mark. "We've had lots of adventures, but we're still just the same as we were before we found it."

"Our characters are improved," said Katharine, "and I think we're sort of happier."

"I don't think Mother is," said Martha.

Three faces turned to her, and, "What do you mean?" said three voices at once.

But before Martha could answer, the telephone in the hall began to ring.

Mark got there first.

"Hello?" he said. "Oh, hi." He turned to the others. "It's Mr. Smith."

"Let me," said Jane, grabbing the phone.

"Honestly," Mark complained to Katharine. "After we had all that hard work getting her to like him at all, now you'd think he were her own special property!"

"Yes," Jane was saying into the phone excitedly. "Yes^ All right. We will. Yes, right away!"

She hung up, and turned from the phone, looking serious and important. "Big Council meeting! At the bookshop in twenty minutes. Carfare will be refunded. Can we scrape together the wherewithal?"

The week had been given over so completely to magic experiment that allowances remained practically intact; so that was all right.

"Are we taking the charm?" Martha wanted to know.

"Naturally! What else would an Important Council be about?" said Jane, witheringly.

Katharine fetched the charm from its hiding place, and the four children waited for a moment when Miss Bick's attention was elsewhere (elsewhere being with the gas-meter man) to steal down the front stairs, hurry out the door, and run two blocks up Bancroft Street before waiting for the streetcar, so she wouldn't see them from the window and take unpleasant steps.

The ride downtown seemed endless but turned out at last not to be, and ten minutes later found them hurrying into the bookshop.

Mr. Smith rose from his desk, and came to greet them. He seemed uneasy.

"Hello," he said. "You were quicker than I expected. Please sit down. I have something to tell you."

The four children looked around, but there were piles of books on all the sitting places; so they stayed standing. Mr. Smith didn't seem to notice. He hesitated, cleared his throat, took his handkerchief out and put it away again, and looked at the floor.

"Dear me, I find this very difficult," he said. "I think perhaps first of all it might help if you stopped calling me Mr. Smith and called me Hugo."

Jane shuddered. "I
couldn't
!"

"That's a terrible name," said Mark, ever candid.

"Maybe if we shortened it?" Katharine suggested. "Hugh isn't so bad."

"I shall call him Huge," announced Martha independently. "After all, he looms huge in our future, if you-know-what is going to happen! You know, if he's going to be our—" she broke off, and uttered the last word in a piercing whisper that carried to all corners of the room—"
stepfather
!"

Mr. Smith heard the whisper, and a blush mantled his cheek.

"Then you know!" he said. "And here I was wondering how to break it to you. That's what I had to tell you. It's true. I have come to care very deeply for your mother and have asked her to be my wife."

"We thought you would," said Martha.

"Any day now," said Mark.

"We think it's wonderful," said Katharine.

"Specially me," said Jane.

"Thank you," said Mr. Smith. "You are four very pleasant children, and I should be proud and happy to be your stepfather, and you may call me Huge or anything else you like."

"
Uncle
Huge," said Mark. "It's more respectful."

"There is only one difficulty," said Mr. Smith.

"Won't she have you?" asked Katharine. "Is she being coy and hard to please?"

"I could go and reason with her if you like," offered Mark. "I'm quite good at it, really."

"
I
shall tell her I think she's a very lucky woman to have landed you!" said Martha.

"Please, I beg of you, do not say anything of the kind!" cried Mr. Smith in alarm, blushing again. "No. Your mother has admitted that she thinks she could care for me in return. But yesterday evening she told me definitely that her answer is no. The reason is that she believes herself to be ill. Mentally ill. I leave you to guess why."

"She's noticed things," said Jane. "Us appearing suddenly out of nowhere and things."

"That wish she half got, when she ran into you out on Bancroft Street," said Katharine.

"Me with all those diamonds and robbers," said Mark.

"I
did
hear her crying last night, then," said Martha.

"Oh, dear. Was she?" said Mr. Smith.

"That's bad," said Mark.

"And it's all our fault," said Katharine.

The four children looked solemn. Then Jane's face cleared.

"It's all right. We can fix it up," she said. "What could be simpler? We'll confess. We'll tell her the whole thing from the beginning."

"Do you think she'll believe it?" said Mr. Smith. "Remember, your mother is a very practical person."

"Stubborn, too," agreed Katharine.

"We could
show
her," suggested Mark doubtfully. "We could have the charm take her somewhere."

"That's it!" Jane's eyes were shining. "We'll let her wish—we'll give her whatever her heart desires! This will be the best deed yet! Come on, let's go over there right now!"

"Do be careful," said Mr. Smith. "Hadn't we better plan it out, first?"

But his words were wasted on the bookshop air. Jane had the charm in her hand, and rashly, excitedly, without thinking what she'd do when they got there, she wished.

The next moment they were in their mother's office.

The children's mother was Women's Club Editor of the newspaper, and that meant that she wrote all those little pieces that say which ladies are going to meetings at which other ladies' houses and what they are going to have to eat.

It wasn't a very important job, and her office was tiny, and today it was already quite filled by a fat lady who was telling their mother all about the Potluck Pageant she was planning to give for the League of Needless Women.

So that when Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha and Mr. Smith were suddenly all there in the office, too, it made quite a crowd.

"Oh!" cried their mother, turning pale, as the five familiar figures appeared out of nowhere before her gaze. "There it is, happening again!"

"Really!" said the fat lady to Jane and Katharine and 'Martha, who were wedged tightly against her. "Stop shoving."

"I'm sorry, but we haven't time for you now," said Jane to the fat lady. And she wished her twice as far as where she belonged.

The lady was quite annoyed to find herself suddenly at home in her own kitchen, and later sued the newspaper for witchcraft. But she was never able to prove her case, and anyway that does not come into this story.

Back in her office, the children's mother sat staring palely at the place where the lady had been.

"It's all right," Jane told her. "We know what you're thinking, but you're wrong. We can explain everything."

"What you thought was you going crazy was just us," said Martha.

"We've got a magic charm," said Mark.

"We've had it for a week, only we didn't tell you," said Katharine. "We thought you were too old to know."

"And that night you went to see Aunt Grace and Uncle Edwin and wished you were home,
you
had it," said Jane. "And it works by halves. And that's how you happened to meet Mr. Smith. And that proves what a good charm it is, because we think he'd make a wonderful stepfather and not a bit Murdstone, and we've adopted him for our Uncle Huge, and we think you ought to marry him right away!"