Jewel of the East
Authors: Ann Hood
by Ann Hood
Grosset & Dunlap
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Text © 2012 by Ann Hood. Illustrations © 2012 by Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Published
by Grosset & Dunlap, a division of Penguin Young Readers Group, 345 Hudson Street,
New York, New York 10014. GROSSET & DUNLAP is a trademark of
Penguin Group (USA) Inc. Printed in the U.S.A.
Cover illustration by Scott Altmann. Map illustration by Meagan Bennett.
Typeset in Mrs Eaves and Adelaide.
Library of Congress Control Number: 2011043283
ISBN: 978-1-101-58072-1
ALWAYS LEARNING
PEARSON
Chapter Three: The Vip Christmas Party
Chapter Six: The Year of the Rat
Chapter Seven: The Boxer Rebellion
Chapter Eleven: A Surprise Visitor
The Treasure Chest, No 4: Prince of Air
Maisie and Felix Robbins watched out their third-floor apartment’s kitchen window as one of the biggest Christmas trees they’d ever seen was unloaded from a truck. Thanksgiving was still a week away, but Newport, Rhode Island, seemed to be skipping that holiday and racing right toward Christmas. On Bellevue Avenue, white lights twinkled from lampposts and fences, and wreaths hung on the doors of all the stores. In front of a restaurant on Thames Street, Santa sat in a sailboat pulled by eight leaping dolphins. And at Elm Medona, the mansion where Maisie and Felix lived with their mother in the old servants’ quarters, a team of people had arrived to put up
decorations, including this gigantic tree, which would sit in the Grand Ballroom.
“The one at Rockefeller Center is bigger, I think,” Maisie said, squinting her eyes against the bright November sun.
Felix wasn’t sure. But he said, “Absolutely,” because to his sister everything in New York was bigger and better than here. Ever since their parents got divorced and they’d moved from their apartment on Bethune Street in New York City to Newport, Maisie had spent most of her time either homesick or scheming to get back. Felix, on the other hand, had started to feel at home in Newport. He had grown to love the smell of the salty air and the sound of buoys clanging on the wharf. The sight of sailboats in the bay on a sunny day looked beautiful to him. He had even started to enjoy eating seafood, stuffed quahogs and fried scallops and fish and chips. In fact, if their father lived with them instead of in faraway Qatar, life would be pretty perfect.
From their perch at the window, Maisie and Felix could now see oversized, gold ornaments getting wheeled inside.
“Gauche,” Maisie said, enjoying the word. She loved using words that most twelve-year-olds didn’t know. Like this one, which meant crude.
She wondered where those ornaments, too big for even this enormous tree, would get hung. Another truck arrived with piles of evergreen boughs. A blond woman in a camel-colored coat stood in the driveway directing all the workmen.
“Let’s go see what they’re doing,” Maisie suggested.
Before Felix could answer, she was slipping on her sneakers and heading out the door. Felix followed his twin sister, as usual.
“Well now,” the Blond Woman said, frowning up from her clipboard at Maisie and Felix. “Where did you two come from?”
“Up there,” Maisie said, pointing.
“And what were you doing up there?” the Blond Woman said. Her hair was cut in a bob, and she looked like she’d spent too much time in the sun. Maisie thought she had a nose like a pig. And beady, blue eyes.
“We live here,” Maisie said.
“I don’t think so,” the Blond Woman snorted.
“Well,” Felix added, “on the third floor.”
The Blond Woman knit her overplucked eyebrows into a scowl.
“Phinneas Pickworth was our great-great-grandfather,” Maisie said, standing up straighter and trying to sound rich.
“Humph,” the Blond Woman said.
Two men navigating a giant wreath decorated with enormous pinecones and gold ribbons hesitated in front of her.
“That one goes on the front door,” she said, checking something off on her clipboard with a purple pen.
She glanced at Maisie and Felix again. “Did you
want
something?” she asked.
Felix shook his head.
“How long does it take to put all this stuff up?” Maisie said.
“In twenty-four hours, Elm Medona will be transformed into a Christmas wonderland. Just in time for all the holiday activities,” the Blond Woman said, studying her clipboard.
“What kinds of activities?” Maisie said.
“Oh, all kinds of things,” the Blond Woman said distractedly. “There are a few weddings. Lots of Christmas concerts and some kind of Victorian party. And of course the big VIP Christmas party on the ninth.”
“You mean Elm Medona is going to be crawling with people for the next month and a half?” Maisie said, trying not to panic.
“Basically, yes,” the Blond Woman said.
A dolly loaded with poinsettias rolled past.
“Pink? Pink poinsettias?” the Blond Woman shouted. “No, no, no. The pink ones belong at Rosecliff. Elm Medona gets the red ones.” She scurried over to the men with the plants, waving her clipboard at them.
Maisie looked at Felix. “With people all over the place, we’ll never be able to get into The Treasure Chest.”
He could tell how upset she was. But a feeling of relief washed over him. When they had first moved to Elm Medona, they got a tour of the mansion. The docent showed them a secret staircase hidden behind a wall on the second floor. At the top of the stairs was a room called The Treasure Chest. It smelled like the Museum of Natural History and was filled with curious objects: maps, seashells, peacock feathers, a small, gold telescope, seedpods, an arrowhead, a porcupine quill, a compass, a bouquet of dried flowers, and hundreds of other things.
One night they sneaked back into The Treasure Chest and found a letter dated 1864. When they both yanked on it, they got carried back in time to the childhood farm of Clara Barton. Clara had told them how she’d nursed her brother David back to health after he fell
from a barn rafter, and they’d listened to her father tell stories about his time in the Indian Wars. The next time, they landed on the island of Saint Croix with Alexander Hamilton and stowed away on a ship to America with him. Even though both trips had been grand adventures, Felix was afraid to time travel again. Their great-great-aunt Maisie made them promise they would do it one more time, but the more Felix thought about it, the more he worried they might be pushing their luck. What if they didn’t get back home? What if they were stuck in the past?
Maisie had no such worries. She couldn’t wait to get back in The Treasure Chest, pick up an object, and leave Elm Medona and the twenty-first century behind.
“Well,” Maisie said as she watched the Blond Woman point an angry finger at the men with the poinsettias, “I guess that means we’ll just have to do it tonight.”
Maisie loved her mother’s bacon and egg pasta more than almost anything. The real name for it was spaghetti carbonara, but Maisie liked her name for it better. Her mother fried bacon nice and crispy, tossed it with spaghetti and Parmesan cheese, and then added three beaten eggs to it.
Before the divorce, she added four eggs, and this small detail made Maisie sad. When Maisie walked in the kitchen, she smelled bacon cooking and saw her mother beating eggs in the green-striped mixing bowl. She grinned. They would eat. Their mother would go back to her law office at Fishbaum and Fishbaum. And then she and Felix would go to The Treasure Chest.
“Perfect,” Maisie said out loud.