Rufus M. (24 page)

Those were good words to write, thought Jane. And when they came true maybe she wouldn't have to mix that little football of coloring into the oleomargarine anymore. Maybe they'd have real butter and they wouldn't have to divide each pound into all that many pieces, either. They wouldn't have to think whether to spread it thick once and eat it pleasurably or spread it thin so it'd last all day. And sugar! There'd be real sugar, not this brown stuff. And good, real, hard black coal. No more of this by-two-minutes kind. Better times...

Well, her margarine looked as though it were softer now. Jane stood up. She lifted the lid of the stove and she dropped her paper in it.

"Look at the way it's burning," she told herself. "You can see the words still, even though the paper's all burnt up."

Then she noticed the other burnt papers, so thin they looked like black tissue paper now. On one she could see a picture of a boat. She looked at it curiously. Joey was always drawing pictures of boats. And this other piece of paper had Rufus's name on it. Rufus M. His paper had curled all up. Janey took the poker and gently turned it over to see what was on the other side. But as she did so it fell to pieces and she would never know what else he had written.

Anyway she lost interest in Rufus's paper, for her eye had caught sight of still another bit of writing. In a corner of the stove she saw Sylvie's round handwriting. Just her name.
Her
name? Not
her
name—Sylvie Abbot over and over. Sylvie was Sylvie Moffat, not Sylvie Abbot. Oh! She was trying it out to see how it sounded. That proved it. What she'd been worrying about was true. If Sylvie liked the sound of the name, Sylvie Abbot, she was going to keep it. Jane scowled back the tears. She didn't want Sylvie to get married; not to anybody; not to Mr. Abbot, who left his overshoes on the porch every day; and not to the redheaded sailor at sea, either, who still sent Sylvie letters even though Mr. Abbot tap-tapped with his toe every time one came.

It would be dreadful if Sylvie got married and moved away and went somewhere else. For one thing, who would take care of Janey's chilblains? She remembered how many times Sylvie had come up to bed while she was still awake because her toes itched so. And Sylvie would take first one foot and then the other in her cool hand and hold it. Then for a while they would feel better. But now Jane did not have time to stay sad for long. She heard the front door open and close. Mr. Abbot! Going now. And Mama came briskly into the kitchen.

"Well!" she exclaimed. "Is this where everybody is? But isn't it getting cold in here?"

She took the poker from Janey and dug at the fire from below. "What's the matter with everybody?" she asked. "Four able-bodied children practically sitting right on the fire and it's going out. Just because Sylvie is planning to marry Ray Abbot and, mind you, even that's not going to happen for a year or so at least, that's no reason," said Mama, "to let the fire go out."

Silence greeted Mama's statement while all the children were taking it in and sorting it out in their minds but outwardly going on with what they were doing before Mama spoke, as though she had said nothing. Jane felt relieved. After all, a year or so is a long time. Life could go on just the same for a long, long while until everybody got so used to the idea of Sylvie Abbot that it wouldn't seem bad anymore.

Mama took all the lids off the stove. She picked up a piece of Joey's newspaper that had fallen to the floor. She crumpled it up a little and laid it on the cooling coals to start the fire up again. The paper rested on the dull ashes a moment and then it burst into a blazing flame. As it began to die down, Joey came over to the stove with an armful of shavings. Rufus followed him because he liked to watch the fire start up again.

"Look!" he exclaimed in excitement. And all the Moffats drew around the stove and looked in. They looked at the word that stood out of the burnt sheet of newspaper. In tremulous, rippling letters lit by a last glow from the burning paper, as though it were seen through the water of the ocean, was the one word PEACE, the headline of Joey's newspaper.

Mama looked at the word and all the children looked too, silently. Then Mama said again, "Yes, you know what that means, don't you? It means better times are coming now, for all people."

And she took the poker and gently scattered the charred fragments of the newspaper and of the papers on which the children had written, so that all the dreams and wishes and plans of the Moffats were gathered in a little pile in the middle of the stove where they soon were wafted up the chimney and became part of the air.

Eleanor Estes
(1906–1988)grew up in West Haven, Connecticut, which she renamed Cranbury for her classic stories about the Moffat and Pye families. A children's librarian for many years, she launched her writing career with the publication of
The Moffats
in 1941. Two of her outstanding books about the Moffats—
Rufus M.
and
The Middle Moffat—
were awarded Newbery Honors, as was her short novel
The Hundred Dresses.
She won the Newbery Medal for
Ginger Pye
in 1952.