The Middle Moffat (9 page)

Today would be a good chance to do this. Of course, she would not say she had come to call on him to keep him from getting lost in the fog. But she would say she had come to see his chicken-bone furniture. Besides, she really owed him a visit since he had come to her organ recital.

Jane ran into her house to get her knitting, for she intended to stay with the oldest inhabitant until the fog lifted. Then she marched up the street and onto Mr. Buckle's porch. She walked right in. She tiptoed through the little parlor with the black horsehair chairs and sofa, and she went into the sitting room, where the oldest inhabitant was bent over a big book. He balanced it halfway on his knees and halfway on the little oval-shaped table beside him.

"Hello, Mr. Buckle," said Jane politely.

"Hello, Jane," said the oldest inhabitant.

"I've come to see the bones," said Jane.

"Ah, yes," said the oldest inhabitant. "The chicken-bone furniture..."

Jane glanced around the room. She had never been in this house before. On one wall was a picture of the ruins of Pompeii, and on another was a picture of a lot of sheep huddled together in a blizzard. There was a picture exactly like this in Nancy's house. Jane preferred colored pictures, such as the one the Moffats had in their green-and-white parlor of a milkmaid leading home the cows.

The oldest inhabitant showed her a little glass cabinet in the corner of the room. This held the furniture he had carved out of chicken bones. Jane stood with her hands behind her back so Mr. Buckle would not think she would touch things and break them. She looked at the chicken-bone furniture in amazement. What lovely little things! Tiny tables, chairs, cupboards, beds, a sofa, a bookcase with what looked like real little books, and even the tiniest of clocks!

"Oh, how nice!" exclaimed Jane.

"Yes ... those are all carved out of chicken bones. Every piece. I did them all by hand."

"My," said Jane. "What a lot of chickens you must have eaten!"

"Yes..." said the oldest inhabitant. "They are very famous. Peabody Museum is asking for them all the time. My daughter frequently suggests that I give them to the museum, but I like to keep them here."

Jane admired the chicken-bone furniture for quite some while. The oldest inhabitant sat down in his little rocking chair again. Now that Jane had seen the chicken-bone furniture, she wondered if the oldest inhabitant expected her to go home. He had gone home after the organ recital. But first they had had cookies and grape juice. He might think if she stayed longer that she wanted something to eat. But she had resolved to stay until the fog lifted or Miss Buckle came home. However, she couldn't look at the chicken-bone furniture the whole afternoon. And he might get alarmed if she sat down and took out her knitting. He might think, "Goodness! Is she going to stay all day?"

That's what the Moffats always thought when Mrs. Price arrived and sat down with her knitting. For she usually did spend the entire afternoon there, while everybody was wanting to do something else.

Fortunately the oldest inhabitant spoke just then and relieved Jane of her embarrassment. "Well, middle Moffat. Now we have seen the chicken-bone furniture. How would you like to look at pictures through the stereoscope?"

"That would be nice," agreed Jane.

The oldest inhabitant went to a little closet in the corner and came back with a pile of pictures and the stereoscope. He put the pile of pictures on the table beside him and sat down. Jane pulled up a chair.

"Now you fit the pictures in and we'll look," said Mr. Buckle.

So Jane fitted a picture in the stereoscope and passed it to the oldest inhabitant, who adjusted it to his eyes. He peered at it with his white head thrust a little forward. Then he handed it to Jane and she adjusted it to her eyes. One by one they went through all the pictures this way. When it was Jane's turn to look, she never knew exactly how long she should look. She didn't want to look too long and make the oldest inhabitant tired of waiting for the next picture. And she didn't want to look too little and give the impression she was not appreciating the beauty of the scene. At length she decided to count up to ten, slowly. There! That was a good polite time to look at each one, she thought.

It really was funny how these two same pictures on the cards jumped together into one picture when you looked at them through the stereoscope. In real life they looked like picture postcards with two identical pictures separated by a line down the middle. But through the stereoscope the two pictures hopped together into one.

How the man, walking along the woody path, suddenly jumped out at you! A real man in a straw hat! The mountains stood out from one another, and the waterfall looked as though it might splash you. A castle hidden in the trees suddenly emerged. You could almost pick the flowers, especially the edelweiss! There was a nearness and a farness to the pictures, as though you were standing on the top of Shingle Hill and looking at real scenery. But, of course, these scenes were of the Alps, not Shingle Hill. One picture showed an old Swiss with a long white beard sitting in front of his mountain cottage. Goats were nibbling the grass.

Maybe the alms-uncle in
Heidi, thought Jane.

"Another oldest inhabitant," said Mr. Buckle, laughing.

Jane smiled at him and looked a longer time, counting up to fifteen at this one.

When they had finished looking at the pictures, the oldest inhabitant said, "I see you have brought your knitting."

"Yes," said Jane. "A scarf for the soldiers in France."

She held it up for him to see. She wished she could knit red rows and blue rows for a change. Maybe she could change it into a helmet. It was not long enough for a scarf yet, but it was nearly long enough for a helmet.

"Would you change this into a helmet?" she asked the oldest inhabitant.

"It's supposed to be a scarf?"

"Yes."

"My goodness! Changing scarves into helmets! The mysterious middle Moffat!" exclaimed the oldest inhabitant.

Jane laughed, and whoops! She lost a stitch!

"Catch it! Catch it!" shouted the oldest inhabitant as though it were a runaway horse.

Jane sat down and clumsily recaptured the stitch.

"Narrow escape," said Mr. Buckle.

My goodness,
thought Jane.
He shouldn't shout like that. I better not drop any more stitches.

She knit one or two rows in silence. The oldest inhabitant watched her for a while and then he bent his head over his book. All you could hear now in the house was the sound of Janey's knitting needles clicking together, the soft breathing of the oldest inhabitant, and the
ticktock
of the comfortable clock on the mantel. Mr. Buckle breathed in to the clock's
tick
and out to the clock's
tock.

Jane knit and the clock ticktocked. The quiet made her sleepy. She heard coal being dumped into Clara Pringle's cellar. Bag after bag rattled down the chute. What a lot of bags of coal they were getting, good hard black coal! Must be enough for a year at least. In the Moffats' house, they never had more than one bag of coal at a time.... She heard an occasional horse and wagon joggle by.
Clop, clop.
And she heard Joey call, "Ru-fus! Mama wants you to come home." All these noises sounded miles away.

Jane thought she would like to stretch her legs now and look out of the window, and see if she could see any of these things that were going on out there in the fog. But, of course, she did not do this. The oldest inhabitant might get it into his head that she did not like sitting here, or that he should offer her something to eat.

She looked at the oldest inhabitant to see if he had gone to sleep. But he hadn't, and he surprised her very much by saying, "How about a good game of double solitaire now?"

Double solitaire! Her favorite game! She and Joey and Rufus played it all the time. She nodded her head up and down. She would play slowly and let him win, she thought. She was the quickest double solitaire player of the Moffats. That was one thing, like running, that she was very good at. It made Rufus mad, she went so fast. She would be careful and not go too fast for the oldest inhabitant.

Mr. Buckle pushed aside the lamp, a small plaster model of the Yale Bowl, a copy of the
National Geographic,
and the red-fringed tablecloth. This table had a white marble top, wonderful for games! He pulled out a little drawer that was ordinarily hidden by the tablecloth and took out two decks of playing cards. Jane pulled her chair around opposite him, and they were ready to begin.

He gave her one deck of cards. "Shuffle!" he bade her.

Jane separated her pack of cards into two piles and shuffled one into the other. The oldest inhabitant did not like the way she shuffled.

"That is not the way to shuffle," he said. "This is the way to shuffle."

And he held the pack in his left hand, took some of the cards out with his right hand, and shuffled them back and forth so fast you couldn't see them. He was the fastest shuffler Jane had ever known.

"There," he said. "Now! We are ready to begin."

They laid out the cards neatly for the game and all was ready.

"Start!"

The oldest inhabitant bit out the words like a sergeant giving a command.

Start! The cards flew! Slap down the ace of hearts! Who would get the two on first? The oldest inhabitant! Slap on the three ... the four. Ace of spades! Slap down the two ... the three. Who'd get the four on first?

The oldest inhabitant!

He flipped the cards through the air between plays! The cards were flying! Slap on the jack ... the queen ... the king! Look at the diamonds! Build up the diamond pile. Who had the seven?

Janey!

Put it on quick. Down with the eight ... the nine. The oldest inhabitant got his card there first almost every time. When he didn't, he put the card on the edge of the table, flipped it lightly in the air, making it turn a somersault, caught it neatly between thumb and forefinger, and returned it to its proper place while Jane was racing for the next card. Flying through the air, aces, spades, hearts, twos, threes, jacks, queens, everything!

Jane's head spun! Her eyes felt crossed. She played faster than she had ever played in her whole life in order to uphold the honor of the Moffats. Let the oldest inhabitant win! Pooh! Not to be licked hollow the way she licked Clara Pringle, that's all she hoped for now.

The oldest inhabitant was winning! And not because she was letting him, either. Letting him! What a foolish thought!

The oldest inhabitant, a veteran of the Civil War, who sat on the reviewing stand for every important occasion, and gave out the diplomas at graduation ... soon to be one hundred years old.... What had she been thinking? Letting him win! Of course a man such as this would win.

Mr. Buckle flipped his last card, the king of hearts, into the air. It turned a neat somersault right smack down on the heart pile.

The oldest inhabitant had won!

"There!" he beamed, rocking back and forth in his chair, his hands on his knees, watching while Jane finished up her last cards.

"Gee..." gasped Jane. "You're some player!"