The Tale of Hawthorn House (33 page)

“I?” Sarah flushed. She was not used to parties, which required dressing up and minding her manners. “I really don’t think—”

“Of course you do! You like Mr. Heelis, don’t you?” Dimity frowned. “I don’t mean it in a silly way, Sarah. I just mean, you wouldn’t mind sitting beside him and making dinner-table conversation with him, would you? Mr. Heelis is very shy, but I’m sure you can draw him out, with your easygoing manner. And he is really very sweet.”

Sarah thought for a moment. Will Heelis had been very kind to her when he helped resolve the legal tangles when Miss Tolliver bequeathed Anvil Cottage to her several years before. She had seen him since on one or two other legal matters, and he was always courteous and attentive. If ever she fancied a man—

“Well, then, yes,” she said, suddenly making up her mind. (We must not inquire too deeply into all the factors that went into this decision, although I suspect that Mr. Heelis’ previous courtesies might have been a part of it.) “If you want me, I shall come—although I’m afraid I haven’t a thing to wear.” She looked down at her trousers and laughed. “I do have dresses, of course, but I don’t have any party frocks.”

“Oh, that’s easy,” Dimity said. “We’re of a size, you and I. You can look through my closet and borrow anything you like.” She clapped her hands. “Oh, I’m so glad I’ve made the lemon curd, Sarah! We shall have it for dessert, with Elsa’s sponge and—” She stopped suddenly, sniffing. “What’s that smell?”

Sarah, who was wondering whether Dimity might allow her to borrow her pink silk dress with the velvet ribbons and ivory lace, lifted her head and took in a deep breath. “It smells like something’s burning,” she said, and glanced quickly at the ashtray into which she had stubbed her cigarette to see if she had set something afire.

“Burning!” Dimity jumped up and ran to the stove. “It’s the curd!” she cried in dismay. “I was supposed to be stirring it. It was already lumpy, but now the lumps are
burnt
!”

Sarah got up and went to the stove to look. “Some housewife you’re going to make,” she said, shaking her head with a laugh. “Although when you’re married and living at Raven Hall, I don’t suppose you’ll ever have to go near the kitchen.” Raven Hall was fully staffed, with several cooks and kitchen maids. “Just as well,” she added. “I hear that the chief cook is a true terror.”

“But I should learn to cook,” Dimity said, very seriously. Her brow was creased. “Every wife ought to know how to make tea and breakfast, in case of necessity.”

“You might not want to start with lemon curd, though,” Sarah said, “especially if you’re going to forget to stir it— although it’s my fault, too. I kept you busy talking. If you want to make another batch, I’ll help.”

“There aren’t any eggs left,” Dimity said disconsolately. “Elsa had a dozen when I started, but I broke several when I tried to separate the yolks from the whites, and then two or three rolled off the table and went smash on the floor. There aren’t any lemons, either.”

“Yes, I see,” Sarah said, glancing down at the floor. “Well, I have plenty of eggs I can let you have, if you want to try again, and lemons, too. But we’d better clean up this mess before Elsa comes back from the butcher shop. You know how she feels about your cooking in her kitchen.”

“I’ll clean,” Dimity said promptly, reaching for the mop. “You go get the lemons and eggs.”

“P’rhaps I wouldn’t have liked the Foreign Legion,”
Rascal said, watching Miss Barwick roll her bicycle down the garden path in the direction of Anvil Cottage.
“It’s always seemed like an exotic idea, but the life might not have suited me after all.”

“So!”
Tabitha stood up and arched her back, twitching her tail victoriously.
“Well, what do you say to all this, Miss Know-It-All? Our Miss Woodcock is marrying her major, regardless of the captain.”
She looked around.
“You were wrong, Crumpet. Admit it! Crumpet!”

But Crumpet was not there. She had thought of something urgent she had to do at the other end of the village and had gone off to do it before the morning got a minute older.

31

And More Eggs!

Dimity Woodcock and Sarah Barwick were not the only ones in the village who were concerned with eggs that morning.

Jemima Puddle-duck had not spent a restful night. The occupants of some of her eggs seemed to be in a spirited mood, and she had been repeatedly roused from sleep by violent tremblings and tumblings and pushings and shovings beneath her. She got off the nest several times to try to puzzle out what was going on. Was this normal egg behavior? Did ducklings always act like jumping beans when they were getting ready to come out of their shells?

But Jemima was completely inexperienced when it came to eggs, since (as you know) the Jennings boy had stolen the ones she laid in the garden and the fox-hound puppies had eaten those she laid at Foxglove Close. And because she had kept the current batch secret, she could hardly run to one of the other Puddle-ducks to ask. They probably wouldn’t be able to advise her, anyway, since they had as little experience of eggs as she did. And asking Mrs. Boots or Mrs. Shawl or Mrs. Bonnet was completely out of the question. She refused even to speak to those snobbish creatures.

So she would simply have to be patient and hope for the best. She checked to make sure that the yellow knitted shawls were handy, as she understood that ducklings were rather damp when they came out of the egg, and she didn’t want them to catch cold. Then she settled back on the nest, put her head under her wing, and fell into an exhausted sleep, although she was startled awake every so often as one of her restless eggs nudged her uncomfortably hard. If it was this difficult to bring offspring into the world, she thought resignedly, it was a wonder that the race of Puddle-ducks had not died away altogether!

Deirdre was also concerned with eggs that morning, but in a slightly different way. When the eight little Suttons sat down to breakfast, each of them had eaten a poached egg with their toast and tea. The two grown-up Suttons had eaten four eggs between them (with sausages and oat biscuits), so that the dozen eggs Mrs. Pettigrew had begun with at half past six were all gone. The tapioca pudding that was wanted for nursery tea required four eggs, so more had to be obtained. Mrs. Pettigrew gave Deirdre a basket and instructed her to stop at Hill Top Farm on her way back from the post office and ask Mrs. Jennings for two dozen.

So at twenty past ten that morning, Deirdre, accompanied by two of the young Suttons (Libby and Mouse), presented herself at Mrs. Jennings’ door with the basket. When Mrs. Jennings went to the cupboard to fetch the eggs, she could find only sixteen. And since she was in the midst of washing the floor (Friday being Cleaning Day throughout the village, as Monday was Washday and Tuesday was Ironing Day and so on, all by general understanding), she told Deirdre to go down to the chicken coop and fetch the other eight herself.

As the two little girls went into the barn, Deirdre went right to the nests to collect the eggs. Luckily, most of the hens had got their egg-laying over with early that morning and gone into the garden to look for bugs, so she found seven eggs without once getting her hand pecked by an angry hen. It was only when she got to the last nest that she found Mrs. Shawl still sitting on it, with her feathers puffed up in a ruff round her neck and a scowl between her eyes. Risking a stab, Deirdre put her hand underneath and pulled out a warm brown egg. She was putting it into her basket when Mouse gave a loud shriek. The cry so startled her that she dropped the egg and broke it.

“Now see what you’ve done, you c-c-careless g-g-girl,”
Mrs. Shawl cackled crossly.
“All the hard work I’ve g-g-gone to, laying that g-g-gorgeous egg, and not a thing left to show for it. Well, there won’t be another until tomorrow.”
And with a huffy
harrumph!
she jumped down and ran off to join her sisters in the garden.

Deirdre hurried across the barnyard and into the barn, where she found Libby and Mouse on their knees and elbows in front of the feedbox, peering at Jemima’s nest.

“What is it, Mouse?” Deirdre asked anxiously. “What’s wrong?” She was suddenly aware of the sound of a duck quacking—loud, hysterical quacks punctuated by deep gulps and sobs and squawks.

Libby looked up. Her eyes were big as saucers, and she could barely speak. “Jemima’s eggs!” she whispered. “They’re hatching!”

“They’re hatching,” Mouse said, “But they’re not—” She gulped. “They’re not ducklings!”

“QUACK!”
cried Jemima frantically.
“My darling duCKLUCKLINGS! They’re—”

“Not ducklings?” Deirdre scoffed, getting down onto her knees and peering under the feedbox. “Don’t be a silly Mouse. What else could they be? What—”

And then she saw what Mouse was looking at, and her heart almost stopped.

 
Jemima had fallen into an exhausted sleep sometime in the wee hours of the morning and slept until Chanticleer began to crow on the rafter overhead, getting the day off to a rousing start. By this time, all the eggs were moving about with violent jerks, as if they were billiard balls with their own internal means of locomotion. And when Jemima put her head down close to the nest, she could hear a constant gnawing sound, like something crunching.

“QuaCK-quaCK?”
she inquired softly.
“What’s going on in there, my sweet little duCKluCKlings? It must be terribly tedious, cooped up in those teensy eGGs. I do so wish you would hurry up and come out. I have your names ready, so who will be First?”

And she did know their names. She had puzzled for quite a long time over what to call her ten ducklings. She had thought of naming them for colors, such as Fuchsia, Chartreuse, Scarlet, and so on, but since they would all be yellow to start with and white when they grew up, colors might confuse them. She had also thought of naming them for herbs—Sage, Parsley, Thyme, Basil—but feared that this might give Mrs. Jennings ideas about holiday dinner, which wouldn’t do at all.

And then it had suddenly come to her, a very simple solution, in a flash that seemed almost of genius. She would call them First, Second, Third, Fourth, and so on, in the order in which they emerged from their eggs. And as each came out of its shell, she would give it a name, a motherly kiss, and a little yellow shawl, to ward off chills.

But the eggs made no answer to Jemima’s maternal inquiries, so she did what she had done every morning since she had begun this task. Very tenderly, she turned them over with her bill, noting with pleasure that the cracks were definitely widening and that some even seemed to be chipped, as if the duckling inside had a tiny hammer and chisel and was chiseling his way out. Now, that was progress, she thought. Real progress! Today, without a doubt, she would finally introduce First, Second, Third, and the others to the world.

And with that happy thought, Jemima climbed back onto her nest, settled down, and tried to take a nap. But her sleep was troubled by more stirrings and scratchings and scrapings and scuffings beneath her, and by a very bad dream, a ghastly nightmare, that kept going on and on and on. In her dream, she was dozing on her nest when she heard the unmistakable sound of an egg cracking. Filled with excitement, she jumped up to see what was going on in her nest.

And when she did, she saw something so horrifying, so absolutely appalling, that she could hardly believe her eyes. Three of the eggs had cracked open and the creatures inside were pushing their way out.

But they weren’t ducklings!

No, they were goblins!

Or if they weren’t goblins, they were trolls or gnomes. They were malformed and misshapen, with gnarled, scaly humps on their backs, and legs with talon-tipped claws, and preposterous heads like snakes, and lidless eyes and beaklike snouts that gaped open and shut soundlessly.

Worst of all, they had no feathers!

Jemima shrank back, frightened half out of her wits. After all this work, all these many days of sitting numbly on her nest, she had hatched monsters! devils! demons! Her heart was truly broken. But she had promised faithfully, so she had no choice but to kiss each ugly, scaly creature as it lurched out of its shell—First, Second, Third, Fourth—and drape the beautiful yellow knitted shawls over their bizarre bodies. She watched, horror-struck, as the monstrous creatures—Fifth, Sixth, Seventh, Eighth—swarmed over the nest and out onto the floor—Ninth and Tenth, here they came!—dragging their pretty shawls through the straw. She shrieked and cowered in a corner of the wall and—

And then she woke up, and it wasn’t a dream at all. There were ten grotesque goblins or hump-backed imps or misbegotten devils—God Himself only knew what they were!—crawling over the nest, across the floor, creeping, scurrying, hurrying, and she was crowded against the wall, babbling and quacking and crying.

Jemima Puddle-duck’s long-dreamt-of motherhood had become a nightmare.

 
Deirdre could hardly believe what she saw. The panic-stricken duck was cowering against the wall with her wings over her eyes, quacking frenziedly. All around her feet, large brown beetle-like creatures were crawling out of broken eggs, crawling over the edge of the nest, crawling out toward the light, crawling and crawling and crawling. But they didn’t have six legs, like a beetle, or eight legs, like a spider. They had just four, and a tail. Four stumpy legs, with tiny toes that sported spiky toenails. They wore half-walnuts on their backs, with overlapping scales, like armor. Their mouths were hooked beaks, gaping wide and snapping shut, and their bright eyes had no lids.

“Monsters!”
Jemima shrieked piteously.
“I’ve given birth to QUACK gargoyles! to QUACK QUACK
dragons!
QUACK!”

“Spiders!” Mouse cried. “Jemima is hatching spiders!”

“No, they’re beetles, Mouse,” said Libby. She made a face. “Big, ugly beetles!”

“They’re not spiders,” Deirdre said. “They’re not beetles, either. And they’re certainly not ducklings.” She crawled under the feedbox and picked up one of the creatures off the floor, holding it up. “Look, girls. They’re tortoises!”