Authors: Janet Lunn
Certainly it was going to be wonderful. The night after Aunt Alice phoned, Mr. and Mrs. Hubbard went to the hospital to visit and (at Aunt Alice’s insistence) to arrange the business. The children sat in the living room planning and talking. Jane made cocoa in the kitchen.
“I’m going to be like a princess in the tower,” said Elizabeth dreamily, “looking far out to the sea, waiting for …”
“You look like some princess,” said Joe disgustedly, eyeing her old plaid dressing gown and her leg, in its big white cast, stretched out on the couch in front of her.
“Shut up.” said Elizabeth.
“Anyway, I’m going to have the tower and Willy Wallet’s going to come and visit….”
“Willy Wallet?” Elizabeth was too horrified to question Joe’s appropriation of her tower. Joe’s friend, Willy Wallet, was the scourge of the Hubbard household. Nothing was safe from him – Pat’s toads and tadpoles, William’s precious cars, the twins’ games and, worse, the twins’ feelings. “Willy Wallet,” cried Elizabeth, trying to rise from the couch, “Willy Wallet is never, ever, going to set foot in Aunt Alice’s house. If …”
“I’m going to have the Huffs dog and keep him in the coach house,” Patrick cut across the budding fight. “They don’t like it very much. I’m sure they’re going to give it to me.”
“I want part of the coach house for arts and crafts,” Jane came in from the kitchen with a tray of cocoa. “Oh, isn’t it all just great!”
“Oh, no you don’t,” said Pat vehemently. “Oh good, cocoa. That coach house is all mine – m-i-n-e – and dog’s.”
“And cat’s,” said Joe, “and water buffalo’s and emu’s …”
“No water buffaloes. No emus,” Patrick began. He stopped. He put down his cocoa mug and looked uncomfortable. “It really seems mean thinking up all these good things when it’s all because Aunt Alice broke her hip. It isn’t fair somehow.”
“Well it’s not our fault she fell,” said Joe defensively. “Anyhow, she’s going to get better and she said she’s glad to move out of that old house.”
“That’s true,” said Pat.
“I can just hear her say it,” Elizabeth mimicked Aunt Alice’s tone, “Tired of that old house. Too big for me. Fits you. You have it….” She giggled and went on in her own voice. “As though it were an old dress or something.” Her face changed. “What’s in this cocoa?”
“It’s furniture polish,” William said looking at Jane. “Did you put in furniture polish?”
Jane’s face grew red. “No I didn’t,” she said indignantly, “William you’re horrid!”
Everyone sniffed the cocoa. William was right. It had an odor that was very remindful of the living room furniture, only not as nice because it was part cocoa.
“Yes, furniture polish. Good old Jane!” Joe put his mug down on the coffee table.
“It’s not.” Jane marched out to the kitchen. Then she came hack, her face redder than before. “I thought it was vanilla,” she said in a small voice.
Four horrified voices asked, “What was it?”
“Lemon flavoring.”
“Never mind,” said Pat, soothingly. “It’s edible.”
“Oh, boy!” said Joe, “you’ve invented a new thing – lemon cocoa. Let’s send some to Aunt Alice.”
“Joe,” said Patrick, “you’re a sap but you have the right idea. We should send something to Aunt Alice.”
“Why don’t we take her a sick basket,” suggested Jane, “the way Mama does, with wine and jelly and things, and a book to read?”
Startled, Elizabeth looked at her sister. She started to say something but Joe interrupted, “Mama never did that.”
“Well someone did.” Jane was puzzled. “Someone took it to a sick old lady.”
“I did,” Elizabeth said, sitting up. “I did,” she said again, “I took it in a dream with the little doll and Mama, and I think you were there too. …” She stopped, tried to remember the dream clearly, couldn’t, and went on, “Never mind. What I remember is the cart, an old-fashioned wood thing, and I had a long blue dress and the day was very bright and there was water shining, a brook or something, nearby….”
“But,” said Jane, “it was my dream. I remember it and I had the doll and a blue dress on….”
“And the doll’s dress was red….” Elizabeth was very excited.
“Twins,” said Joe. “Twins! Good grief! Twins!”
“There was a little house,” Jane went on, ignoring Joe, “a red brick one with a white peak on the front….”
“Like lace.”
“Yes, sort of wood lace, and …”
“What’s all that got to do with Aunt Alice and the basket thing?” Joe put an exclamation mark after his name, which he had just written on Elizabeth’s cast.
Elizabeth said nothing. She couldn’t remember ever sharing dreams before.
“It should have pickled meat, and flowers on the handle,” Jane said, describing the basket in her (and Elizabeth’s) dream.
“Pickled meat on the handle? Great!” Joe leaned back in his chair laughing so hard that he knocked over the lamp standing behind him.
“Great,” said Pat, “when Papa sees that lamp.”
“Well,” said Joe, picking himself and the lamp up from the floor, “nobody has to tell him.” He looked at William.
It was a good idea, the basket. While Joe tidied up the lamp and got a new bulb from the kitchen, Pat fetched the family picnic basket from the basement. Then they counted their combined money. It came to $2.26.
“Not very much,” Joe said, but everyone else decided it would buy some grapes and apples, and maybe some chocolates besides. Jane went to the kitchen for jelly, but all she could find that wasn’t full of toast crumbs was a jar of Marmite, so they put that in. Patrick said they couldn’t buy any wine until they were twenty-one years old.
“Mama or Papa could get it,” suggested William, but Jane thought it had better be a surprise.
“You know how Mama’s always saying how much people appreciate it when it’s all your own effort,” she said. Everyone agreed she was right. No wine.
“There’s white wine vinegar in the cupboard in the kitchen,” offered William.
“Not the same thing,” said Patrick firmly.
“There’s a bottle of lemon juice in the fridge. I saw it there,” said Jane.
“Funny you didn’t put it in the cocoa,” Joe remarked.
“See if I ever make cocoa again.” Jane was insulted.
“See if I ever drink it,” Joe shot back and the others said quickly, “Go get the lemon juice.”
The basket was beginning to fill up nicely. As well as the Marmite and the lemon juice there were a couple of
oranges from the refrigerator, a tin of tuna fish, a bottle of cologne Jane had got for Christmas from Aunt Marvel, a package of rye krisp, and the promise of grapes and apples and maybe chocolate from the $2.26.
“Now,” said Jane in a tone of satisfaction, “we need a good book.”
“How about
101 Ways to Annoy Your Doctor
,” suggested Joe, “or
Ten Easy Steps to a Broken Back?”
“Oh,” said Jane, stamping her foot, “do you have to make a joke out of everything?”
“How about a history of Toronto,” asked Pat, looking high into the top corner of the bookshelf. Jane bounced angrily up from her chair.
“No,” he said, “I mean it. Here’s a book way up here called
City on the Lake: Being a Brief History of the City of Toronto, 1793-1861.”
He took it down. It was obviously very old and it looked as though it might once have been blue, although it was a dark gray color now. “By William Sabiston,” he said.
“Sabiston,” said the twins in unison. “That’s the name of Aunt Alice’s street. Let’s do that one,” and into the basket went
City on the Lake
by William Sabiston, along with the Marmite, Aunt Marvel’s cologne, and the rest.
“Splendid,” said Patrick and picked up the basket to be put away until tomorrow when they could buy the fruit and take the offering to Aunt Alice. There was one more thing, flowers for the handle. The twins remembered the trimming on their spring hats and solved that problem. Joe, who could draw quite well, made a card, and the next afternoon Pat
marched the basket, complete with its artificial daisies and its grapes and apples (and there had been enough money for chocolates), to Aunt Alice in the hospital.
Aunt Alice wrote them a note telling them all thank you. She did admit that she had given the Marmite to a nurse (Pat said he could sure understand that) but that the fruit had been delicious, the lemon juice also, and the basket very attractive. She said she hadn’t known Uncle William had written a book and was delighted to have it. She had found it so interesting she had lent it to the man across the hall who worked in the museum and was particularly interested in Canadian history.
The children were very pleased with themselves. The days were marching on. Raw, cold early spring was turning into warm, soft late spring. Leaves were opening wide on all the trees. Tulip time came and went. The birds in the trees around Aunt Alice’s house were making their nests and the lilac in her garden was in full bloom. The lake had lost its green color and sparkled like a bed of brilliants under the sun. Elizabeth’s leg had mended quickly. The cast was off and, although she was instructed not to run, she no longer had to use the crutches.
Moving day was fast approaching. The house was a complete chaos of packing boxes and trunks. Marble prowled unhappily among them night and day. Joe packed everything he owned so he’d be ready on moving day and then had to unpack them at least once a day to find the things he needed. Nobody else could find anything and everyone was getting cross about it. Nobody was as cross
as Papa, who grumbled and pawed over and over again through the boxes in the living room looking for something he had lost; muttering about having put it high for safe keeping; complaining that there was a conspiracy to prevent him finishing the paper he was working on.
Finally one morning his temper erupted into the crowded kitchen where the family was standing around eating breakfast.
“My job,” he shouted, “my life’s work, maybe even life itself, depends on this document and now some malevolent malcontent has spirited it away – why?” He raised his fist in the air and stamped his foot on Marble’s tail. The cat screamed.
No one else moved.
“Now, David,” said Mrs. Hubbard soothingly.
Giving the cat a dirty look, he thundered, “I can’t go one single step further in this paper without that book.”
“What is the book, dear?” Mama asked. “Maybe we can all help look for it.”
“Look for it?” he shouted. “I’ve BEEN looking for it for weeks – years, it seems. It was a history of this city,” he said in careful tones. “It was the only extant copy known of that book, which was written by your mother’s great uncle and about which I am writing what I like to think is an important historical paper.”
Five spoons rested on five grapefruit halves. Nobody said a word.
Finally William spoke, “Is it a blue book?”
“I don’t know what color it was,” Papa said testily. “I only know it was called
City on the Lake: Being a Brief History of Toronto,
by William Sabiston, your great-great-great uncle.”
“Oh,” said Elizabeth – or maybe it was Jane, or Patrick, or Joe, or William. Five pairs of eyes looked uneasily at each other.
It was Jane who told. She took a deep breath. “I … we …,” she said, “we know what happened to your book.”
“You do?” Papa asked in great surprise.
“We sent it in Aunt Alice’s sick basket.”
Both parents looked at her in complete bewilderment. The children began to explain in a hodgepodge of words – basket, Aunt Alice, hadn’t any wine, Marmite, wasn’t any jelly, $2.26 even enough for chocolates, said she really liked the book, hadn’t remembered at all Uncle William had written it, lent it to the museum man across the hall. Words filled the little kitchen until the look on Papa’s face wilted them all one by one. The kitchen was silent.
With great care Papa said, “You – get – that – book – back – today,” and got up and left the house.
“Well,” said Mama. She glared at them all and went to phone Aunt Alice.
The book was retrieved from the museum man across the hall in the hospital and back in Papa’s hands by nightfall. He was so pleased to see it that he said no more about it. In fact he was in such a good mood that when Patrick came in from delivering his newspapers Papa asked him
if the Huffs still wanted to give away their little dog and how big was it. When Patrick described its size as about a foot high, Papa said he guessed it wouldn’t get too seriously in the way and that if Pat would promise to care for it completely, he could accept it.
The only other thing that came of Aunt Alice’s sick basket concerned the twins alone – and the little doll. A night or so after they had put together the basket, a night or so during which Elizabeth had an exciting thought running wildly around in her head, she spoke to Jane about it. Just before they went to bed while Jane was putting her hair into two neat braids and Elizabeth was spreading hers artistically over her shoulders.
“Remember when we were deciding about the sick basket?” she asked, “And you had my dream?”
“Umhm.”
“Don’t you think it was funny? I mean don’t you think there’s something fishy about that?”
“What do you mean fishy? You mean being twins? Yes.”
“No, stupid, not being twins. Having the same dream – and twice.”
“Why?”
“Well,” Elizabeth sat down on the edge of her bed looking over at the doll propped on their tall dresser top. Then she looked back at Jane. “Ever since we’ve had this doll,” she said hesitantly, “we’ve had funny things happen – the same dreams and knowing things and stuff like that.”
“Oh, Elizabeth! Just because we had the same dream. Just what Joe said, twins, remember?” Jane leaned way over the top bunk and thrust her face down next to her sister’s.
“Twins,” she said, “twins.”
“No,” Elizabeth said seriously, “it’s more than that. There’s something really queer about the whole thing. Finding it the way we did and knowing its name and having that dream. And there have been a couple of other things too. I’m sure there have. … I mean I’m not sure, but I almost am. I …” She stopped, not entirely sure just what she did mean.
“Look,” she went on, “sometimes I see things I don’t really see. I know I do. Long ago things with long dresses and bonnets and once it was the doll with its dress all new. It’s weird, but kind of exciting, too.”