Authors: Janet Lunn
Jane had learned something from the fight, too. She had made up her mind – suddenly, on her way upstairs to rescue Amelia – to go along with Elizabeth’s ideas. Being untwins was too painful. She was going to try, really try, to see things Elizabeth’s way. And if Elizabeth wanted to start a crazy hunt for the things in the dreams, she was going to do it and she wasn’t going to say a word about how stupid it was. If it killed her, she promised herself, she would do it – and she felt much better for deciding.
“OK,” she said, “maybe you’re right about the doll. Maybe there IS something about it. Maybe we SHOULD do something.”
Elizabeth was overjoyed. “Oh Jane, there is, there really is. Listen,” she sat up on her heels and wound the ends of her hair around her fingers with excitement. “What I think is that long ago when Amelia was new she was Hester’s doll and lived in that house.”
Jane shivered.
“I know what you mean,” Elizabeth put her hand on Jane’s arm. “There’s something about Hester, isn’t there? Something not nice. But she’s part of it and we have to think about her. It was her house.”
“I’d rather think about the doll.”
“She wants us to find it.”
“What?”
“The house.”
“Who does?”
“The doll, stupid.”
“Oh, Elizabeth,” Jane began and stopped herself, remembering her pledge. “Well,” she said hastily, “if it’s true and the doll wants us to find the dream house, how do we do it? If she’s as old as she looks, she must be hundreds of years old. We can’t go back hundreds of years just like that and find it – and where was it anyway? Toronto isn’t hundreds of years old. Remember in history last year we took Toronto. It’s a lot newer than lots of places. What if the house was in England or France or somewhere?”
“Oh, no. It couldn’t have been. It must have been here.” Elizabeth was emphatic.
“Why?”
“Because the doll’s here. We found it here. It has its dreams here.”
Jane swallowed carefully the part about the doll having dreams and said, “It could have come from somewhere else.”
“But it found us here. It wasn’t just an accident, us going into that shop. It found us here because here is where it wants us to look for its house.”
“All right,” said Jane. There didn’t seem to be much point in arguing.
“What do we do,” she asked, rolling over on top of the happy puppy snuggled in between them, “hire a time machine? Or will the doll take care of it? If we hire a time machine, Claverhouse,” she murmured into the dog’s white fur, “we’ll take you, too, OK?”
Elizabeth looked suspiciously at her sister, “You don’t need to make fun,” she said.
“Wasn’t really,” Jane jumped up and so did the dog, looking hopefully for someone to romp with. “I just don’t entirely see how we’re going to manage it, that’s all – get down Claverhouse.”
There was a look of triumph in Elizabeth’s eyes. “Why do you call that dog Claverhouse?” she asked.
“I don’t know, just came to me that it would be a good name.”
“I think Hester had a dog named Claverhouse.”
This was almost too much for Jane. She was sure Elizabeth had made that up, but having made up her mind to do a thing, Jane was not one to give up easily. Hastily she changed the subject; “Really, Eliza, we can’t find a house and a girl from long ago times. It isn’t possible.”
“We’ll have to go house hunting,” answered her sister imperturbably. “We’ll go into town and look at all the houses. There can’t be many exactly like Hester’s.”
Mama was pleased the next morning when the twins asked if they could go uptown. “I’m glad to have you out of the way,” she said, “not messing in my kitchen or my sewing things.”
(That’s the second time,
thought Elizabeth and promised herself to speak to William.) She gave them an errand to do in the wool shop on Temperance Street and threatened them with horrifying consequences if they were not home on time.
They went upstairs, put on their matching red and white striped dresses (“People are always more helpful when we dress alike,” said Elizabeth. Jane snorted but obeyed.), and off they went to the streetcar to look for Hester’s house.
At first they saw nothing that resembled the house in their dream. Then they saw a row with white peaks in the front but too tall, and then nothing. On they went for a mile or so, peering from this side of the streetcar and then that, expecting at any moment to see their house (at least Elizabeth did) – and then Elizabeth saw it. She was sure she did. It was thin and little, old, with dirty paint, but still, unmistakably, a little red brick house with a white wood
lace peak at its front. Jane leading, they hurried off the streetcar. Jane didn’t know what to think seeing the house really standing there. She started across the street.
“Wait,” Elizabeth hadn’t moved. “It’s not right,” she said sadly.
“Don’t be silly.”
“No, it isn’t,” Elizabeth shook her head. It was a deep disappointment to her but she knew she was right.
“You mean because it’s so shabby?”
“No, I know it would have to be old-looking now. No, it isn’t that – something else and it hasn’t got the butter-and-eggs. I guess they’d die after a while, too.” This house not only had no little white and yellow flowers by its doorstep, it had nothing but soot and dirt clinging to every part of it. “No.” said Elizabeth again, “I know what it is. It’s the lace. The lace is wrong.” She pointed toward the house’s peaked trim. “Our house has two circles or something. This one has a tulip. See?”
Jane did. Where the white wood trim came together to form its point it curled around at the bottom in the shape of a tulip.
“Ours has roses, I think,” she said.
“Yes, roses,” agreed Elizabeth thoughtfully, “roses, I’m sure. Oh, dear! Well we’ll have to get on the next streetcar and look some more. Have we got any more money?”
“Enough for that, I guess,” and they got on the next streetcar and resumed their watch. Jane on one side of the car, Elizabeth on the other.
This time it was Jane who saw the house, but before rushing off the streetcar they both looked at its white peak. Alas, the lace trim had a design in fern shape, no flower petals of any kind. Then Elizabeth saw another little house, and another. Jane saw a whole row – all shabby, all old, but none with the double rose design they remembered from the dream. By the time the streetcar had run all across town, they had seen twenty-seven single houses with white wood lace peaks and nine whole rows of them.
“It’s sort of like the tinderbox story,” said Elizabeth disconsolately, “with the X on one door and then X’s on all the other doors in town. We’ll never find it.”
“Why didn’t we ever see any houses like this before?” Jane leaned her tired head back on the car seat, wishing she were home going swimming.
“I don’t know. Maybe it’s because we were never looking for one. I never noticed anyone else’s broken leg before I broke mine, but the first day I went out with a cast I saw five.”
“Funny,” said Jane but she didn’t sound as though she meant it. “I guess we’ll go home now.”
“I guess so,” said Elizabeth. “We can try again tomorrow and maybe we should bring the doll.”
“What for?”
“To help remember, stupid.”
Jane groaned inwardly but closed her eyes and said no more. It wasn’t until they were within one stop of their own street that they remembered Mama’s errand. They
had to go all the way back to town for it and were forty minutes late getting home.
Their mother was cross, not only because of their being late, but because she had discovered her dressing table in a complete hash of jewelry, lipstick, and cologne.
“Look,” she said, “I don’t know what’s got into you girls. You’ve never been like this before, never. If you want my needles, cloth, lipstick, hairpins – anything – just ask. I was patient those days you were so unhappy but I’ve spoken to you several times now – this is just too much.”
“But we didn’t. We …”
“No buts. Who else in the family would bother with jewelry and make-up like that?” and she sent them to their room without dinner.
Hot, tired, and put out by this injustice, the twins posted themselves at the windows hoping to see someone who would get them something to eat. While they waited they went over their afternoon and decided it hadn’t been a total waste of time. They had learned one thing: Toronto was full of their kind of house. They were looking in the right place.
“Tomorrow we’ll take Amelia.” Elizabeth reached inside the window seat to get the doll out. “Boy,” she said, “what a mess. Why did you dump all these things in here?” She pulled the doll out from under a jumble of paints and tennis shoes.
“I didn’t.” Jane was indignant. And then she saw Joe through the back window.
“Joe,” she hissed.
“What?” He shouted up.
“Shh!”
“What is it?” – a loud whisper.
“Come here a minute, but please be quiet.”
“OK,” he shouted again and soon his head appeared above the floor from the stairwell. “What do you want?”
“We can’t have supper. If I give you some money, will you get us a hot dog or something?”
“Why can’t you?”
“Oh never mind. Will you get the things?”
“If you tell me first.”
“Oh, OK. The dog or someone knocked over all Mama’s stuff on her dressing table and she thinks it’s us – and it isn’t – but she won’t let us have any supper. So here’s a quarter. You could get a hot dog or something and we could split it.”
“You twins …”
“You’re a good kid, Joe,” Elizabeth said quickly. “And we’ll time your swimming if you go.”
Joe went. Jane watched out the window and a few minutes later Claverhouse – or Snowball – came bouncing along beside Joe as he whistled his way up the street.
“Papa’s right,” Jane said, “the dog is getting bigger and bigger. I wonder how big he’ll be when he’s finished?”
“Don’t know.” Elizabeth was under the bed searching for a piece of chocolate bar she thought she might have left there.
“Look at that boat. Oh Elizabeth, come look. It’s terrific – just like the old-fashioned sailing ships.”
“Mhm,” Elizabeth came up regretfully from under her bed where she had found no chocolate. “I guess that’s the same one I saw the other night. It’s gorgeous. I’m hungry.”
It wasn’t more than five minutes before Joe’s whistling came back down the street.
“I wonder what he’s got?” said Elizabeth hopefully. There’s much more than a hot dog or a chocolate bar in that big bag.
“I guess,” said Jane, “he had to shop for Mama.”
But when Joe appeared a few moments later, he still had the same big bag with him.
“Pat had some dough,” he explained with a grin, “and I had an extra dime, so we got some more,” and he pulled out of the bag, like a magician pulling rabbits from a high hat, potato chips, four hot dogs, two coconut cakes wrapped in cellophane and two bottles of orange soda pop.
“Yippee,” cried Jane. “Oh Joe you’re great!”
“I’ll give you a kiss,” offered Elizabeth, but Joe said no thanks and retreated hastily down the stairwell.
Stuffing themselves with hot dogs and potato chips the twins returned to the doll. Jane said maybe they ought to leave it alone for a few days, but Elizabeth was determined to go back downtown the next day with Amelia and look again for the house.
“OK, then,” said Jane, “we’ll make a list.”
“Make a list?”
“The way detectives do in detective books – it’s sort of a detectivy thing anyway, isn’t it? I mean, we have some clues and we have to find a missing thing.”
Elizabeth put down the coconut cakes, still unwrapped, and looked at her sister suspiciously, “You mean organize?” she accused. “Oh no, no lists. We’ll just go back downtown with the doll and just let her show us the way.”
“You mean like one of those people looking for well water with a stick?” Jane was incredulous.
“I suppose, sort of.”
Jane remembered again why it was she was looking for the house in the first place and said nothing. She picked up the coconut cakes and began to take off the cellophane.
It was at this moment Mama called from downstairs.
“I’ve been thinking it over,” she said when they stood before her in the kitchen. “I think perhaps I was a little harsh with you. I suppose it could have been the puppy in my dressing table. In any case I feel I should take your word for it. You may have your supper.”
For a moment neither girl said anything. Then Jane said with a gulp, “Thank you,” and together they meekly followed their mother into the dining room.
“It’s hot dogs,” said Joe gleefully passing them the platter, “and potato chips.”
Patrick said nothing but the twins could see by his eyes that he thought it was just as funny as Joe did.
“What’s wrong?” asked Mama, looking from one to the other of them.
“Nothing,” said Joe, looking hard at William and biting into his hot dog. No one else said anything.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” asked Papa in a tone that said clearly,
no sulks,
and the twins valiantly ate one hot dog, a small dish of coleslaw, and three potato chips each. At least that’s what it looked like. Jane fed all of hers to the dog, and Elizabeth got rid of most of hers the same way until Papa caught the dog with the end of it, accused him of having stolen it, and insisted on getting Elizabeth another one.
“That dog,” he said, giving the animal a hard look, “seems bigger and bigger to me. Patrick,” he asked, “how old is the dog?”
“Well,” said Pat, and you could see he was uncomfortable. For the first time since the dog had come into the family, Papa was giving it his full attention (what Joe called the treatment).
“I don’t know a great deal about dogs,” Papa continued, not waiting for Pat’s reply, “but I have always believed that full-grown dogs do not run about as much as this one – and another thing,” he looked suspiciously from Patrick to the dog and back again, “the only dog I’ve ever encountered with hair like that, growing right down into its eyes, was an English sheep dog.”
“Sheep dog,” gasped Mama. Over on the window seat Marble sat up. “But sheep dogs grow as big as horses!”
“Yes,” said Papa ominously, “they do. Well Patrick?” Everyone looked at Pat.