Ellen Tebbits (3 page)

“Girls, before I dismiss the class I have a little announcement to make,” she said. “Next week members of all my classes are going to give a program for the soldiers and sailors in the Veterans Hospital. I should like to have some of you girls put on your little Dance of the Falling Leaves. It is such a sweet dance and it is so appropriate for this time of year, 29

I am sure the men will enjoy it. Those of you who think your mothers will let you go, please give me your names before you leave.”

Ellen thought it would be wonderful to dance on a real stage with a real live audience just like a grown-up ballerina. She knew she would dance so beautifully that she would be called back for encore after encore. Eagerly she crowded up to Mrs. Spofford with the rest of the girls.

Then she remembered her underwear.

She wanted so much to dance at the Veterans Hospital that she was almost will-ing to risk having the girls find out about her underwear. Almost, but not quite. She wiggled out of the group of girls, ran across the polished floor, and darted into the empty dressing room. Snatching her street clothes from the bench, she flung open the door of the broom closet.Then she stopped, astounded at what she saw.

Austine Allen was already in the broom closet.

Ellen could not believe her eyes. Austine was wearing woolen underwear.

“Shut the door!” ordered Austine.

Ellen stood with her mouth open.

Austine’s high-necked underwear buttoned down the front and across the back just like hers.

“Didn’t you hear me? Shut the door!”

“Do you—do you wear woolen underwear, too?” asked Ellen, still not believing what she saw.

“Shut the door,” ordered Austine for the third time, as she yanked her slip over her head. She poked her head through the slip and said crossly, “Yes, I do.”

By now Ellen had her wits about her. She joined Austine in the broom closet and closed the door. “And I thought I was the only girl in the whole school who had to wear it,” she said, and sat down on the bag of sweeping compound.

“And I thought I was the only one,” said Austine, “until I watched you in the mirror.

I sort of thought that was why you looked so bumpy around the waist.”

“That old Otis Spofford makes me so mad,” said Ellen. “Do you suppose he really guessed? I don’t know what I’d have done if you hadn’t spoken right out loud like you did.”As she hastily stood up again and began to change her clothes, Ellen smiled at Austine. “Promise you won’t tell anybody,” she begged.

“I promise if you promise,” said Austine.

“My mother makes me wear the old stuff because she says it’s so much colder here than it is in California.”

“I promise,” agreed Ellen. “Mother says I have to wear it because I’m thin and catch cold easily. I’d just die if anyone at school knew about it.”

“Me too,” said Austine.

“How did you keep yours from slipping?” asked Ellen.

“I brought a string and tied it around my waist. Shhh. Here they come.”

“We’ll have to stay here until they go,” whispered Ellen. Both girls dressed quickly and silently. Then, as they waited, they listened to the other girls chatter.

“Where are Austine and Ellen?” they heard Joanne say. “I didn’t see them leave.”

“I didn’t either,” said Linda, “and I just know Ellen wasn’t in here before the lesson.

I wonder where she came from.”

“She couldn’t have come from any place but here,” said Barbara.“Say, where does that door go?”

“That’s just the janitor’s closet.”

“I’ll bet they’re in there,” said Linda, and flung open the door. “There you are!” she exclaimed triumphantly. “What are you doing in there?”

Ellen and Austine looked at each other and began to giggle.

“Oh, we were just hiding,” said Austine.

“We just wanted to see if you would miss us,” added Ellen.“Come on, Austine, let’s go home.” She wasn’t going to give the others a chance to ask any more questions.

When they were out on the sidewalk, Austine asked timidly, “Do I really talk about California too much?”

Ellen was embarrassed.“Well, you do talk about it quite a lot, but I shouldn’t have said anything. I guess I was just worried about someone finding out about my underwear.”

“I suppose I do talk about California a lot,” said Austine slowly, “but I miss it—all the kids I used to play with there and everything. Here it rains all the time, and I have 34

to stay in the house a lot, and anyway there isn’t anyone in my block to play with.”

“There isn’t anyone in my block to play with, either. I live on Tillamook Street.

Where do you live?”

“On Forty-first next to the house with the little gnomes in the front yard.”

“I know where that is,” exclaimed Ellen.

“I like to walk past there and look at the gnomes. I like the one with the spade best.”

“He’s my favorite, too,” agreed Austine.

“Second best I like the one with the wheel-barrow.”

Ellen thought a minute. “You live only two blocks from my house. Just down the street and around the corner.”

“Do I?” Austine was delighted. “Maybe you could come over sometime. Why don’t you come home with me now? My mother could phone your mother.”

“I’d love to. I’m sure Mother would let me if your mother phones.”

“And we can bake brownies,” said Austine.

Ellen was impressed.“Do you know how to bake brownies?”

“Sure. I bake them all the time. My brother eats so many they don’t last long at our house.”

“I can make pudding out of a package,” said Ellen,“but I can’t do anything hard like brownies. There are eggs in brownies, aren’t there?”

“Just two.”

Ellen was even more impressed. “My mother let me break an egg once. I hit it on the edge of a bowl just like she does, but when I tried to break it in two, I stuck my thumbs into the yolk and messed it all up.”

“I know what,” said Austine. “You crack the nuts and I’ll break the eggs and do the rest.”

“Swell,” agreed Ellen. “I’m good at cracking nuts.”

The girls smiled at each other. “You know something?” said Ellen. “I don’t mind this awful underwear half so much, now that I know I’m not the only one in school who has to wear it.”

“Isn’t it funny?” said Austine. “That’s just the way I feel.”

2

The Biennial Beet

At first Ellen thought everything about the third grade was going to be perfect.

The nicest part of all was knowing Austine.

She thought they were best friends, but she wasn’t quite sure. Austine hadn’t said anything about being best friends. But the two girls were always together at dancing class and at school, and they liked to play at each other’s houses.

Austine liked to play at Ellen’s house because the attic was full of such interesting things—old clothes for dressing up, a violin with half the strings missing, piles of maga-zines full of coupons to send away for free samples. The basement was an interesting place, too, and the girls spent one rainy afternoon there blowing bubbles in a bucket of soapsuds with an old tire pump. Austine had never lived in a house with a basement or an attic before she moved to Oregon.

Anyway, her mother believed in sending old things to the Goodwill instead of keeping them in case they might come in handy some day.

The rest of Ellen’s house was nice, too, but in a different way.The furniture was polished, the floors shone, and everything was in perfect order. Austine always felt she should be on her very best behavior, so she wouldn’t leave marks on the floor or knock over a vase. Mrs. Tebbits used her nicest dishes for serving cookies and tea made with lots of milk. That made Austine feel grown up.

Ellen liked to go to Austine’s home because it was next door to the house with the gnomes on the lawn and because, although there was nothing in the Allens’ attic but empty trunks and packing cases, the rest of the house was such a nice place to play. The furniture was old and comfortable, and there was nothing that could be easily broken. Best of all, Austine’s mother did not mind the girls’ making brownies in her kitchen. If they spilled cookie batter on the floor, she never said, “Oh dear, my clean floor!” Instead, she found a cloth for wiping up the batter. Ellen thought this was a nice way for a mother to be.

Next to having Austine for a friend, Ellen felt that the best thing about the third grade was having Miss Joyce for her teacher. Miss Joyce was the nicest teacher in Rosemont School. She was never impatient and almost never cross. Besides, she was young and pretty and had curly hair.

Unlike other teachers, Miss Joyce never wore dark blouses and skirts or sensible shoes. She wore the prettiest clothes Ellen had ever seen. Ellen liked best of all a yellow woolen dress that made her think of sun-shine on rainy winter days.With the yellow dress Miss Joyce always wore beautiful red shoes with high heels.

“Red and yellow, catch a fellow,” Otis whispered whenever Miss Joyce wore the dress, but Ellen made up her mind that when she was grown up she was going to have a yellow dress and a pair of red shoes with teetery heels just like her teacher’s.

But, much as Ellen loved Miss Joyce, she was not quite happy in Miss Joyce’s room.

Of course, Miss Joyce was always very nice to Ellen. She was patient with her mistakes in arithmetic and praised her reading, even when she mispronounced words. She always noticed when Ellen wore a new dress to school and told her how pretty she thought it was.

Just the same, as the days went by, Ellen became more and more certain that Miss Joyce did not like her as much as she liked the other boys and girls. Ellen was sure of this, because Miss Joyce never asked her to clap erasers.

Every day, just before afternoon recess, Miss Joyce named two children to collect all the blackboard erasers, take them outdoors, and beat the chalk dust out of them. Every day when it came time for Miss Joyce to select the children, Ellen was hopeful, but Miss Joyce always chose someone else.

When the boys and girls went out for recess, Ellen would wait her turn at hopscotch and wistfully watch the lucky pair as they clapped erasers together and made chalk dust fly. If the erasers were extra dirty, they would make faces and turn their heads away as they beat out the dust. Sometimes they beat the erasers against the brick building.

Ellen wanted more than anything to make chalk dust fly and to beat a white pattern on the red building.

Finally in November, when Austine had clapped erasers twice and Otis had clapped them three times, Ellen said to Austine, “If Miss Joyce really liked me, I just know she would choose me to clap the erasers.”

“It’s funny she’s never picked you,” agreed Austine, “but she sends you to the principal’s office with notes and she never lets me go.”

Ellen liked to be sent to the principal’s office with notes. She liked having the long halls all to herself, with no hall monitors around to keep her from running and leaping. She did this very quietly on her toes, pretending she was a ballerina. It was fun, but it wasn’t the same as clapping erasers.

Finally Ellen made up her mind that she would have to do something special to please Miss Joyce. She didn’t know what it would be, but it would have to be something Miss Joyce couldn’t help noticing.

One day Miss Joyce sent the class to the board to review arithmetic problems. Ellen dreaded doing addition where everyone could see her, because she was so poor in arithmetic.At her desk she could at least put her hands in her lap and count quickly on her fingers.

She took her place at the blackboard.

Otis took the space beside her. He picked up a long piece of chalk and squeaked it on the blackboard. Ellen put her hands over her ears.