The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen (23 page)

“But I can be your noo ingenoo, cain't I, Miss Loucien, cain't I, I can, cain't I?” Tibbie's golden curls bounced around her angelic face, lustrous and sweet as buttered baby ears of corn, and Cissy felt herself shrivel into a testy little witch arriving too late with a cauldron of spells.

Loucien gasped. “Oh, but the job's taken, honey! Sorry 'bout that. Leastways, Mr. Cyril's seen the actress he wants, and he's in talks with her agent.”

Tibbie shrugged and away she went, actually skipping, so as to enjoy the swish of her multiple petticoats, her ambitions altered in the blink of an eye. She would be a chanteuse instead, or a banjo player, or marry Egil, with his green eyes. Cissy paused to seal tight her cauldron of envy and nastiness, determined it would not slop over. Not ever. She could do that. Ever since Roper Junction, she had been able to do it: to pull down the veil, to seal up Cissy inside. “So . . . where did Mr. Cyril see her?” she asked, breezy as you like. “This new ingénue?”

Loucien seemed to be concentrating on her waking baby. “Saw her in a place called Roper Junction,” she crooned. “Wish I'd been there. Quite a performance by all accounts. Everett said it lifted him higher'n the longest plank. I'm envious.” She brushed a finger against the baby's cheek. “Her agent will stall for time, of course: he's one tough hombre. But Cyril will wear him down in a year or three. When the girl's got herself educated. The Bright Lights never give up when they've set their mind to a thing. I'm looking forward to it. Be like working with royalty.” She put the same finger against Cissy's lips, which were failing to form words. “Keep it in, Cissy. Seal it up tight. You can run ten thousand mile on a furnace fulla happiness an' you won't explode. Feels like it, but take it from me: you won't.”

Cyril Crew did indeed hurry over to Cissy's father, delighted to see him recovered, grasping him so eagerly by the hand that the stranger's visiting card attached itself to his palm.

“Goodness gracious,” he remarked, showing it to his brother. “When the good Captain Bouverie expresses his goodwill, he does not send chocolates, does he?”

The train engineer shoved the quartet off his footplate and gave an impatient blast on his whistle. He was running late. A boy with red hair came up on him from behind, climbing onto the other footplate, tossing a piece of coal from hand to hand.

“One day I'm gonna be a train engineer,” said Kookie nonchalantly. “Done it before. Piece-a pie.”

“Why would you
want
to?” fumed the engineer, waving a fist at the crowd lackadaisically rambling to and fro across the tracks, making him late.

But Kookie answered him in all earnest. “Why? 'Cause trains are good. Best things happen with trains. Trains get people home.”

Then, like cattle at milking time, the whole festive mob moved off up Main Street, with no particular destination in mind but a sense that things would be more agreeable thanks to the new day, more agreeable for them and for the world at large. God had given the globe a helpful spin—for luck, as it were.

A week later, the calliope steam piano arrived by train, crated and padded to a prodigious size. Kookie told everyone it was a Growow, fiercest animal in the known world, and began selling tickets. But Miss March confiscated the proceeds to buy refreshments for anyone who would help haul the contraption up the hill to the church.

No one had the first idea how to make it work. So they were glad of Chad Powers's resourceful genius. They were glad of him altogether, after weeks of berating by Hulbert Sissney for banishing an innocent young eccentric. Chad managed to hook up the calliope to the back boiler. It meant having the stove lit every Sunday, which would be a trial in high summer, but it was more than worth it to own a calliope. Now the people in towns to north, south, east, and west would be able to hear when Olive Town was at its prayers.

People stayed home the evenings Miss March gave recitals. It was not that they hated either Johann Sebastian Bach or Dixie music; it was just too deafening to stay
inside
the church when Miss March was in full flow.

“When the theater is built,” said Chad dreamily, “I shall move it over there and build an organ here. I'm working up this idea for a wind-powered piano, you know? Fixing to call it the Powers Patent Aeolian Organ.”

The church was full on Thanksgiving Day, of course. With certain exceptions, the people of Olive Town had a lot to be thankful for. The warmth from the boiler was welcome, and the calliope, in getting up steam, made merry little chirruping noises, like birds in the loft. Miss May March pulled out all the stops and played “The Arrival of the Queen of Sheba,” and if small children howled, no one could hear them so it didn't matter. When she had finished, she rang down to Chad to tell him to ease off the steam pressure. Then she hurried down the steps, collected her bouquet from Cissy, and fairly sprinted up the length of the church. Waiting for her at the head of the aisle stood Curly, trembling with stage fright, as all bridegrooms do.

A Biographical Note

H
ORACE
A. W. T
ABOR,
a mining tycoon immortalized in
The Ballad of Baby Doe
, spent some of his millions building the Tabor Grand Opera House in Denver. He sent his architect, George King, to Europe for inspiration, and imported cherry wood from Japan, marble from Italy, cloth from France. The seats were cushioned, the auditorium gaslit, the curtain hand painted with a landscape of ancient Rome.

What future jobs Mr. King undertook are less well recorded, but he would surely not have let the skills and knowledge that he had gained in Denver go to waste. Who else would some rich benefactor choose, if he wanted to make the gift of theater to a town of people dear to his heart?

GERALDINE McCAUGHREAN
is the Printz Award-winning author of THE WHITE DARKNESS. She has been honored with England's most prestigious children's book award, the Carnegie Medal, and is the only three-time winner ever of the Whitbread Children's Book Award. She also wrote PETER PAN IN SCARLET, the first official sequel to the treasured masterpiece PETER PAN, and the critically acclaimed THE DEATH-DEFYING PEPPER ROUX. Geraldine lives in Berkshire, England, with her husband and actress daughter. You can visit her online at www.geraldinemccaughrean.co.uk.

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Other Books by
Geraldine McCaughrean

The Death-Defying Pepper Roux

The White Darkness

Peter Pan in Scarlet

Stop the Train!

Not the End of the World

The Kite Rider

The Stones Are Hatching

Jacket art © 2011 by Sam Nielsen
Jacket design by Torborg Davern

The Glorious Adventures of the Sunshine Queen

Copyright © 2010 by Geraldine McCaughrean

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

McCaughrean, Geraldine.

  The glorious adventures of the Sunshine Queen / Geraldine McCaughrean. — 1st American ed.

    p. cm. Sequel to: Stop the train!

Summary: When a diphtheria outbreak forces twelve-year-old Cissy to leave her Oklahoma hometown in the 1890s, she and her two classmates embark on a wild adventure down the Missouri River with a team of traveling actors who are living on a dilapidated paddle steamer.

  ISBN 978-0-06-200806-0 (trade bdg.)

  [1. Adventure and adventurers—Fiction. 2. Theater—Fiction. 3. Paddle steamers—Fiction. 4. Missouri River—History—19th century—Fiction.] I. Title.

PZ7.M4784133Gl 2010

[Fic]—dc22

2010021958
CIP
AC

EPub Edition © 2011 ISBN: 9780062077080

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