The Moffats (22 page)

"How long is a month?" asked Rufus. "As far as Christmas?"

And everyone was glad of an excuse to laugh. Otherwise they might have cried. Certainly Janey might have.

But now today the month had gone! It was the last day.

Mama had found another house. It was a tiny little house set far back from the street so that it had a long front lawn and almost no backyard. Mama did not like this business about the yards. "There we sit in everybody's backyard," she said. And at first the children had not liked it, either. "Imagine," they said. "Hardly any apple trees at all and only one grape arbor." And Joe mopped his forehead when he thought of mowing all that long green lawn in front. But Jane was rather charmed with the long green carpet at the end of which was their tiny little house. It was somehow like looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

In their hearts all the Moffats knew there might be many things about the new little house that they would like, but today, right now, while these things were still unknown to them, they all had huge lumps in their throats.

They had all spent the day in packing up. At last all was practically ready. Madame was on the porch wearing a rather disapproving air. The broom was leaning against her. The furniture was grouped in corners of the rooms and the carpets were rolled up. The pipes had been taken down from the kitchen stove and the little stove in the sitting room. They were all waiting for the moving van.

From time to time the children walked through the empty rooms, feeling strange. The yellow house was no longer their home. Later on it would live in their memories alive and glowing again like the coals that used to fall in the grates. But now, today, it was unfamiliar. Their footsteps echoed on the wooden floors. Where the pictures had hung were clean squares of wallpaper. Every so often one or another of the four Moffats ran to steal a look at Mama to see if she, too, had changed.

Joe wandered off to the backyard. He wanted to climb that old apple tree once more. Rufus shinned up the cherry tree, the one he had fallen out of the year before last. Sylvie made some last-minute entries in her diary. Perhaps she was writing about how it felt to be moving away from this house she had lived in so long, thought Jane. Or maybe she was writing about that week's vacation she'd had at Camp Lincoln. Jane wished she knew. But there—Sylvie kept her diary locked.

Mama was still packing the last few things in the pantry; the china Jersey cow that could be used for either a bank or a milk pitcher; the porcelain head of a man—lift his hat off and keep tobacco in it. That's what it was meant for, anyway, although Mama used it for spices. "And the funny thing about it," said Mama to Jane, who was feeling closer and closer to tears, "the funny thing about it is that it looks very much like your father looked when he was courting me. Mustache and all."

When Mama finished with these last few things, she said, "I wonder what is keeping the moving man. Jane, would you mind running over to I. Bimber's, the moving van company, and tell them we are ready?"

No. Jane was glad to have something definite to do.

She started running up the street. She passed Mrs. Pudge, who was walking slowly up the street to the trolley car. Mrs. Pudge called after her, "So you're moving today, Jane?"

Jane nodded, bobbing her braids up and down importantly. She found a stone and kicked it with the blunt toe of her brown sandal. She kept kicking it ahead of her, playing a game she made up; if it landed on the right side of the pavement more often than the left, it would turn into a nugget of gold.

At the same time she was thinking that someday she, too, would be too old to run up the street and race with the trolley cars. She would have to walk like Mrs. Pudge. How could she bear that? And how could she bear never to play cops and robbers with the boys? Or never to walk fences? Or never to play baseball in the vacant lot? Imagine Mrs. Pudge or Mrs. Ellenbach or any of the other women on New Dollar Street doing these things. But Jane had a feeling that just as surely as that they, the Moffats, were moving away from the yellow house that day, time would take these other keen delights from her, too.

Why, you just had to look at Sylvie to see that this was true. Sylvie still liked to race up the street. But she never played cops and robbers anymore, and someday she would probably get married. Then who would take care of her chilblains and sing her to sleep, Janey wondered, giving the stone a terrific kick, which lodged it between a tree and a fence.

She stopped and worked at it with her toe. Finally it bounded out and she kicked it hard right straight in front of her.

Besides
, she thought,
nothing ever divides into threes well's fours.
And would Catherine-the-cat know enough to bring only three kittens instead of the usual four when Sylvie married and left them to set up housekeeping like Tilly Cadwalader?

Well, these thoughts did not take the lump out of her throat. On the contrary, she had the utmost difficulty restraining those foolish tears when she told Mr. Bimber they were waiting for the van.

"Baby!" she whispered furiously to herself when she left.

Instead of going right back to the yellow house, Jane decided to walk over to the new house a few blocks away to see again how it looked.

When she got there, she bent over and looked at the little house from between her legs. It looked quite charming and rather like a picture postcard. Straightening up she walked around the little backyard.

"Hardly a tree in it," she observed gloomily.

She stepped onto the little porch that was covered with hop vines. She looked through the window. The rooms were empty but they wore a look of expectancy. There were a dustpan and brush in one corner. Mama had been here yesterday cleaning up. Would this place ever seem like home? Jane wondered.

She went down the long path to the street. "I'll pretend I'm comin' home from school," she said, "and see how it feels."

She skipped up the path singing at the top of her lungs, "I saw you toss the kites on high," the way she always did when she came home from school to the yellow house. She ran around to the back door, pushed it open, and sniffed.

It was no use. This house had a musty smell and seemed neither friendly nor unfriendly, just indifferent.

"After all," she reflected, "it's still empty. When we all get in it, it'll be different maybe."

Slowly she went out of the house into the backyard. She climbed the fence that separated this yard from the neighbor's and sat there. The branches of an apple tree in the yard behind theirs sheltered her. Two tears trickled down her cheeks. Life would be different in this house. Suddenly a voice startlingly near her said:

"Are you crying? I never cry unless it's something just frightfully important."

"I'm not crying," denied Jane indignantly. She looked around to see who it was that had caught her.

There was no one in sight, no one down in either of the yards below. A mocking laugh made her look up. She caught her breath. A girl about her own age was sitting on a high branch of the tree. It was her hair that made Jane catch her breath. A head of tangled curls of gold just like the ones she herself had in her dreams.

She almost fell off the fence in her surprise.

"Ha-ha," laughed the girl heartily. "Surprised you, didn't I? Say, are you by any chance going to move into this house?"

"Yes," said Jane, very shy.

"Oh! Well, that's good. How old are you?"

"Ten."

"So am I. I live in that house back there. This is my backyard. What's your name?"

"Jane Moffat."

"Mine's Nancy Stokes. Well, I'm glad you're moving in here. My best friend, Alice Phelps, moved away last week. We used to have plenty of good fights. Perhaps if I like you and you like me, we can get to be best friends."

Best friends! Jane had never had a best friend before. There had always been just the four of them—Sylvie, Joe, Jane, and Rufus. Oh, of course, she had friends, too. There were Chief Mulligan, Mr. Brooney, her teacher, and she often went hunting wildflowers with Milly Cadwalader, but she had never had a best friend. What was it like to have a best friend? She didn't know what to say.

"How many in your family?" Nancy went on. "There's just myself and Bee, my sister. And, of course, Mother and Dad."

"In mine there's Sylvie, Joe, me, and Rufus. And Mama and Catherine-the-cat."

"Well, I think it's great you're moving here. We'll build a gate in this fence if Mother'll let us."

"Yes," agreed Jane, still shy.

"Say! What do you think about before you go to sleep?"

Jane was silent. A princess with golden curls. A prince on a black horse riding down a wooded path. A meeting in the clearing by the cold, clear spring. These were the things she thought about before she went to sleep.

"I mean, what do you dream you are before you go to sleep?" Nancy was insistent. Jane felt she had to answer.

"I think I'm a princess with long golden curls ridin' on a white horse."

"You do!" The girl seemed surprised.

Jane felt overwhelmed with shyness. Goodness, that wasn't the thing to think about at all, she thought. Had she blasted her chance of being best friends? She felt like flying away.

"Well," Nancy went on, "I dream I'm a great singer. I'm on the platform and all the theater is clapping and clapping."

Her eyes shone. Jane was thrilled. She saw this girl on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera House like the other great singers Mama had told her about. And she, Jane, was going to be her best friend! An incredible feeling of happiness gushed up in her. She wished she could think of something to say. Instead, she picked a leaf from the tree and started to chew on it.

Suddenly the girl swung herself out of the tree. "Well, so long," she said. "I've got to have my music lesson. See you later." And she walked off, whistling.

Jane followed her with her eyes as long as she could see her. The girl went into the big house whose yard backed up to her yard. Jane was still tingling inside. Best friends! She jumped off the fence and tore back to the yellow house like lightning.

I. Bimber's moving van was already there. Jane sat on the hitching post and watched. Joe and Rufus sat on Mrs. Squire's wire fence. Mrs. Squire was sitting behind the parlor curtains, watching proceedings herself. Today she did not seem to mind that Rufus and Joe were sitting on her fence. "Those Moffats are moving away and it will be nice and quiet here. If only Peter Frost and the Pudges would move away, too, and all those Cadwaladers, New Dollar Street wouldn't be so bad."

Sylvie was racing around helping Mama. Sylvie's curls were caught up in the back.
Just like a grown-up
, thought Jane.

I. Bimber's men came out with load after load. First they piled everything on the sidewalk so that people had to walk out in the street to get by, even Chief Mulligan of the police force. Then they stored things neatly in the van, covering each piece with an old quilt. The last to go in were Madame and the little potbellied stove. These were bound fast to the wagon with thick ropes.

Madame was placed with her back to the potbellied stove. She seemed disdainful. Such company to be keeping!
She is fat where he is thin
, thought Jane, laughing out loud.
And he is fat where she is thin. They are going on their honeymoon
, she thought,
and already they have had a slight disagreement.