The Time Garden (9 page)

The dry sink in the corner was crowded with dirty dishes. "Am I supposed to tackle these?" grumbled Eliza. "I didn't come back through the mists of time to do
menial labors!
"

"Maybe the magic's teaching you a lesson," said Roger, from the hearth. "It did once before."

"The nerve!" said Eliza. But she fell to nevertheless, pumping water from the well, fetching it pail by pail, and working so hard that by the time Laurie and Jo came stamping in laughing and rosy-cheeked with armfuls of logs, the dishes were in apple-pie order, and Jo pronounced Eliza "a trump" and "a brick."

Ann meanwhile had decided to amuse the baby. But do what she would, the baby didn't seem to appreciate her efforts. When she tried playing pat-a-cake with it, it threw its doll at her. And when she began telling it a story, it hit her in the eye with an old chewed building block. Then it noticed her birthstone ring with the real garnet.

"Pretty. Baby want," it said. And pulling the ring from Ann's finger it clutched it tightly in its own hot hand.

"Naughty. Mustn't do," said Ann. "Give ringy back to Ann."

"Won't," said the baby, pouting. "Nassy dirl." And it turned and ran to its mother.

"What are you doing to my child?" demanded the woman, looking up from her book. Then her tone changed as she saw the ring. "Why, how nice!" she cried, taking it and slipping it on her own finger. "And red is my favorite color, too! Baby, say thank you to the young lady for giving it to Mama!"

"But I didn't!" gasped Ann. "It's my present from birthday before last!"

The woman looked hurt. "How can you talk so?" she whined. "And you with so much and us with so little! Never did I think one of you nice young ladies would turn out to be a Indian giver!"

"I'm not! It's all a mistake!" said poor Ann, hating to hurt the woman's feelings, yet not quite trusting her, somehow. She looked round for advice, but the others were busy getting supper. Then she thought of the Natterjack, and took the lid off the coffee tin. But before she could seek its aid, a man appeared in the doorway. He was a big burly fellow with a shifty eye, and Ann didn't like the look of him.

"Supper ready, Eupheemy?" he said, sniffing the air, through which a savory scent was beginning to steal.

"Yes, Clarence, it is, thanks to these ministering angels as ever was," said the woman. "This young lady gave me this ring. Ain't it purty?"

The man inspected the ring. "Semiprecious!" he said, in tones of contempt. He sniffed the air again. "Mutton stew! Not much class to the bill of fare. They might at least have brought a beefsteak! Don't look like rich young ladies at all. Poorly dressed," he added, looking at Jo's shabby poplin with the burn and the tear.

The others were listening now, and Eliza had heard enough. "Oh, is that so?" she cried, springing forward. "Well, I think you're lucky we bother helping you at all! We may not be rich, but we're more important than you think we are!"

"Oh?" said the man, interested. "Tell me more."

"Well," said Eliza, forgetting all her mother had ever told her about not boasting. "Take Laurie. His grandfather's a prominent citizen."

"You don't say!" said the man, pleased. "Rich old gentleman, I presoom? Nice big house? Stately mansion?"

"Stone," said Eliza, "with pillars."

"Fine. Fine," said the man. "Go on."

"And Jo may be poor," went on the headstrong girl, though Roger was glaring at her and making signs of caution, "but she's going to be a famous author any day now!"

"Well, well," said the man, rubbing his hands together. "'Pears we've got distinguished guests, Eupheemy! It'd be a pity if they was to get away, wouldn't it? Lock the door!"

The woman sprang from the bed with surprising agility, turned the key, and put it in her pocket. The seven "ministering angels" turned pale, as the man's purpose became plain.

"Now see what you've done," hissed Roger to Eliza. "You've got us kidnapped!"

"Now, now," said the man. "No need to use ugly words. We just want you to set awhile, that's all. Rich men's sonny-boys and lady-authors ought to have friends who'd pay a pretty penny to have 'em back safe an' sound!" And he laughed unpleasantly.

"Don't worry," said Jack rather shakily to Roger and Laurie. "It's three of us fellows against one of him. Stand close together. Form a hollow square with the girls behind us."

But Eliza needed no defending. "You'd better watch out!" she cried to the man. "/ happen to be a pretty important sorceress, myself! From the twentieth century! I've got a magic there in that coffee tin that could smash you to atoms! Isn't that so?" she appealed to the Natterjack.

"H'atoms!" agreed the Natterjack, from the coffee tin.

"I don't like this, Clarence," said the woman uneasily. "They got talking beasts. They come from future parts."

"I don't believe it," said the man. "It's ventriloquists. That ain't no beast. That's a measly old frog."

The Natterjack was affronted. "Very well," it said, puffing itself out angrily. "Deceiving these h'innocent children and these 'eroines of fiction was one thing, but h'insulting
me
is the last straw! Who 'as the thyme?"

Ann held out the golden sprig and the Natterjack looked at it. "'Ighly suitable," it said. "The time I 'ave in mind may not 'ave been pleasant for
some,
but it was a golden age for Natterjacks!"

It rubbed the bit of thyme with its foot and whiffed the fragrance. Maybe because nobody else whiffed, the others remained as they were. But a startling change occurred in the vicinity of the coffee tin. The Natterjack disappeared. In its place was a fabulous beast as tall as the ceiling. Gnashing teeth filled its hideous jaws. It had claws, and talons, and a great uncoiling scaly tail that nearly filled the whole room.

"Dragons!" cried Jo, her eyes gleaming.

"I'll defend you!" cried Laurie, reaching for the poker.

"Don't," cried Ann. "It's our Natterjack! It's friendly!"

"Friendly to
some,
" said the Natterjack, "but to those as deserves it I can be '
orrible!
" And it lowered its great horrendous head to glare at the man and woman. The woman cowered, trembling, but the man stood his ground, pale but defiant.

"It isn't a dragon, really," Jack explained to the faltering Meg. "There's no such thing. It's a prehistoric beast.
Tyrannosaurus rex,
I think it's called."

"What's in a name?" remarked the Natterjack airily, blowing puffs of smoke from its nostrils. "Some

may call us dragons an' some may call us tyrannosauruses, but we're h'
all
Natterjacks h'under the skin!"

"You've kind of dwindled down, in modern times, haven't you?" said Roger.

"Not at all," said the Natterjack. "What we once put into brawn, we puts into brain. When you think 'ow much h'extra brain that makes left over, h'it's no
wonder
we're magic! H'it
does
feel good to get back into form again once in a while, though." It swished its tail, knocking over several chairs and a table, and breathed out more puffs of brimstone-y smelling smoke. "H'I can't manage smoke rings again yet," it added. "H'out of practice!"

There was a pause. "Well?" said Eliza. "Aren't you going to eat them?"

The Natterjack hesitated. "By rights I should," it said, eyeing the man and woman with distaste, "but I doubt if they'd digest, from the look of them. They'd sit 'eavy. Per'aps if they was to reform, I'd h'overlook it this once."

"Reform, Clarence," begged the woman. "Re-form before it's too late!"

"I won't!" said the man stubbornly. "I won't
never.
I'd sooner be et!"

"Oh, very well," sighed the Natterjack. And it opened its jaws.

But there was an interruption. "Wait!" cried Jo. "Two wrongs do not make a right, and violence never yet solved anything in this world."

She advanced on the man and woman. With her face flushed in righteous anger and her hair escaping from its pins and coming down behind, she made a glorious sight. And even in the heat of the moment Ann noticed that Jack had stopped looking at Meg and was staring at Jo with the reddening cheek and glazing eye of utter adoration. And she remembered suddenly that Jo was a teenage girl, too!

"Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" said Jo to the man.

"No I ain't," said the man. "Take or be took by, that's the rule of life. Grab or be downtrod!"

"No such thing," said Jo. "If you would put your shoulder to the wheel and learn to know the happy weariness that comes from honest toil, you would see things differently."

"Wouldn't neither," said the man. "I tried working once. All I got was tired and no richer."

"Think of the terrible influence on your poor family, if you go on as you are," said Jo. "Already they are showing the effects of an unfavorable environment. I don't mean to be rude, but your wife is
not
a good housekeeper. And your baby is undisciplined."

"It certainly is," said Ann. "It stole my ring with the garnet."

"It did?" said the man, pleased. "Clever little fellow!"

Jo was still not discouraged. "You must have a better side
somewhere
," she said. "No matter how hardened in crime you are, you, too, must have been an innocent baby once. You, too, must have had a mother!"

"I never!" said the man. "I was born an orphing."

"You must have had
someone
," insisted Jo.

For the first time the man's hard exterior showed signs of softening. "Aunt Jerusha!" he murmured. "Good old Aunt Jerusha! Hain't thought of her these forty years!"

"Exactly," said Jo, triumphant. "Then think of her now. Think of that gentlewoman caring for you and watching you flower into manhood!"

"She
warn't
gentle!" said the man, indignantly. "She were tough! Cuff you as soon as look at you, she would!" And his face relaxed in a look of happy remembrance. Jo was quick to press home her advantage.

"Think of her poor hands, weary with cuffing!" she said. "Think of her arm, weary with switching. Think of her face, worn with the care of thinking up new punishments, all in hope that you'd grow into a good man! And think of how you have repaid her!"

The man looked from Jo to the Natterjack-dragon and back again. His lip trembled. "'Tain't fair," he said. "Gangin' up on a man's soft spots, reformin' him against his will! 'Tain't no-ways fair!"

"Why don't you give in?" said Ann. "It's easy being good, when you get started."

"It's fun, too, in a way," said Eliza, "now and then."

The man hesitated. Then he made up his mind. "All right," he said. "I've tried everything else. Might as well try
that!
" And his iron control gave way, and he burst into sobs of repentance. "Ain't it awful?" he said, between sobs. "Ain't it horrible to think what I've went an' become? Maybe it's 'cause Aunt Jerusha died and there warn't no more cuffing! Maybe if one of you was to cuff me now, I'd be a better man!"

Laurie and Jack and Roger were perfectly willing, but Jo dissuaded them. "No," she said. "He has reformed at last, and that is punishment enough."

"Yes," said Ann, carried away by the emotion of the moment, "let's turn the other cheek and heap coals of fire on it!"

"Do I have to give the ring back, too, Clarence?" asked the woman.

"Yes, Eupheemy, you do," said the man. "If we're going to reform, might as well go the whole hog!" And the woman handed it over.

Everyone was being so noble that Ann almost hated to take it. If it hadn't been a present from her favorite Aunt Jane, she wouldn't have.

"Of course," said the Natterjack, speaking for the first time in quite a while, "that isn't
quite
h'all there is to it. H'it isn't quite as h'easy as
that!
There 'as to be signs of h'improvement in future. The
first
thing to do is clean up this messy room!"

And urged on by gentle shoves from the Natterjack's dragonlike claws and hot gusts of its smoky breath, the man and woman proceeded to give the room such a thorough cleaning as it had never known in all its days, dusting and sweeping and scouring and waxing till they were nearly dropping with weariness. When it came time for beating the carpets on the line in the yard, the Natterjack took pity on the man and woman and offered the use of its tail. All the neighbors and passersby took one look at the carpet-beating dragon, and rushed inside and locked the doors and sent for the police, and the man and woman were later forced to move out of town, for harboring undesirable pets. But that is another story.

"And now," said Eliza to the Natterjack, when the house cleaning was finally over, "let's all go back to dragon-time with you. Did you used to eat many princesses? Was it you who fought Saint George? Can we watch?"

"Let's not," said Ann. "Let's go back to Concord and have sledding and apples and gingerbread instead."

The Natterjack shook its head regretfully. "HTm afraid we can't do h'either," it said. "When this 'ere magic stops, it stops. The next whiff will take h'each of us back to 'is own century. It's time to say good-bye."