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Title: Seven-Day Magic
Author: Eager, Edward [Edward McMaken] (1911-1964)
Date of first publication: 1962
Edition used as base for this ebook:
   New York: Harcourt, Brace & World
   [internal evidence suggests it appeared
   between 1962 and 1970, probably in 1966]
Date first posted: 12 July 2015
Date last updated: 12 July 2015
Project Gutenberg Canada ebook #1260

This ebook was produced by Al Haines


PUBLISHER'S NOTE

Because of copyright considerations, the illustrations by
N. M. Bodecker (1922-1988) have been omitted from this etext.

Italics in the original printed edition are indicated _thus_.

The quotations in Chapter 3 ("What does the train say?...")
are from The Baby Goes To Boston, a poem by Laura E. Richards
(1850-1943), included in her 1890 collection In My Nursery.

The quotation in Chapter 4 ("What is this I hear of sorrow
and weariness...") is from Lucinda Matlock, a poem by
Edgar Lee Masters (1868-1950), included in his 1915
collection Spoon River Anthology.

As part of the conversion of the book to its new digital
format, we have made certain minor adjustments in its layout.






  SEVEN-DAY MAGIC


  Edward Eager





  _For Ann Drakeley,
  when she isn't quite so new,
  and Peter Saxon,
  if he hasn't grown too old_





CONTENTS


1. FINDING IT

2. USING IT

3. TAMING IT

4. LOSING IT

5. THWARTING IT

6. BEING THWARTED

7. KEEPING IT?

8. GIVING IT BACK




SEVEN-DAY MAGIC



1.  Finding It

"The best kind of book," said Barnaby, "is a magic book."

"Naturally," said John.

There was a silence, as they all thought about this and how true it was.

"The best kind of magic book," said Barnaby, leaning back against the
edge of the long, low library table and surveying the crowded
bookshelves, only seeming somehow to look beyond them and beyond
everything else, too, the way he so often did, "is when it's about
ordinary people like us, and then something happens and it's magic."

"Like when you find a nickel, except it isn't a nickel--it's a
half-magic talisman," said Susan.

"Or you're playing in the front yard and somebody asks is this the road
to Butterfield," said Abbie.

"Only it isn't at all--it's the road to Oz!" shrilled Fredericka,
jigging up and down excitedly, for she had read the book in which this
happens.

The lady sitting at the far end of the table sighed and looked up,
putting her hand to her head as if it ached.  "Please," she said.
"Can't we have quiet?"

"Now, now!"  Miss Dowitcher, the librarian, wagged a finger in merry
reproof as she skimmed past.  "Now, now.  This is a children's room,
you know.  It's for the children to enjoy."

The lady sighed again, closed the book she was reading, and opened
another.  Abbie tried to catch her eye and look sympathetic, but the
lady would not meet her gaze.

Abbie knew the lady well, by sight.  She was called Miss Prang, Miss
Eulalie Smythe Prang, and she spent most of her days in the children's
room at the library, looking in the different books and taking things
out.  When she had taken enough out, she put it together into a new
book.  There were a lot of her books on the library's shelves already,
but they were not the kind of magic books Barnaby and John and Susan
and Abbie and Fredericka had in mind.  Mostly they were about dear
little fairies who lived in buttercups.

Abbie sometimes thought that if Miss Prang would listen when she heard
children talking, instead of sighing and putting her hand to her head,
it might do her books a lot of good.  For instance, she ought to be
listening to Barnaby right now.

"The best kind of magic book," Barnaby was saying, "is the kind where
the magic has rules.  And you have to deal with it and thwart it before
it thwarts you.  Only sometimes you forget and get thwarted."

Everybody began talking at the same time, and the name of E. Nesbit was
heard in more than one voice, for she was the five children's favorite
author and no wonder (though Fredericka liked the Oz books nearly as
well).

"Why couldn't she have lived forever?" said Abbie, taking that best of
all Nesbit books, _The Enchanted Castle_, down from the shelf and
looking at it with loving eyes.

"We've read all of hers, and nobody seems to do books like that any
more."

"If you could have a brand-new magic book, specially made for you,"
said John, "what would you choose?"

"One about a lot of children," said Abbie.

"One about five children just like us," said Fredericka.

"And they're walking home from somewhere and the magic starts suddenly
before they know it," said Susan.

"And they have to learn its rules and tame it and make the most of it,"
said Barnaby.

At the far end of the table Miss Prang muttered to herself, pushed the
books about in front of her, and at last half rose to her feet, gazing
imploringly in the direction of the librarian's desk.

Miss Dowitcher came skimming across the room again.  "I think, then,
children, if you're ready to go?" she murmured apologetically.
"Perhaps it would be best.  Have you found enough books to take?"

Of course they had not, for who has ever found enough books?

But they scrabbled together the ones they had chosen and lined up at
the desk to have the date stamped in them.  It was then that Susan
looked back and saw the book sitting all by itself at one end of the
bottom shelf.

It was a red book, smallish but plump, comfortable and shabby.  There
had once been gilt letters on the back, but these had rubbed away, and
Susan couldn't read the name of what it was.  Still, it looked odd
enough to be interesting and worn enough to have been enjoyed by
countless generations.  On a sudden impulse she added it to the pile in
her arms and took her place at the end of the line.

She thought Miss Dowitcher looked at her a bit strangely when she saw
the red book, but "That's a seven-day book" was all she said.  Susan
was surprised.  Usually the books that had to be returned in seven days
were the newest ones, and new was the last thing she would have thought
this book to be.

"Oh, we'll be through with it before that," she said.

"I wouldn't be too sure," remarked Miss Dowitcher, in rather a peculiar
voice Susan thought.  But she stamped the book with a will, and a
minute later Susan and the others emerged from the library into the
bright, new-washed June morning.

If you had seen the five children coming down the library steps that
day, you would have thought they belonged to two families, and this was
true.

John and Susan were tall and light-haired and calm.  Barnaby and Abbie
and Fredericka were little and quick and dark.

"You two look just the way you are," Barnaby had said one day, back
when the two families had first met.  "You look worthy and dependable.
You look like people who would be president and vice president of the
class."

"Well," admitted Susan apologetically, "we usually are."

She and John were president and vice president of the fifth grade this
year.  They were in the same class, not because they were twins (which
they weren't) but because John had been very sick once and missed a
whole year of school.  But that was long ago.

Now John was big and strong and played quarterback on the school
football team.  Susan was captain of girls' soccer, and they were both
rather good at chess.  In schoolwork their marks generally averaged B,
or at least B minus.  Almost everybody liked them, even teachers, and
their days were pleasant if uneventful.

Or at least that was the way things had always been up till last summer.

But then last summer Barnaby moved into the house across the road and
turned out to be in their room in school, and after that things were
changed.

Barnaby was a person with ideas.

"I don't see what you see in that little runt," big Pete Schroeder said
to John at football practice one day back in the fall, when Barnaby was
still the new boy in Miss Dugdale's room.  "I don't see what you want
to go round with him all the time for."

"It's like this," John told him.  "He has ideas.  And he's my best
friend.  So lay off."

Big Pete Schroeder laid off.  Because John's word was law in
five-one-A.  The only one who could tell John what to do was Barnaby.
Barnaby had ideas.

The ideas Barnaby had weren't always good ones, but he had them one
after another, all day long.  And some of them were exciting.

He believed in magic, for one thing, or said he did.  He believed that
anything could happen, any minute, and that sometimes you could _make_
things happen, if you tried hard enough.  And he could think up
wonderful games and ways to make the most boring things seem like fun.

Nobody would ever have taken Barnaby for the president of anything.  He
was not dignified enough.  And everybody did not like him as much as
John and Susan did.  He was stubborn and hot-tempered and impatient,
and when he disagreed with people, he started arguments.  Miss Dugdale
said the trouble with Barnaby was he was opinionated.

Susan sometimes tried to reason with Barnaby for his own good.  And
other times John had to step in and defend him when he got into fights
with boys who were bigger than he was.

That was one thing about Barnaby, even his enemies agreed.  He had
spunk.  He wasn't afraid of anybody.  But he wasn't really at his best
with his fists.  He was more of a brain.

It was typical of him, Susan and John felt, to have an interesting and
unusual name and to have sisters with interesting names, too, Abigail
and Fredericka.

"_Our_ names sound just like us," Susan complained one day after
Barnaby had come into their lives.

"Good old Susan and John," agreed John.

Barnaby liked his own name.  He was proud of its differentness and
would never answer to "Barney" or any other nickname.  And Fredericka
was just the same.  People took their lives in their hands who dared to
call her "Freddy."  Fredericka was the baby of the family and even
fiercer-tempered than Barnaby.

But everybody called Abigail Abbie.

Abbie was that kind of person, just jolly and friendly, with no temper
at all.  Barnaby always said Abbie must be a throwback, only he
couldn't decide what she was a throwback to.  She wasn't a bit like the
rest of the family.

"That's 'cause she's the middle one," said Barnaby's father,
overhearing this one afternoon.  "Middle ones are mild.  Only don't
count on it.  She may surprise you some day."  He ruffled Abbie's hair,
and Abbie gave him a loving look.

Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka's father was a nice man.  He was a
singer on television, but not a famous one yet.  Mostly you saw him as
one of a quartet singing that his beer was Finegold, the dry beer, or
wanting someone to be sociable and have a Poopsi.

He was little and quick and dark like Barnaby, and when he was at home
playing croquet or badminton with the kids, he looked more like their
brother than their father.  But he wasn't home so very often, because
with three children to support, he had to go in to New York at all
kinds of hours on all kinds of different singing jobs.

Barnaby's mother used to be a dancer, but now she went whizzing around
all day in her old car, trying to sell other people houses, to help
make ends meet and keep up their payments on their own house.  Their
house was new and little, just large enough to hold a family of five.

Susan and John's house across the road was big and old.  Sometimes
Susan thought it was too big for just her and John and Grannie.

Susan and John's parents had died a long time ago, the same year John
was so sick.  After that Grannie came to stay with them, but whether
she was taking care of them or they were taking care of her was never
quite clear.  Susan and John often felt as if Grannie were the child
and they were the grownups.  Grannie was like that.

She was little and frail and older than most grandmothers and yet
almost too energetic.  And she was so unexpected in what she might do
and often did, such as climbing cherry trees or shoveling snow off the
walk, that Susan and John hated to leave her alone in the house any
more than they had to.  Sometimes one of them would miss a party sooner
than have both of them go out for a whole evening at the same time.

Not that Grannie would have climbed trees or shoveled snow in the dark
of night, but she would probably think of something just as dangerous
and unsuitable.

So altogether it was wonderful for Susan and John when Barnaby moved
into the little new house and they had a friend right at home, almost
in the front yard.

And then to have the friend turn out to be a person with ideas was
almost too good to be true.

One of the ideas Barnaby had was that Susan and John should get
acquainted with the public library.  Up till then John hardly read
anything at all, outside of school.  And Susan mostly read about Sue
Barton, student nurse.

But books were Barnaby's life blood, maybe because he was an author
himself.  He had a book of his own in his mind, and some of it down on
paper, but he would never talk about it or tell the others what it was.

Except that he had told a little of it to Abbie, for she was a poet, or
hoped to be, and would understand.

Most of the time when Barnaby wasn't having ideas or thinking about his
own book, he was reading other people's.  He read one a day, at
_least_, and was anxious that his friends should do the same.  It was
Barnaby who had decided that Saturday was library day.

Each Saturday morning, as soon as breakfast was over, the five children
would ride along with Barnaby's mother on her way to the office (and
with Barnaby's father, too, if he were catching the train for an early
rehearsal) and get off at the library corner.

Later, after an hour or two of rummaging and browsing (and a lot of
advice from Barnaby), they would come down the library steps and walk
along the village street that turned into the curving country road
home, reading as they went.  And Barnaby had made a game of that, too.
Each one got to read part of his most interesting-looking book out
loud, and then the others were free to criticize.

This particular June morning started out no differently from the
others.  As the five children wandered along Cherry Street, Barnaby
opened his top book hopefully and began chapter one.  But after only a
paragraph or two he leafed over to the back, glanced at the last pages,
and shut the cover with a disgusted bang.

"I thought so," he said.  "Of all the gyps!  It calls itself _The Magic
Door_, but there's not a speck of real magic in it anywhere!  It's just
about this boy that learns to get along with these other people by
being friendly and stuff.  And the magic door's just the door of good
fellowship or something.  Man, do I despise a book like that!"

And the others could not have agreed with him more.  Usually the five
children could spot a book like that a mile off, though.  It wasn't
very often that they got fooled.

So then, of course, Fredericka had to read about Ozma's birthday party
from the end of _The Road to Oz_, the way she almost always did.  The
others never minded listening to this once again.  It took them back to
their own happy, carefree, innocent childhood.

When she had finished, Barnaby looked around at the others.  "Anybody
else?"

Ordinarily Susan would have been the last to answer.  She wasn't a
quick reader out loud and was afraid of disgracing herself in Barnaby's
hearing by stumbling over long words.  But today she looked at the
little old shabby-looking book on the top of her pile, and something
made her change her mind.

"I've got this book here," she said.

"What is it?" said Barnaby.  "Who's it by?"

"I don't know," said Susan.  "It doesn't seem to say.  I just kind of
think it might be interesting."  And she opened the worn red cover and
began to read.

These are the words that Susan read:


"'The best kind of book,' said Barnaby, 'is a magic book.'

'Naturally,' said John.

'The best kind of magic book,' said Barnaby, leaning back against the
edge of the long, low library table and surveying the crowded
bookshelves, only seeming somehow to look beyond them and beyond
everything else, too, the way he so often did, 'is when it's about
ordinary people like us, and then something happens and it's magic.'

'Like when you find a nickel, except it isn't a nickel--it's a
half-magic talisman,' said Susan.

'Or you're playing in the front yard and somebody asks is this the road
to Butterfield,' said Abbie.

'Only it isn't at all-it's the road to Oz!' shrilled Fredericka,
jigging up and down excitedly..."


Susan's voice trailed off.  She looked at the others.

"It can't be," said Barnaby.

"It is," said Susan.  "It's about _us_!  All of us, and every single
thing we said!"

"Let's see."

Barnaby reached for the book, rather greedily Susan thought, and yet
what of it?  This was no time to be worrying about manners, and Barnaby
could read the fastest.  He was reading fast now, flipping over the
pages one after the other.

"You're right," he muttered as he read.  "We're all in it."

"How could we be?" said John.  "How'd we get there without our knowing
it?"

"I don't know," said Barnaby, "but we're there all right.  It tells
about us, and our parents, and your Grannie, even.  And a lot more
about me being stubborn and unpopular and you sticking up for me," he
went on, his face getting rather red.

"What does it say about _me_?" said Fredericka.

"It says you're fierce-tempered," said Barnaby.

"Well, I am," said Fredericka.

There was a silence.  Everybody stopped walking and just stood there.

"What's happening?" said Abbie.  "Do you suppose we're magic, suddenly?"

"Either we are," said John, "or that book is."

"Maybe it isn't a book at all," said Fredericka in eerie tones.

"I don't like it," said Abbie.  "It's creepy.  Let's take it back and
tell the library we don't want it."

"Or bury it with a stake through its heart," said Barnaby.

But nobody laughed.

"Do you suppose," said Susan, "we're not really real at all but just
characters in this book somebody wrote?"

This was a sobering thought.

"I don't _want_ to be not real," said Fredericka, all of a sudden not
seeming fierce-tempered at all but just little and scared.

There was another silence.  Everybody looked at Barnaby.  Barnaby
thought a minute.  Then he shook his head.

"No," he said, "it can't be that.  Because when the book tells about me
and Abbie and Fredericka, it says we've just moved here.  But I
remember being me long before that."

"Maybe that part of you was in _another_ book," said Susan.  She didn't
mean to say it, but it just slipped out.

Barnaby was undaunted.  "All right," he said.  "Suppose we _are_ book
characters?  It never bothered us before, before we thought about it.
It doesn't have to bother us now.  Characters have all kinds of
interesting things happen to them.  And here's a whole bookful of
adventures and we're just at the beginning!"

"What happens next?" said Fredericka, standing on tip-toe and trying to
see over Barnaby's shoulder (only she was too little to reach).

"What happens at the _end_?" said Abbie.  "That's what _I_'m worrying
about!"

"How far did you get?" said Susan.  "Did the Susan in the book find an
old book in the library, too, and start reading out loud from it?"

"That's where I stopped," said Barnaby.  "'Susan opened the worn red
cover and began to read,' it says."

"Just think," John said dreamily.  "If we find a book about people like
us and the people in the book find a book about people like _them_, and
the people in that book find a book about people like..."

"Don't!" cried Susan.  "It's like those awful arithmetic problems that
go on and on."  She turned back to Barnaby.  "_Then_ what does the book
say.  Is it taking down everything we're saying now, like a
stenographer?"

"No," said Barnaby.  "It doesn't say _anything_ then.  The page ends
there."

"Turn over," said Fredericka.

"Look in the back," said Abbie.

Barnaby tried.  "I can't," he told them.  "It's stuck or something.
The whole rest of the book's shut solid tight."

"I suppose that's as much as they want us to know," said Abbie darkly.
"And now I suppose the awful thing happens."

"What awful thing?" said Fredericka.

"I don't know.  Some awful thing.  It stands to reason."

"Not necessarily," said Barnaby.  And then even he broke off and caught
his breath and looked around warily.

But what happened was nothing at all.  Except that the sun went on
shining and the sky went on being blue and some cars drove by and an
oriole sang and a woman came out of a house and began beating a carpet.

After a few minutes of this usualness everyone found himself breathing
more regularly again.  The five children found themselves walking along
again, too, and waiting for Barnaby to begin having more ideas.  And
pretty soon he did.

"Of course," he said.  "I'm beginning to see it all.  Don't you
remember?  We said we wanted a special magic book of our own."

"About five children just like us," said Abbie.  "_You_ said that
part."  And she pointed an accusing finger at Fredericka.

"No matter who said what," said Barnaby, "it looks as if we got it,
somehow.  But _something_ had to make the wish come true.  And what
else but the book itself could have done that?"  He turned to Susan.
"Where'd you find it in the first place?"

"On the bottom shelf of the fairy-tale section," she said, remembering.

Barnaby nodded excitedly.  "It all adds up.  Think of it sitting there
all those years, with the magic from all those other books dripping
down onto it!  It's prob'ly _soaked_ with magic powers by now.  It's
prob'ly been sitting there waiting for somebody to come along and make
a wish in front of it.  And we came and wanted a magic story; so that's
what it turned into.  Prob'ly if we'd wanted pirates, it'd have turned
into a book about a pirate ship with us on board.  But we asked for
magic; so that's what we got."

"What kind of wish is that?" said Fredericka.  "What good is a book
about us?  We _know_ about us."

"We don't know what's coming next," said Barnaby.  "All we've had is
the beginning.  What else did we wish for?  Think back."

"I said the people in the book would be walking home from somewhere and
the magic would start suddenly before they knew it," said Susan.

"Well?" said Barnaby.  "_That_ part came true.  And then _I_ said
they'd have to tame the magic and learn its rules and thwart it and
make the most of it.  So I guess it's up to us to do that from now on."

Barnaby was certainly having ideas today.  In fact, he was having them
so fast the others could hardly keep up with him.  But they were
exciting ideas, all the same.

"You mean," said Susan, "there's a whole book still going to happen to
us?"

"That's what I think," said Barnaby.

"But if it's all there in the book," said John, "why not use the magic
and wish the book open?  So we can read the next chapter and know what
to expect?"

"I don't think it works like that," said Barnaby.  "I think that'd be
against the rules.  Anyway, maybe there _isn't_ any next chapter, yet.
I think if we could pry open the rest of the pages, they'd prob'ly be
blank.  I think it's prob'ly up to us to make more wishes and have them
come true, so as to fill the pages up!"

"Sort of make up the book as we go along?" said Abbie.

"You mean it's ours to _use_?" said Susan.  "Like a wishing ring, sort
of?"

"Only mixed up with those things they have in offices," said
Fredericka.  "Those things you talk into."

"Dictaphones," said John.

"Whatever they're called," said Fredericka.

"That's the idea," said Barnaby.  "More or less."

Everyone thought about this.

"That book," said John, "had better be handled with care from now on."

"Don't anybody dare even _think_ about wishing," said Susan, "till
we've talked it out and decided what kind of adventure we want."

"_You_ ought to do the deciding," said Barnaby.  "You're the one who
found the book in the first place."

That was typical of Barnaby.  He might be grabby, but he was fair.
Susan's hand went out toward the book.  Then she pulled it back and
shook her head.  Barnaby was the one with ideas.  Let him go on having
them.

"No, you go first.  You'll do it better."

"No, you ought to be the one."

"No, honestly, I'd rather."

"Oh, for heaven's sake," said Fredericka.  "If everybody else is too
polite around here, let _me_!"  And she laid hold of the book.

"Stop her, somebody!" cried Abbie.  But it was too late.  Fredericka
was already talking, gabbling her words without stopping to breathe for
fear someone would interrupt her, the way youngest children in families
soon learn to do.

"I wish we'd have a magic adventure, with wizards and witches and magic
things in it, and I wish it'd start right now, this minute, so we'll
know for certain it's really our wish coming true and not just a
quincidence!"

"That's done it," said Barnaby, when Fredericka finally stopped just
before utter breath failed.

But it didn't seem to have.  Nothing happened.

"Maybe the book didn't hear her," said Abbie.

"Maybe I'm supposed to kiss it or something," said Fredericka.

"Maybe we're supposed to keep on walking," said Barnaby.  "The minute
isn't up yet."

They kept on walking.  Round a bend in the road they came on a house
they had always specially noticed in the past.  It was a perfectly
ordinary-looking house in a perfectly ordinary-looking garden, but it
had an interesting sign by the driveway.

"Slow," warned the sign.  "Cats, et cetera."

In the past the five children had often stopped and waited by the
driveway, in hope that something other than a cat would come out.  But
up till this second nothing had.

At this second (which happened to be the fifty-ninth since Fredericka
had made her wish), something did.

What came out was a dragon.




2.  Using It

The dragon was bright red all over, except for its eyes, which were
green.  It was flying low over the driveway, puffing purple smoke as it
came.

Abbie stopped short and clutched the others.  But Fredericka pressed
forward curiously.  And the dragon seemed just as curious as
Fredericka.  It hovered over her in hawk-like circles, peering down.
For a moment their eyes met.  Then it scooped her up in its scaly grasp
and flew away with her, over the trees.

"Stop!" cried John, starting to run in the direction it had taken.

"Do something!" cried Abbie, pulling at Barnaby.  "Use the book!
Wish!"  She turned to Susan.

"Wait," said Barnaby.  He was as pale as the others, but he was having
ideas, all the same.  "You'll never find it that way," he called to
John.  "It's prob'ly over some other county by now."

John stopped running, for indeed the dragon (and Fredericka) had
disappeared in the far distance, and the last puff of purple smoke was
merging into the clouds.

"And let's not make any more wishes without stopping to think," Barnaby
went on.  "Fredericka did that, and look what happened!  But she asked
for a magic adventure and this is it.  I think we ought to start by
finding out whose dragon it is."

"Look!" said Susan, pointing up the driveway.

A ground-floor window of the house was open, and a face was staring out
at the four children.  The face wore a surprised expression.

Abbie, usually so timid, ran right across the lawn and up to the face,
and the others followed.

"Was that your dragon?" she demanded sternly.

"Oh dear," said the face.  "Is _that_ what it was?  I was _afraid_ that
was what it was!"

"Well, you ought to be more careful!" Abbie scolded.  "You let it get
away, and now it's stolen my little sister!"

"Oh dear," said the face again.  "I _am_ sorry."

Now that they were near, the four children could see that the face
belonged to a little round gentleman with a bald head.  He wore an
old-fashioned long coat, a fancy vest, and a flowing tie.  In his hand
was a tall silk hat, which he was regarding in a distracted manner.

"I don't know what can have gone wrong," he went on.  "Such a thing
never happened before.  I was practicing my tricks the way I always do
after breakfast, and I reached into my hat to pull out a rabbit, and
_something_ came out, only it was something _else_!"

"It certainly _was_!" said John.

"I could tell it wasn't a rabbit," said the round gentleman, "from the
feel.  But I didn't dare to look.  Then it went whoosh, and it was
gone."

Barnaby turned to the others.  "You can see what prob'ly happened.
Fredericka prob'ly made her wish at that exact minute, and that prob'ly
did it."

The round gentleman did not appear to have heard this.  "I'm sorry to
have inconvenienced any sister of yours," he went on.  "Still, it shows
I haven't lost my knack, doesn't it?"

Barnaby looked at him.  And he remembered the rest of Fredericka's
wish.  "You must be a wizard," he said.

The round gentleman looked pleased.  "How did you guess?  It is true
that is my profession, though 'magician' is the proper term.  In
vaudeville they called me The Great Oswaldo."

"What's Vaudeville?" whispered Abbie to Barnaby.

"It's a kind of show they used to have, back before television," he
whispered back.

"Oh," said Abbie.  She had thought Vaudeville might be a magic kingdom,
rather like Oz or Narnia.  Still, at a time like this, even a stage
wizard was probably better than no wizard at all.  And the round
gentleman appeared kind.  So she said, "You'll help us, won't you?
You'll find my sister for us?"

The round gentleman looked uncertain.  "Well, I'll _try_," he said.
"Won't you come in?"  And he left the window.

"Shall we?" said Susan.

"Proceed as the door opens," said Barnaby.

But when the round gentleman opened the door of the house, the four
children hesitated.  The hall inside looked dark and spooky, and there
were sounds, a furry flumping and a padding and a purring and a murmur
of mews.

"Better not.  He's got more wild beasts!" warned John.

"Merely a few household pets," said the round gentleman.  "When I
retired, I thought a cat would be company, but they mounted up."  And
he switched on the hall light.

The four children regarded the scene inside with interest.  Cats
wreathed about the round gentleman's feet, and the bottoms of his
trousers were patterned with their paw prints.  And the children knew
now what the "et cetera" on the sign had stood for.  The "et cetera"
was kittens.  They sat on the stair and stared through the banisters
and played on the plate rail.

"Aw!" said Abbie, running to pick up the smallest and fluffiest kitten
and hold it against her.  And the other three followed her into the
hall.  As they did so, a woman appeared from the back of the house.

"Who are all these?" she said.  "Feet on my good rugs.  As if them cats
weren't enough!"

"It's all right, Mrs. Funkhouser," said the round gentleman.  "These
visitors are for _me_.  Mrs. Funkhouser is my landlady," he went on,
when the woman had muttered herself away.  "A good woman, but not much
artistic temperament.  And now if you'll step this way?"

He went through a door at the end of the hall, and the four children
followed.  When they saw the room beyond the door, Abbie's eyes grew
wide with wonder, and John said, "Whew!"

The room looked very much as yours does when you have played with your
Mysto-Magic set and forgotten to pick it up and then the cat has got
in.  Only in this case it was more like twenty magic sets and thirty
cats.  Crystal balls and bottles of colored liquid and jars of colored
powder and phials and retorts and spirit lamps were on every table and
shelf.  But most of the bottles were tipped over and most of the powder
was spilled.  Cats and kittens moved among the remains.

"I'm afraid we're a little untidy this morning," said the round
gentleman.  "I don't know what Mrs. Funkhouser would say."

The four children thought they knew what she would say all too well.

"However," the gentleman went on, looking at the litter of
paraphernalia and fluttering his hands in rather a helpless way, "we'll
see what we can do.  I'm afraid I may be a bit rusty.  It's years now
since my farewell appearance.  And I never found a lost girl, even in
the old days.  I'm not quite certain how it's done.  I used to saw a
lady in half at one time, but it's not quite the same thing."

"It certainly isn't!" said Susan indignantly.

"I might try the hat trick again and see what comes out this time,"
suggested the round gentleman.

But when he put his hand in the hat, what came out wasn't Fredericka or
even a white rabbit.  What came out was the smallest kitten, who had
left Abbie's shoulder and crawled into the hat when no one was looking.

"Sorry," said the gentleman.  "I suppose it would be more to the point
to get the dragon back _into_ the hat, wouldn't it?  Or transform him
to some more harmless form.  Where's my box of tricks?"  He found a
card index and riffled through it.  "Transformations," he muttered.
"There's only one listed here, but as I remember, it was always
colorful."

He found a blue handkerchief in the litter on the nearest table and
drew it through a wooden ring.

The handkerchief was transformed from blue to red, but Fredericka did
not return.  And if the dragon (wherever it was by now) was altered in
any way, it did not put in an appearance to make the fact known.

"You're not trying," said Abbie accusingly.  She was beginning to
suspect that the round gentleman might be a _good_ wizard without being
very good at it.

"Yes, I am," said the round gentleman.  "The third time's always the
one that works."  His eyes roamed the room, rather desperately Susan
thought.  "There's _this_," he said, picking up a bottle of purple
liquid, seemingly at random.

"What does it do?" said John.

"It's _supposed_ to make a red flare," said the round gentleman, "but
the way things have been going this morning, _anything_ might happen!"
And he emptied the bottle into a bowl.

As he did so, Susan had an idea.

She wasn't sure yet just how the magic of the book worked.  It had
already proved it could get them into adventures, but after that, did
it just sit back and watch or would it help?

Who could say?  Still, there was no harm in trying.  And she felt sorry
for the round gentleman and wanted to help him (to say nothing of
Fredericka).  So she held the book firmly in both hands and wished with
all her might that this time the magic would prove successful.

The round gentleman struck a match and lit the fluid in the bowl.  It
made a red flare, all right.  But other things happened, too.  There
was a whooshing noise, followed by a whirring one.

"It wasn't supposed to do _that_," said the round gentleman.  "Or
_that_, either," he added, as there was a sudden jolt, and everybody's
stomach felt the way yours does when you're in an elevator and it
starts going up too fast.

"We're moving," said Barnaby.  "Flying, I _think_."

John ran to the window.  "That's right, we're right off the ground.
We're heading the same way the dragon did, too!"

Two treetops passed by the window, going from left to right, just to
prove it.

"Oh dear," said the round gentleman, turning pale.  "What will Mrs.
Funkhouser say?  She always claims she runs a well-run house, but I
don't think she'd want it to _fly_!"

What Mrs. Funkhouser would say was soon made clear.

"Mr. Oswaldo," she said, appearing sternly in the doorway, "you put
this house down right this minute!"

The round gentleman shook his head.  "I would if I could," he said,
"but I can't.  I don't know how."

"This," said Mrs. Funkhouser, "is the last straw.  Mama always said
never rent to theatricals or they'd raise the roof.  If we ever get
back to lower Weed Street, your room'll be wanted!"

"I'm sorry," said the round gentleman.  But he didn't look sorry.  He
was smiling.  "Still, it's a good trick, isn't it?  I didn't know I had
it in me!"

Susan said nothing.  But she gave the book a grateful pat.

Barnaby saw her do it.  Their eyes met, and he seemed to put two and
two together.  He nodded to himself.  Then he turned to the round
gentleman.

"You keep it up," he said kindly.  "You're doing fine."


When the dragon first flew away with Fredericka, she thought her last
hour had come.  But as the minutes went by and it didn't actually bite,
her hopes rose.  Dragon stories in books sometimes had happy endings.
Maybe a prince would come and rescue her.  Or maybe Barnaby would.

By the time she dared to look down, the landscape beneath wasn't modern
Connecticut any more.  The country below had a long-ago, fairy-tale
look.  There were rings in the grass that could be fairy rings and
caves in the mountains that might belong to gnomes.

"Where am I?" she murmured.

"In magic realms, of course," said the dragon, "and faery lands
forlorn.  That was what you wished for, wasn't it?"

Fredericka jumped (as well as she could in the dragon's grasp).  She
hadn't expected an answer.  Then she took courage.  If the dragon could
talk, it was probably a superior type, perhaps even a friendly one.
"How do wishes work, _exactly_?" she said.  "I've always wanted to
know."

"I don't know how they work for _you_," said the dragon, "but for us
magic things they're sort of doorways into the real world.  We'll
always get in if we can.  Only there aren't many doors left.  You must
have found one of the last."

"Oh," said Fredericka.  She thought for a minute.  "But if you wanted
to get into _our_ world, why didn't you stay there?"

"What's even better," said the dragon, "is to steal somebody out of
your world into ours.  The door works both ways.  You've heard of
fairies kidnaping children.  It's the same with dragons.  Only
different."

Fredericka cleared her throat.  "Different in what way?" she asked
cautiously.  "Where are you taking me?"

"To my lair, of course," said the dragon.

"Why?" said Fredericka.

The dragon appeared embarrassed.  "For the usual purpose," it said
finally.  "Let's not talk about it."

"You mean...?" said Fredericka.

"_You_ know," said the dragon.

"Oh," said Fredericka, in a small voice.

There was a pause.

"Why?" said Fredericka.  "Why are you so mean?"

"Made that way," said the dragon, shrugging its wings (and causing
rather a bumpy downdraft).

"Have you ever thought," suggested Fredericka, "of going on a vegetable
diet?  Trees might be tasty."

The dragon shook its head.  "Meat," it said, "is meat and drink to me.
Of course I prefer princess, but it's almost gone off the market
lately.  Damsel generally does as well.  Or maiden.  I've never tried
small girl before, but it should be tender, from the feel."  And it
gripped her tighter in its steely claws.

Fredericka tried to square her jaw.  "I'm _not_," she said.  "I'm tough
as _anything_!"  And she made up her mind that she would _try_ to be
when the time came.

But in spite of herself, her lip trembled and her spirits faltered and
her heart sank.  She wondered where Barnaby and the others were, and if
pretty soon they would wish on the book and everything would come out
right, or if her own wish had foiled the book and the magic had gone
out of it and she would never see her family and friends and the real
world again.

And the dragon flew on.


Meanwhile, a few miles back, so did Mrs. Funkhouser's house.  And now
Abbie, at the window, was looking down on the same fairy-tale landscape
Fredericka had observed a few minutes before.

"What country _is_ it, do you suppose?" she said.  "It can't be Oz, or
it'd be all blue or yellow or red or purple or with emeralds."

"I don't care for the look of it," said Mrs. Funkhouser, joining her at
the window.  "It's not a convenient neighborhood.  There's no
supermarket.  I want to go home."

"It's too late," said Barnaby, peering over their shoulders.  "We're
landing."

The meadows and caves were suddenly rushing nearer, and a crowd of
people could be seen below, staring upwards.

John joined the watchers at the window.  Susan and the round gentleman
hung back, but a second later they went sliding along the floor.  The
combined weight of the others proved too much for the house's balance,
and it slowly tilted, then tipped forward on its face.  All the people
fell on top of all the _other_ people, and all the cats and kittens
fell furrily and fussily and waulingly and scratchingly on top of
_them_.  The smallest kitten would have fallen right through the
window, but Barnaby caught it in time.

"Everybody back!" he cried.  "Distribute your weight or we'll crash!"

The others climbed up the slanty floor and placed themselves about the
room till the house righted itself, and not a second too soon.  There
was a slight jar.  Then all was still, but only for a moment.
Following the jar came a roaring sound from without.

"The dragon!" cried Abbie in alarm.

"No," said Barnaby.  "It's people, and I think they're cheering."

"Come on," said John.  And he and Barnaby and Susan and Abbie and the
round gentleman made their way out of the house.

Outside was a primrosey meadow, with an old-fashioned-looking village
in the background.  A crowd of peasants stood nearby.  You could tell
they were peasants by their peasant costumes.  When they spoke, they
spoke peasant, too.

"Hooray, hooray!" they said.  "Be you come to kill the dragon and save
us all?"

"Why, yes," said Barnaby.  "At least I hope so."

The leader of the peasants came nearer and looked them over.  "Well,"
he said, "leastways you be a change.  Mostly we get princes.  Mostly
they come by horse, not house.  Mostly they don't kill it, neither.
Mostly they get et."

"_We_ won't," said Abbie, hoping that she spoke the truth.  "We brought
our magic.  We brought a wizard, too!"

"Magician, please," corrected the round gentleman.

The first peasant looked at him.  Then he looked beyond him.  "You'm
brought a witch, too, seems like."

The four children followed his gaze.  Mrs. Funkhouser was just emerging
from the house.  So were the cats.  But the cats' nerves had been
rudely shocked by the tilting and tipping of the house, and they were
still arching their backs and hissing.  Some of the more maddened ones
were climbing up Mrs. Funkhouser's dress and clawing at her hair.  To
say that as a group they presented a witchlike aspect would be putting
it mildly.

But Mrs. Funkhouser had heard the peasant's comment and resented it.
"I," she told him, "am a respectable woman."

The peasant nodded.  "Good," he said.  "You be a _good_ witch, then.
That's the best kind."

"And now," said Barnaby, trying to sound more courageous than he felt,
"lead us to your dragon."

"It be right there," said the peasant.

"Where?" said all four children, jumping.

"There, in the lair," said the peasant, pointing.

The four children looked where he pointed.  Beyond the house was a cave
in the rock that they hadn't noticed before.  A huffing sound of
breathing came from within, and with each huff a puff of purple smoke
issued from the cavern's mouth.

"He sounds awfully _relaxed_," said Susan.  "Do you suppose he's eaten
her already?"

"No," said the first peasant, "he hain't.  He feeds prompt at noon.
'Tis the custom."

"Mornings he goes a-hunting," said a second peasant.  "All among the
local maidens.  'Tis a curse on us."

"One a day he eats," said a third, "till the hero comes who'll kill the
beast and rule the country.  'Tis the prophecy."

"Not many maidens left by now," said a fourth peasant.  "Seems like the
race may die out afore he does.  'Tis a problem."

"Today's maiden makes no never-minds, though," said a fifth.  "'Tis a
stranger."

"Nobody we know," agreed a sixth.

"So _that's_ all right," said the seventh (and last) peasant.

Abbie turned on the crowd of peasants indignantly.  "It is _not_ all
right!" she cried.  "She is _not_ a stranger!  She's my little sister!"
And before Barnaby could stop her, she ran to the mouth of the cave.
"Fredericka!" she called wildly.

Within the lair Fredericka heard her sister's voice and struggled in
the dragon's grip.  "Help!" she called back.

"Hush now," said the dragon fussily, bending over her.  "I never like
it when folks scream.  Spoils the taste going down and upsets my
digestion, later."

"It _does_?" said Fredericka, considerably encouraged.  And she
screamed again, even louder.

"What a horrible sound!  It must be eating her _now_!" cried Susan,
holding her ears.

"No," said the first peasant, "it hain't.  It feeds prompt at noon, and
it feeds in public, to scarify us."

John looked at his watch.  "It's three minutes to twelve," he said.

"We've got to do something fast," said Barnaby, turning to the round
gentleman.

"Oh dear," said the round gentleman.  "Now the time has come, I don't
believe I _can_!"

But a new voice was heard.  "Shame on you, Mr. Oswaldo," it said.  "The
one time your pesky magic might be some use, don't you _dare_ back out!"

Everyone turned in surprise.  It was Mrs. Funkhouser.  Apparently
beneath her cross exterior she had hidden depths, and Fredericka's
cries had plumbed them.

"You save that little girl," she said now, "or take a week's notice
from Tuesday!"

"Well, I'll _try_," said the round gentleman, "but I doubt if I'll be
much help."

"Of course you will," said Susan encouragingly.  "It stands to reason.
The book wouldn't have brought you in, otherwise.  Or you, either," she
added, turning to Mrs. Funkhouser.

Mrs. Funkhouser gave her a sharp look.  "What book would that be?"

Susan looked at Barnaby, and Barnaby gave a little nod.  "Well, you see
we have this magic book," said Susan.

"We're not sure yet just how it works," said John.

"But it more or less began the whole thing," said Barnaby.

"Let me see it," said Mrs. Funkhouser and the round gentleman, both
speaking at once.

Susan started to answer.  But at that moment the steeple bells in the
nearby village chimed noon, and the dragon emerged from its lair.  And
her words were drowned in a gasp.

The children had had only a fleeting glimpse of the dragon before.  Now
as it paraded up and down, displaying itself to the crowd, they saw its
scaly scarlet sides and its hideous hungry jaws and its calamitous
wreathing tail, and their hearts sank.

"Don't just stand there.  _Do_ something!" Fredericka called to her
friends and relations, from the dragon's grasp.

Susan roused herself.  "I will," she said.  And she handed the book to
the round gentleman.

If you have understood about the book so far, you will know that for
each person its power was different, because to each person it was the
particular book that person had always longed to find.

So that while for the five children it was a magic story with them in
it, for the round gentleman it was something else again.

"'_Wishful Ways for Wizards_!'" he read, from the title page.  "Why,
this is wonderful!  If I'd had this when I was in vaudeville, I needn't
have retired in the first place!"  He turned the book's pages, sampling
its contents.  "'How to Turn Day to Night,' 'How to Tell Chalk from
Cheese,' 'One Hundred Easy Card Tricks'!" he read.

"Don't just _skim_!  Find the right place!" called the captive
Fredericka.

"To be sure," said the round gentleman shamefacedly.  "I was
forgetting.  'How to Shrink a Dragon.'  I'm sure I saw it here
somewhere.  Now _where_...?"  He leafed through the pages.

"Oh, for pity's sake let _me_!" said Mrs. Funkhouser, taking the book
from him.  But of course once in her housewifely hands, the book was a
book of another color.

"'_Helpful Hints for Homemakers_,'" she read.  "'You take your
skillet...'"

The dragon, annoyed at this interruption, glared in her direction, and
its gaze fell upon the book's title.

"That isn't what it says," said the dragon.  "It says, '_Dreadful Deeds
for Dragons_.'  And I want it!"  It set Fredericka down, keeping one
claw on her for safekeeping, and stretched its other claw toward Mrs.
Funkhouser.

"Don't look at _me_, you nasty creature, don't!" said Mrs. Funkhouser,
snatching the book away.  "Oh, you would, would you?" she added, as the
dragon shot out an angry tongue of flame and a cloud of smoke.  She
consulted the book.  "'To put out an oven fire, use salt,'" she read.
"That ought to do it.  Fetch the salt, somebody."

John ran into the house.

"Stop interfering," said the dragon.  "Do I have to eat you, too?  Oh,
very well!"  And it opened its cavernous mouth.

Then it hesitated.  Mrs. Funkhouser looked as if she would be all
gristle.  Fredericka undoubtedly would prove more toothsome.  Should he
save her till last or eat her first, as an appetizer?

But he who hesitates is often lost.

While the dragon was making up its mind, John came running out of the
house with the salt box, and Mrs. Funkhouser shook it full in the
dragon's face.

There was a hissing sound, and the dragon's fire went out.

I have heard it said that when a dragon's fire is put out, the dragon
is rendered harmless.  This is not true.  Because what _I_ say is, what
about the teeth?  They would still be there, fire or no fire.  In this
case they were, and the dragon now showed all of them in a snarl of
fury.

At the same time, having its fire put out hurts a dragon's pride and
lowers it in its own esteem.  And since a dragon's belief in itself is
part of a dragon's power, it is lowered in the public eye, also.  In
this case by about ten feet.  It had been a forty-foot dragon to start
with; so the change made quite a difference.

The crowd cheered.

The dragon trembled with rage and frustration and snapped at Mrs.
Funkhouser.  But it was not yet used to its new size, and its
coordination was poor.  So was its aim.

"Bite _me_, would you?" said Mrs. Funkhouser, dodging it easily.  She
consulted the book again.  "'For bites, stings, et cetera, use
household ammonia,'" she read.

Barnaby did not wait to be asked but went rushing into the house.

"This is undignified," said the dragon.  "Either get a sword and fight
me properly, or withdraw from the combat!"

Mrs. Funkhouser did not deign to answer.  Barnaby was back by now with
the bottle from under the sink, and she took it from him and emptied it
in the general direction of the dragon.

The dragon sneezed and sputtered and coughed.  Otherwise, it was not
physically hurt.  Its hurt went deeper.  To be salted and ammoniaed by
a domestic housewife is humiliating to a dragon and makes it feel small.

And when a dragon feels small, it _is_.

Small, however, is a relative term, which means that it can mean many
things.  A small lion is bigger than a large flea.

As for a small dragon, it is about the size of a large dog.  And such
now proved to be the case.

The crowd cheered again.

"This is monstrous," said the dragon, looking over its shoulder to see
what size it was _this_ time.  "You are breaking _all_ the rules.  St.
George would have shown more consideration!"

"My turn now!" cried the round gentleman, dancing up and down with
impatience and trying to catch a look at the book.  "'To Shrink a
Dragon'--I know I saw it somewhere..."

But the next turn proved to be the cats'.

When the dragon had first come out of its lair, all the cats and
kittens had hidden behind Mrs. Funkhouser's skirts.  Now, as the fumes
from the ammonia reached their sensitive nostrils, they said
"Pig-whiff!", put back their ears, and peered out.

What they saw seemed to be a large (and unusually ugly) dog at bay.  As
such, it was fair game for taunting.  The cats had already had an
extremely nerve-wracking morning, and they were in no gentle mood.

They stalked forth, lashing their tails.

You may have heard that an elephant is afraid of a mouse.  With dragons
and cats it is very much the same.  I think it has to do with claws and
scales.  The one might so easily scratch off the other.  You may have
noticed your own cat with your mother's nylon stockings.  It is the
same principle.

The dragon saw the cats coming and shrank in fear.  And once it started
shrinking, it couldn't seem to stop.

It shrank from the size of a large collie to the size of a medium-sized
poodle.  The cats stood around it in a circle, glaring and spitting.
The dragon took one look at them and shrank in fear again.

It shrank to the size of a small Pekingese, and the cats and kittens
approached it and rattled their claws against its sides.

"This is unendurable," said the dragon.  "You tickle."

It shrank until it was the size of a mouse, and the cats played with
it, batting it to and fro.

It shrank until it was the size of a small lizard or salamander (or
newt or eft).  And its protesting voice died away in a faint squeak
like the huffle of a snail in danger.

Fredericka stood up and stretched herself and looked down at the
shrunken dragon.  It was laughable to think of its eating her now.  She
might more easily have eaten it.  But she would have disdained to.

It was someone else who did.

As the five children watched in horrified fascination, the smallest
kitten pounced on the dragon and gobbled it down as easily as it might
have swallowed a fly.  Then it looked around with a surprised
expression.  Then it purred.

"Is that real purr, do you suppose?" said Abbie.  "Or is it the dragon
growling down there?"

The kitten did not enlighten her.  It went hurrying off to join its
relations, who were trying to make friends with the field mice in a
nearby cornfield (only the mice wouldn't).

And now the crowd, which had been waiting at a safe distance, came up
and surrounded the round gentleman and Mrs. Funkhouser, and more people
appeared from the neighboring village, and they all cheered and some
let off fireworks.

"Three cheers for the wonderful wizard Oswaldo!  And may he reign over
us and rule the land forever!  Three cheers for the respectable witch,
too!" cried all the people.

The round gentleman smiled and bowed and waved his hat.  As for Mrs.
Funkhouser, she pretended to be fussed and embarrassed, but you could
tell she was enjoying the applause just as much as he was.

"That wizard didn't do a thing, really," muttered Abbie to the others,
under cover of the noise the people were making.  "Mrs. Funkhouser and
the cats did it all!"

"I guess that's the way with wizards," said Barnaby.  "They let the
witches do the work and then take the credit.  It's the same way in
stories."

"Why, yes," said Fredericka.  "Even the Wizard of Oz was a humbug.
Remember?"

Then she broke off.  She had had an exciting thought.  And the more she
thought of the thought, the more exciting it was.  "You know what?" she
said.  "This could be Oz, back in prehistory times.  Before the books
tell about it.  Nobody knows what it looked like, then.  Mr. Oswaldo
could even be the real Wizard of Oz.  This could be how he got there in
the first place.  And we're in it from the beginning!"

"But in the book the real Wizard tells Dorothy he came in a balloon,"
objected Abbie.

"Yes," Fredericka admitted, "but in the book the real Wizard doesn't
always tell the truth.  Think back."

Everybody thought back.

Fredericka went up to the nearest cheering peasant and tapped him on
the shoulder.  "Please," she said, "what country is this?"

"We be called Dragonland," said the peasant, "up till now, but now all
that be changed.  Have to think up something new.  Oswaldoland, maybe."

"You see?" said Fredericka to the others.  "It all works out.  The name
could have got shortened in the mists of time.  Anyway, I'll always
think it _was_ Oz.  I'll feel part of it from now on."

"Or if it isn't," said Abbie, "it's some place else just as
interesting!"

And all agreed.

"And now," said Barnaby, "I guess it's time to go."

"How do we _do_ that?" said John.

"I'm not sure," said Barnaby.  He went up to Mrs. Funkhouser and the
round gentleman, and the other four followed.  "Are you really going to
stay and rule the country?" he asked.

"I must do as my public demands," said the round gentleman.  "They want
me.  Listen to them cheering."

"I suppose I'll have to stay, too," said Mrs. Funkhouser.
"_Somebody_'ll have to see that you're picked up and kept out of
trouble!"

"They've offered us a lovely palace," confided the Wizard (if it was
truly he).  "The one the princesses used to live in that the dragon
ate."

"Thirty rooms!" said Mrs. Funkhouser grimly.  "Think of the dusting!"

"Come, come, dear lady," said the round gentleman (who might be the
Wizard) in rather a lordly way.  "The maids of honor will attend to
that."

"I," said Mrs. Funkhouser, "have never trusted a maid yet and never
will!"

"Could we have our book now?" said Susan.  "We'll be taking it home
with us.  Are you sure you'll be all right here without it?"

"Just let me take one more quick glance," said the round gentleman.  He
studied the first three or four pages briefly.

"There!  That'll give me enough new tricks to stay in business for
years!"

Susan offered Mrs. Funkhouser a look at the book, but she waved it away.

"I won't be needing it.  Just use my common sense.  All a matter of
good housekeeping."

"What method of travel were you planning to use?" the round gentleman
asked the five children.

"That's just it," said Susan.  "We're not quite sure."

"Vanishing cream," said Mrs. Funkhouser promptly, without so much as a
glance in the book's direction.  "There's some in my top bureau
drawer."  And Fredericka ran to fetch it.

"Shall we let her?" whispered Abbie.  "What if we just _vanish_?  And
don't turn up anywhere?"

"Trust the book," counseled Barnaby.  "It's done pretty well so far."

And then Fredericka returned with the jar of vanishing cream, and Mrs.
Funkhouser rubbed a little on the foreheads of each.

But Susan clasped the book tight and wished, too, just in case.


You may wonder what vanishing feels like.  The answer is that it feels
like nothing at all.  One second the five children were standing in a
magic country (that might or might not be Oz), watching a wizard (who
might or might not be _the_ Wizard) give a demonstration of One Hundred
Easy Card Tricks, while a crowd of peasants cheered.

The next second they found themselves sitting on the front steps of
Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka's little white house in Connecticut.

"Back from the library already?" said Barnaby and Abbie and
Fredericka's mother, coming out the door on her way to try to sell
someone a split-level colonial ranch house.  "You were quick."

"I don't _feel_ quick," said Abbie, when her mother had driven off.  "I
feel as if I'd been away for years.  Do you suppose that place really
was Oz?"

"If it was," said Fredericka, "I'm disappointed.  I'd have thought we'd
meet famous people, Dorothy and the Scarecrow and all those."

Barnaby shook his head.  "I don't think that's how it works.  I think
it's more like this.  Everybody has to go to Oz--or any other magic
country--in his own way.  The adventures that are written down in books
have already _been_.  If we tried to horn in on them, we'd be just
tagging along.  So we have to make our own adventures.  It's as if
there were different doors."

"That's what the dragon said," said Fredericka dreamily.

"It did?" said Barnaby, interested.  "What else did it say?"

"I forget," said Fredericka.  "But it was interesting at the time.
That dragon had a nice side, in a way.  I'm kind of sorry it's gone."

"Maybe it isn't," said John.  "Maybe its better self will merge with
the kitten."

"Or maybe its _worse_ self will," said Abbie.  "Maybe the kitten will
grow up with man-eating tendencies.  They'll have to watch over it and
curb it and mold its infant mind."

"Only we'll never know whether they did or not, or what happened."
Susan sighed.

There was a silence.

"Anyway, we're started now," said Barnaby.  "It's your turn tomorrow."

Susan shook her head.  "Tomorrow's Sunday."

"What of it?" said Fredericka.  "It's summer.  There's no Sunday
school."

"Even so," said Susan.  "Magic's not a Sunday thing.  Not that it's
sinful or anything, I don't mean.  But they just wouldn't mix."

"How'll we get through a whole day?" said Abbie.  "The thought might be
father to the wish."

"Better shut the book up somewhere safe," said Barnaby.

"I'm going to," said Susan.

"Without reading the chapter, now it's finished?" Fredericka wanted to
know.

"Dwell in the dead past if you want to," Barnaby told her.  "I _know_
what it says."

"I'd kind of like to look," said John.  And he took the book from Susan
and began to read.

"It's got illustrations," reported Fredericka, hanging over his
shoulder.  "Is that what I look like?  That isn't what I look like!"

And then the Good Humor man came driving along the road, ringing his
bell, and everyone ran to catch up with him, and magic was forgotten in
the cooling joy of sheer sherbet.

But first Susan ran across the street to her own house and put the book
away carefully in her top bureau drawer.

And later that day, just before supper, without saying anything to the
others, she took a walk along lower Weed Street.

As she rounded the familiar bend, she wondered whether she would see a
mere hole in the ground where Mrs. Funkhouser's house had been.  But to
her surprise the house was still there, the same as always.  The sign
by the driveway was still there, too.

But when Susan came nearer, she saw that the sign didn't say, "Slow.
Cats, et cetera" any more.

The sign said, "For Sale."

And when she went up close to the house and peered through its windows,
she saw that every stick of furniture inside was gone.

It was nice to know that whatever the name of the magic kingdom where
Mrs. Funkhouser now reigned, she apparently had her salt and her
ammonia and other useful supplies for a respectable witch with her.
She had prob'ly moved her possessions to the palace, thought Susan, and
then prob'ly she hadn't wanted the house there to remind her of her
humble origins; so she had prob'ly rubbed vanishing cream on it, too.

And maybe some of the magic from the book had got into the vanishing
cream so that it still worked.  Or maybe Mrs. Funkhouser (unlike the
late dragon) had started believing in her own power so much that she
was beginning to be a real witch now, though Susan was sure she would
always be a respectable one.

While she was thinking these thoughts, a woman had come out on the
porch next door and was regarding her curiously.

"If you're looking for Mrs. Funkhouser and Mr. Oswaldo," said the
woman, "they've moved.  All of a sudden, as ever was.  And they do
say," she went on, "that _he's_ gone back into vaudeville."

Susan thought of the round gentleman as she had last seen him and of
Mrs. Funkhouser and her housewifely witchcraft.

"Yes," she said slowly.  "Yes, I guess you might say they _both_ have.
In a way."

And she started walking home.




3.  Taming It

"This time no magic kingdoms," said Susan, "and no dragons."  And the
others (all but Fredericka, who, having survived one dragon, was ready
to tackle another) agreed.

It was the second day after the five children had found the book, and
they were assembled on John and Susan's front porch.

Sunday had been a day of rest, by Susan's decree.

At first Fredericka had fretted and Abbie had sighed and even Barnaby
had wanted to make plans.  But Susan had been unusually strong-minded
and had put a stop to it.

"If we start all that, we'll be tempted and we might give way," she
said.  "Let's not even _think_ about the magic."

This didn't seem possible, but later it turned out that it was.  Books
were read and games were played and walks taken, and a few good deeds
were even done, to be on the safe side, though nothing good enough or
interesting enough to tell about.  And the hours passed.

And now at last it was Monday, and here the five children were with the
dishes and other chores out of the way and Grannie established at the
parlor table just inside the front window with a particularly hard
jigsaw puzzle that should keep her out of harm's way for half an hour,
at least.

And the time was ripe, and it was Susan's turn.

"No dragons," she repeated, "and no witches.  I like it better in the
Nesbit stories and those other ones where the magic's more sort of
tame."

"Tame is blah," said Fredericka.

"Maybe tame isn't what I mean," said Susan, "but where at first
everything starts out real and sort of _daily_.  Then when the magic
comes it's more..."  She paused, seeking a word.

"Of a contrast," supplied Barnaby.

There was a silence.

"Aren't you going to ask anything more?" said John.

"I don't want to know any more," said Susan.  "I want us just to go
about our business and wait for whatever happens."

"There are entirely too many blue pieces in this puzzle," said Grannie
from inside the window.  "They can't all be sky or if they are, it's
monotonous."

John and Susan went inside and got her started on another corner where
some of the blue sky might be somebody's dress.  With that settled, the
five children left the porch and walked along the road to town as if it
were any ordinary Monday.

They passed Mrs. Funkhouser's empty house and discussed where its
former occupants were now, and Fredericka wished she had Ozma's magic
picture so she might see what they were doing at this moment.

But she did not have the book in her hands; so the picture did not
appear.

On Main Street the five children compared finances.  Susan had sixteen
cents and Abbie had eleven.  John had a dollar he'd earned cutting
lawns, and Barnaby had fifty cents he'd made selling magazine
subscriptions (he had sold one so far).  But this money was to be saved
toward their college educations.

Still, twenty-seven cents divided by five gave everyone a nickel each
with two cents over toward tomorrow.  So the candy store was the next
stop.

But nothing magic happened there, either (save for the magic that lies
in Turkish Taffy and Chocolate Almond-Butterscotch Delight).

It was when they came out of the store and turned the corner that Susan
noticed the strangeness first.

"The street's different," she said.  "Look."

The others looked.

Instead of short, friendly Cherry Street, with its white houses and big
trees, blocks of drab apartment houses stretched far into the distance
ahead.

"It's like a city," said John.

"We're somewhere else.  It's the magic.  It's beginning," said Susan,
shivering delightedly.  "I like it like this when it sneaks up on you!"

"Where do you suppose we are?" said Fredericka.

"I saw a sign last week that said, 'Watch Our Town Grow,'" said Abbie.
"Do you suppose it _did_?  Do you suppose this is the _future_?"

A high, gawky-looking windowless car drove past, honking a horn that
said "Ah-oo-ga."

John shook his head.  "It's the other way round.  That's a 1924
Hupmobile," for he was one who knew about such things.  "I don't know
where we are, but it's in olden times.  We're in the past somewhere."

"It's familiar.  I've seen this street before.  In a book, I think,"
said Susan.  "Only what one?"  Then she stopped short and clutched
whoever was handy, pointing up ahead.

On the nearest corner stood a little girl.  She was rather a
poor-looking little girl, but neat.  She wore an old-fashioned apron
over her dress, and her dark hair hung straightly down her back in a
pony-tail.  She was looking at something in her hand, something that
gave a metallic glint.  On the sidewalk nearby sat a fat baby with its
thumb in its mouth.

"I _knew_ it was a book!" whispered Susan excitedly.  "It's the girl in
the _Half Magic_ picture!  It's the little girl in the last chapter who
finds the charm after Jane and Mark and Katharine and Martha pass it
on!"

"I always wanted to know what happened next!" said Abbie.

"In Oz we got there before the beginning," marveled Fredericka.  "This
time we're coming in after the end!"

"Shush," said Susan.  "Be careful.  Don't scare her."

But Fredericka was pushing forward.  "Hello," she said.  "Do you know
what you just found?  You just found a magic charm!"

The little girl looked up with a smile.  "Hello," she said.  "I
_thought_ it might be that."

"Well, it is," said Fredericka.

"Only it works by halves," said Barnaby.

The little girl shook her head.  "It doesn't work at all.  I wished I
could go into future times and meet some children there, but I'm still
right where I started."

"But we _come_ from future times!" said Abbie.

"You _do_?  Did my wish bring you?" said the little girl.

"I'm not sure," said Barnaby, scratching his head in a puzzled way.
The problem of whose wish had brought whom where was too much even for
his giant brain.

"You see, we've got a magic of our own," explained Susan, "and we
wished at the same time."

"How _interesting_," said the little girl.  "Maybe we sort of met in
the middle."

"Anyway, we're here," said Fredericka, "and that's the better half of
_any_ wish."

"Tell me about what it's like," said the little girl.  "The future, I
mean.  Are there no more wars or poor people?  Is everything perfect?"

The five children looked at each other.

"Not quite," said Barnaby.  "Not just yet.  But we're working on it."

"Could I go there and see?" said the little girl.  "May I come and call
on you?"

"I'm not sure," said Barnaby again.

"Of course we'd be glad to have you, any time," said Susan quickly.

"It's just that in the book Merlin fixed the charm so it only worked in
the present time," said Barnaby.

"Still, that was when the other children had it," said Susan.  "Maybe
with a new person it'd start all over fresh."

"Who's Merlin?" said the little girl.  "What other children?"

"It's a long story," said Barnaby.  And he proceeded to tell it to her.

If you have read the book called _Half Magic_, you will know the story
Barnaby told.  If not, suffice it to say that the charm was an old,
ancient talisman that was found lying on the sidewalk by four children
in the year 1924 in a town called Toledo, Ohio.  And it thwarted them
and had its way with them until they learned its ways and tamed it and
had _their_ way with _it_, traveling through time and space to the
court of King Arthur and other interesting places.  And in the end six
lives were changed.  After that the four children left the charm lying
on the sidewalk again for someone else to find.

"And you came along and found it," finished Barnaby.

"And we came along and found _you_," said Abbie.

"Oh," said the little girl.  She thought for a minute.  "How does it
work?"

"That's where the catch comes in," said Fredericka.

"It's a wishing charm," said Susan, "only it cuts wishes in two and
only grants half of them."

"Like if you wished you were in the middle of London Bridge," said
Barnaby, "you might end up just in London somewhere, or you might end
up on some other bridge anywhere."

"Or the bridge of a ship," said John.

"Or in some dumb old bridge game," said Fredericka.

"Or," finished Barnaby, "you might end up in the middle of the ocean,
_halfway_ there.  So if you want something, you have to wish for twice
whatever it is."

"Or twice as much," said Susan.

"Or twice as far," said Abbie.

"Oh," said the little girl again.  There was a pause, as all this sank
in.

"Do you want any help?" was the eager offer of Fredericka.  "Shall I
wish for you?"

The little girl looked at her.  "No, thank you," she said.  "I think I
can do it.  I've had the two times table."  She held the charm before
her and addressed it firmly.  "I want to go into the future," she said,
"twice as far as to the time and place these children come from, and I
want them to come there with me.  Twice," she added.

"That's very _good_," said Fredericka kindly.

But Susan held their own magic book tight in her hands and wished, too.

The next moment the five children and the little girl were sitting on
John and Susan's front porch.  I hope it is not necessary to remind you
of a seventh person who had been left behind.

"Is this the future?" said the little girl, looking around at white
houses, green trees, grass, and a picket fence.  "It doesn't seem any
different."

"That's cause we're in the country," said Barnaby.  "Nature stays
pretty much the same.  There've been lots of improvements in the world,
though.  Well, changes anyway."

"Cities are bigger," said Susan.

"Cars go faster," said Abbie.  A Thunderbird sped by on the road before
them, just to prove it.

"Planes fly higher," said John.  "We're exploring outer space now.  Of
course, you can't see from here," he added, as the little girl looked
at the sky expectantly.

"What's that?" said the little girl, pointing upward.

Everyone looked where she pointed, and Susan uttered a cry of alarm.

What "that" was was Grannie, sitting perilously poised on the window
sill of John's gable room and washing the window from outside, a thing
Susan and John had strictly forbidden her to do.

"Hello," she greeted them.  "That puzzle wasn't any good.  It wouldn't
come out."

"Stay right there," called John, in a voice he hoped was calm.  "Don't
move."

He ran inside, and Susan and Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka followed.

If you have never had a grandmother like Grannie (and many have not),
you may be wondering about her, and how so active and unexpected an old
lady happened to have such calm, sensible grandchildren as Susan and
John.  In a way, that may be part of the reason.  They had learned to
remain calm, no matter what.

But if you are thinking of Grannie as just a dotty old lady, you are
wrong.  She was far more.  As to exactly what she was, this is not the
time or the place to say.  That time will come.

For now, it is enough to know that it took five minutes and the
combined arguments of all five children to persuade Grannie off the
window sill and into the house and downstairs, and establish her in the
parlor rocker with some suitable tatting.

"There," said Susan, coming out on the porch again with the others.
"Excuse us for leaving you alone."  Then she broke off.

The little girl wasn't alone.  A man was standing on the front lawn,
and the little girl was staring at him in pale surprise.

"Something terrible happened," she cried.  "I suddenly remembered I
left Baby sitting there on the sidewalk, back home in Toledo, Ohio!  So
I wished on the charm, but it's all gone wrong.  Baby didn't come.
_He_ came instead!"  And she pointed a finger of horror at the man.

"You must have forgotten the half part of the magic," said Susan.  "You
must have forgotten to say two times everything.  You must have brought
him _half_ here."

"I couldn't have.  Does he look like half a baby?"

The five children looked at the man and had to agree that he did not.
The man was big, and he wore a suit and a shirt and a tie and a hat.
He looked, in short, like a man.  But that was at first glance.

As the five children went on looking, the man put his thumb in his
mouth.  And the little girl gave a cry.

"It _is_ Baby!  I'd recognize him anywhere!  He _always_ does that!
But what's happened to him?"

"I think I see," said Barnaby.  "It could be worse.  Just his bottom
half might have turned up, or just his top.  Or the charm might have
brought him all half there and transparent, like the ghost of a baby.
It did something like that once before.  But it likes to thwart people
in a different way each time.  So it brought him here half _grown up_!"

"About thirty-seven years old, I'd say," said John.

"Sure!  Prob'ly just the age he'd be if he'd really been growing all
these years," said Barnaby, "but the half of him that's inside is still
just a baby!"

"This is awful!" said the little girl, looking at the babyish man.  "I
can't take him home again like that!  Mother wouldn't _want_ him like
that!"

"It's very simple," said Fredericka.  "All you do is, you make another
wish.  And get the 'rithmetic part right this time."

"I can't," said the little girl.  "When I saw _him_, I was so surprised
I dropped the charm, and it rolled down the walk and he picked it up
and put it in his pocket.  And it's no use asking for it back.  Baby'll
never give _anything_ back!"

She looked at the man, who was now sitting on the grass making a mud
pie.  Then she burst into tears.

"Don't cry," said John.  "We'll get it for you."

"Let _me_," said Susan.  After all, it was supposed to be her turn at
the magic.  And she had always been good with babies.

She went up to the manly form.  "Naughty, naughty," she said.  "Baby
mustn't touch.  _Nasty_ magic charm.  Burney burn.  What did Baby do
with it?  _Tell_ Susan."

"How can I?" said the baby (or man).  "I can't talk."

Then it looked surprised.  "Who said that?  Did _I_ say that?  Why, I
can _too_ talk!" it said.  "Can I walk, too?"  It got up and staggered
a few steps.  "I can walk!" it cried.  "Look at me; I'm walking!"

"_Clever_ baby!" said Susan.  But the man (or baby) paid no heed.

"This is wonderful!  I can go anywhere I like!" it boasted.  "No more
big people carrying me around and telling me what to do!  No more
everlasting baby carriage!  I'm free!"  And it started for the gate.
Now that it was getting used to walking, it hardly staggered at all.

But the little girl barred the way.  "Wait!  Stop!" she cried.  "Don't
you know me?"

The baby looked down at her from its vast height.  "Yes, I do," it
said.  "I know you now.  You're that big one that keeps picking me up
and carrying me away just when it's getting interesting and putting me
to bed.  But never again any more of that from now on!  From now on I'm
bigger than _you_ are.  I can pick you up and carry _you_ away!"

And it did.

"Put me down!" cried the little girl, jogging along the road in its
overgrown clutch.

"Come back!" called the five children, running to the gate and peering
after them.

The man (or baby) was heading down the road in the opposite direction
from town, toward the little country railroad station that is called
Talmadge Hill.

"Reach in its pocket!  Find the charm!" Barnaby shouted after the
little girl.

"I can't!  He's got me all scrooched!" the little girl called.  And
after that any further words died away in the distance.

The five children looked at each other.

"Shall we just let them go?" said Susan.  "I suppose what happens now
is really her adventure, in a way."

"But it's part ours, too," said John.  "We helped get them here.
Besides, the railway crossing's straight ahead of them.  That baby
wouldn't know any better than to sit down on the tracks and play
dandelion clocks!"

Luckily at this moment the mailman happened along in his truck, and the
five children all knew him, so it was all right for them to accept a
lift, though aggravating when he stopped at every passing mailbox.  At
the foot of the hill that led to the station, he turned into a driveway
with a special delivery package; so the five children got out and
started up the steep hill on foot.

"This is as bad as the dragon," said Fredericka between puffs.  "Does
somebody have to be kidnaped every time?"

"Who would think a mere baby would be so revengeful?" said Susan.

"It's a 'bad black-hearted baby!'" said Abbie, in the words of the poem
by Mr. W. S. Gilbert.

"Maybe it isn't," said Barnaby.  "Maybe _all_ babies feel like that, if
they could express themselves.  Maybe they'd _all_ turn on us if they
could!"

The five children rounded a bend, and the station came into view, with
the little girl and the oversize baby in the act of arriving on the
platform.

"Oh dear," said Susan.  "Suppose a train's just coming in?"

One was.

Seeing the two waiting forms, the engineer brought the train to a stop.

"What if they get on?" said Abbie.

"That baby could disrupt the whole transportation system, if I know
it!" remarked Barnaby.

They got on.

Luckily the kind conductor saw the five children struggling up the hill
and waited.  The children clambered aboard in the wake of their quarry,
the whistle went "Toot-toot!" and the little two-car train continued on
its way to join the main line.

Traveling with a small child can be difficult at the best of times.
When a child looks like a prosperous businessman of thirty-seven but
has the heart and mind and soul of a babe of one (if a babe of one
could talk), it can be embarrassing to the point of tears.  And so the
five children now found it.

First the baby chose to sing.

  "'What does the train say?
  --Jiggle joggle jiggle joggle!
  What does the train say?
  --Jiggle joggle jee!'"

it chanted, in words familiar to all well-read households.

But the words did not awaken a chord in the heart of the lady sitting
just behind.

"Really, sir," she said, tapping the baby on its manly shoulder, "if
you must bring your children on public conveyances, can't you amuse
them in some more quiet manner?"

The shameless infant paid no heed.

  "'Will the little baby go
  Riding on the locomo?'"

it chanted.

  "'Loky moky poky stoky
  --Smoky choky chee!'"


The lady tapped its shoulder again.  "If you are not silent at once,"
she said, "I shall speak to the conductor!"

The baby turned in its seat and observed the lady.  Then it nodded.  "I
_thought_ you'd look like that," it said.

"Why, of all the I never heard!" said the lady.

"I'd complain, Pearl," said her companion.

"I mean to," said the lady.

"Tickets, please," said the conductor, appearing in the aisle.

"Don't want any," said the baby.

"Come, come, sir," reproved the conductor.

"Come _where_?" said the baby, with interest.  In a suddenly docile
mood it got down from its seat.  "Shall we go for a walk now?"

"Certainly not!" said the conductor.  "Pull yourself together, sir!
_Tickets_, please!"

"Oh, all right," said the baby with a shrug, taking some already
collected tickers from the conductor and putting them in its pocket.

"No, no, no.  Give me _your_ tickets!" said the conductor.

"Indian giver!" said the baby, handing back the tickets it had taken.

The conductor mopped his brow.

"Conductor," said the lady in the seat behind, "I have been listening
to this person's remarks and observing his conduct.  In my opinion he
is mentally disturbed and no fit guardian for innocent children!"

"You're right, Pearl," said her friend.  "In _my_ opinion he should be
put off the train and his family turned over to the Welfare Society!"

"No, don't do that," said Abbie.

"We'll watch over him better from now on," promised Barnaby.  "We'll
see that he behaves."

"He's not bad, really," said the little girl.  "Just fractious."

"Listen to the poor little things defending him!" said the lady
indignantly.

"We'll pay for the tickets, too," said John.  "We've got a dollar and a
half we earned, between us.  Will that be enough?"

"Do you hear that?" cried the lady.  "He makes these poor little
children work to earn money for him!  Oh, how vile!"

"Lowest of the low!" agreed her friend.

"If you ask _me_," said a man in the seat ahead, turning around
menacingly, "a father like that is nothing but a skunk!"

"He should be horsewhipped!" said a lady across the aisle, joining in.

"Oh stop!  Oh don't!  He's _not_ our father!" wailed Susan.

"I thought as much!" cried the lady who had been first to complain.
"He is probably nothing but a kidnaper!  Conductor, arrest that man!"

"Now, now.  Keep calm.  Order, please," said the conductor.  And he
turned back to deal with the baby.

But at this moment the baby's eye was caught by something at the
farther end of the car, and it pushed past the conductor and ran down
the aisle.  Barnaby had an alarmed thought and tried to follow, but the
conductor was in his way.  He hesitated.  What would the irresponsible
baby do next?

What it did was stop at the water cooler.  First it filled a paper cup
with water and drank it.  Then it started making more cups into paper
aeroplanes and sailing them down the car.

"Whee!" said the baby.

"Everybody stay where you are.  I'll handle this," said the conductor.
And he approached the water cooler.

"Aren't you ashamed?" he said.  "Get hold of yourself.  Be a man."

The baby seemed to consider this advice.  "All right," it said.  Then
it took the conductor's cap off the conductor and put it on its own
head.

The cap seemed to give it a new idea.  "I want to drive the train," it
announced.  "I wish I could drive the train _now_!"

This was what Barnaby had been afraid might happen, all along.

Because, of course, the charm was still in the baby's pocket, but the
baby didn't realize its magic power and wouldn't have known the
arithmetic to handle it if it had.

What happened next was exactly what you might expect.  No sooner did
the baby utter its wish than it vanished.  In its place appeared the
driver of the train, looking around him dazedly.

"What does this mean, Formsby?" said the conductor sternly.  "Why
aren't you at the throttle?  A New York, New Haven, and Hartford man
never deserts his post!"

"I didn't," cried the astonished driver.  "Did I?"  He looked around.
"Why, so I did!  I don't know how it happened!" Then an expression of
horror came over his face.  "If I'm here," he said, "then _who is
driving the train_?"

The conductor looked at the spot where the baby no longer stood.  And
he turned pale.  "I don't know," he said, "but I have a good idea."

The complaining lady had moved meddlesomely forward, and now she
overheard this.  "Do you mean to say," she cried, "that we are in the
hands of that maniac?"

"We're doomed!" moaned her friend.

And indeed from the actions of the train at that moment, it did truly
seem as if they might be.

Of course once the baby wished that it could drive the train, that
meant that it could _half_ drive it.  In other words, it could drive it
but not very well.  One could only suppose it was trying each of the
controls in turn.

The train stalled and started, buckled and bumped, and halted and
hopped.  Then it got up speed and shot through Cemetery Station without
stopping, leaving the waiting people on the platform looking after it
with expressions of dismay.  Then it reversed and shot past them again
backwards, and their faltering faces switched from right to left as if
they were watching a tennis match.

By now the hardened commuters, who hadn't noticed anything wrong
before, looked up from their papers.

"In all my years of bad service on this railroad," said one, "this is
the worst yet.  I shall write to the Department of the Interior!"

"I," said another, "am saving up money to buy a helicopter."

The conductor was pallid but spunky.  "Ladies and gentlemen," he said,
"a slight emergency seems to have arisen.  But there is no need to
panic as yet.  Keep your seats and _hang on_!"

And he strode vengefully toward the front of the train.  Barnaby and
John and Susan and Abbie and Fredericka and the little girl had all had
the same idea, and as the conductor approached the closed-off section
where the controls were, he seemed to be knee-deep in children.
Several irate passengers had followed the conductor, and there was
quite a traffic jam.

"Out of the way," said the conductor kindly but grimly.  "It's no use
your trying to defend him any more.  This is men's work."

"Don't hurt him," pleaded the little girl.

"If you'd just let us get to him first," urged Barnaby.  "You see, he
has this charm..."

"He has no charm for _me_," said the conductor.  "I have seldom met
anyone less charming in my life.  You had better not watch.  This may
be painful."  And he pushed open the door.

At the controls of the train the utterly emancipated baby pushed at
this handle and pulled at that one.  It might not be very good at it,
but it was enjoying it to the full.

"Jiggle joggle," it sang.  "Jiggle joggle jiggle joggle jiggle joggle
jiggle joggle..."

The conductor and the other men closed in.


Susan and Abbie and even Fredericka admitted afterwards that they did
close their eyes during the worst of what followed.  But Barnaby and
John kept careful watch.  So did the little girl.

The conductor and the other men seized the surprised figure at the
controls and pinioned its arms.  It showed fight, and they strove
together.

The scuffle was not a long one.  From the pocket of the embattled baby
something small and metallic flew forth.  Barnaby and the little girl
both dove for it and collided.  It was John who picked it up, and
perhaps this was as well.  In her present mood the little girl might
have wished herself and the baby twice as far as Toledo, Ohio, and left
the others to deal with the maddened train.

But John took things one by one.  Considering the circumstances, he did
very well.

First he wished the baby were twice itself again.  The charm divided
the wish neatly in half, and the avenging conductor faltered and fell
back as he found himself struggling with a mere one-year-old who
squirmed and giggled and crowed in the delight of utter ticklishness.

The conductor rubbed his eyes.  So did the irate passengers.  And the
little girl ran forward and caught the baby up in her arms.

"Oh, Baby, Baby!" she cried.  "Forgive me for leaving you behind, and
I'll never, never forget you again!"

"Coo," said the baby.  And it sucked its thumb.

"Great Scott!" said the conductor.  And "What next?" said the
passengers.

Next John wished that he and the rest of his party were home again on
lower Weed Street.  Immediately he and Susan and Barnaby and Abbie and
Fredericka and the little girl and the baby found themselves sitting on
the porch of the big white house.

"There," said John.

"You're forgetting that poor train," said Susan.

"That's right!" said Fredericka excitedly.  "Nobody's driving it now.
It'll go right to the end of the line and crash!"

"Or even if the driver gets to the controls in time," said Abbie,
"think of the effect on the passengers!  They're prob'ly all suffering
from shock by now.  Their poor brains'll prob'ly never be the same!"

"They'll have to go to psychiatrists with traumas," said Barnaby, whose
wide reading had taught him many a big word.

So John made another wish, that the train's whole madcap journey would
be twice as much as forgotten by all the passengers and crew, and that
its morning run would start all over again as if it had never been,
only twice as much so.  That ought to take care of everything.

And apparently it did, for a second later a "toot-toot" was heard as
the train peaceably approached Talmadge Hill station once more.

"The ten twenty-two is late today," remarked Grannie from the parlor
window.

"And now may I have my charm back, please?" said the little girl,
rather coolly Susan thought.

"What'll we do with it next?  Where'll we go?" said Fredericka.

"I think..." Susan began, for something, maybe it was the little girl's
tone of voice or maybe it was their own magic book, which she still
held clutched in her hands, seemed to tell her that the adventure was
probably over, at least so far as they were concerned.

But the little girl had begun speaking at the same moment.  "I think,"
she said, "if it's all the same to you, Baby and I'll just go on by
ourselves from now on.  I think we've had enough of the future."

"I'm sorry things got so wild," said Susan.

"It's not usually that exciting around here," said Abbie.

"It's been an unusual day," said Barnaby.

"All the same," said the little girl, "I think that's what we'll do.
Not that it hasn't been interesting," she added politely.

Everyone felt a bit disappointed, but everyone, even Fredericka, could
see the little girl's point of view.  It was her charm, at least for
the moment.  Let her use it in her own way while it lasted.

But, "What'll you wish?  Where'll you go first?" Fredericka couldn't
help asking.

"First?"  The little girl's eyes danced as an idea occurred to her.
"Well, first I think..."  She stopped.  "Or perhaps..." she began
again, as another magic possibility flashed through her mind.  Then her
expression changed.  "I think maybe first we'll go home and see
Mother," she said.  "And after that..."  She smiled a secret smile at
the baby, and the baby smiled back.  "After that, we'll see."

She tucked the baby under one arm and held the charm before her in the
other hand, poised for flight.

"Do you know the words to say?" asked John.

"Oh, yes," the little girl assured him.  "We know everything now, don't
we, Baby?  We won't make any mistakes from now on."  And she wished
herself and the baby twice as far as home.

"Good-by," said Abbie a second later to the spot where the girl and the
baby had been standing.

"At least we got them off to a good start," said Susan.  "Do you really
think she'll be all right?  Do you suppose she really won't make any
more mistakes?"

"That charm'll find a way," said Barnaby.  "It'll foil her somehow, if
I know it.  But I think," he added, "she'll be all right in the end."

"We never got to explore the past," complained Fredericka.  "We never
found out that little girl's first name or about her home life or
anything."

"It doesn't tell her name in the _Half Magic_ book," said Susan,
remembering.  "So I guess it all works out.  I guess we're never meant
to know."

There was a silence, as everyone thought about the mysteriousness of
things in general and of magic in particular.

"Children," called Grannie from inside the parlor window, "I seem to
have tatted myself fast to this rocking chair.  Come and unstitch me!"

And the five children ran inside.




4.  Losing It

Susan put the book down on the porch before running in after the
others.  And then, while the five children were untatting Grannie, the
front doorbell rang, and it was Eunice Geers, come to show off her new
party dress.

Eunice, while not an exciting or a magical girl, was perfectly all
right in some ways, and her ways included those of fashion and charm;
so after lunch (for which Eunice was pressed to stay), she and Susan
spent an enjoyable afternoon in Susan's room, trying on each other's
clothes and experimenting with two run-down lipsticks Eunice had
rescued from her mother's wastebasket.

Big Pete Schroeder had shown up, meanwhile, with his catcher's mitt and
ball, and he and John were tossing a few in the back yard.  Barnaby,
who was not at his best with a ball, base or any other, sat in the
cherry tree and made sarcastic remarks, knowing all the time he should
let them alone and go home but somehow not doing it.

Abbie and Fredericka stayed with Grannie and wound yarn while she
knitted, meanwhile charming them with tales of life on the old Dakota
plains, and how when she was a young girl teaching school, she lived
all alone in a sod house, and when she married Grandad, the neighbors
moved his sod house two miles and joined it on to her sod house.  Abbie
was fond of this story and could never hear it too often.

Later, while Grannie took her nap, Abbie and Fredericka went outside
and perched on the front steps, and Hector Hullhorst and Luemma Babcock
and little Stevie Wynkoop happened by, and they all played an
old-fashioned game called Steps, also known as Red Light (but not to be
confused with the other game of that name sometimes referred to in less
refined circles as Cheezit).

And unbelievable as it may seem, no one remembered the magic book or
thought about it, and many an outsider passed and repassed the fated
porch before night fell.

Long before it did, the father of Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka
appeared, home from New York unexpectedly early and with tickets, for
both families, to a concert in the neighboring settlement of
Silvermine.  Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka were all musical, like
their parents, and Susan and John tried to be musical, too, because
anything Barnaby liked must be all right.  And sometimes when the music
wasn't too loud and modern, they found they could follow right along.

Tonight Barnaby's father, who was earning extra money singing in a
special television show that week, offered to take everyone to dinner
before the concert, at the seafood pier the children all liked, where
the big ocean-going yachts and launches docked right alongside.
Grannie wore her good black lace with her white hair piled high, and
Susan and John were proud of her.

And for the rest of the evening all was lobster and Brahms, and it
wasn't till the loud modern second half of the concert that Susan's
mind wandered, and she found herself wondering what had become of the
magic book and exactly where it was at that moment.  She had left it on
the front porch when they all ran inside, and she couldn't remember
seeing it since.  Probably Barnaby had rescued it.  After all, it was
his turn to wish tomorrow, or Abbie's.  But she thought she had better
make sure.

What happened next is still a matter of mystery.  Susan claims to this
day that she whispered to John to whisper to Barnaby, "You have the
book, don't you?" and that Barnaby nodded yes.

John doesn't remember exactly what he whispered.  But according to
Barnaby the words he heard from John were "You don't have the book, do
you?" and he whispered back, "No."  If he nodded his head after that,
it must have been in time to the music.

What is definitely agreed to by everyone is that the fat woman in the
row ahead turned around in her seat and said, "Shush!"

And the concert crashed to an end, and everyone went home with Susan
sure Barnaby had the book safe, and Barnaby certain it was in Susan's
keeping, and both of them wrong.

The next morning Susan woke early with a feeling of joyful expectation.
Today would be Barnaby's adventure, or Abbie's.  Either way, Barnaby
would have an idea.  But as the morning wore on, she waited in vain for
Barnaby and the others to show up with the book.  When ten o'clock came
and they still hadn't appeared, she permitted herself the mean thought
that it was exactly like Barnaby to hog the whole thing (though this
wasn't true, really; Barnaby might boss, but he almost always shared).

"What's the matter?" John finally asked her frowning countenance as she
stalked from room to room.  When Susan explained, he shrugged his
shoulders.

"What of it?  Maybe he's got his reasons.  Maybe he can't come over.
Maybe he's got chores."

And then big Pete Schroeder stopped by and wanted to go fishing.  But
first he and John went to dig for worms in the side yard, by the
compost heap.

But Susan moped all morning.

Across the street in the little white house, Barnaby was wondering why
Susan and John didn't appear with the book.  When they didn't, he was
about to set out for their house, but a shaming thought occurred.

Maybe they were annoyed with him for being surly and making sarcastic
remarks yesterday when big Pete Schroeder came by.  The fact that he
had been in the wrong and knew it made him all the surer that this was
probably the trouble.  So after battling with his better nature a
while, he decided to go and apologize.  But when he started down his
front steps, he saw John and big Pete come from the other house and
wander toward the side yard.  So he went indoors again.

"Where _is_ everybody?  What about the magic?" said Fredericka,
happening through the hall.

"There isn't going to be any.  Some people would rather go fishing
instead," said Barnaby bitterly.  And he went upstairs and into his
room and slammed the door.

"The master is cross," Fredericka informed Abbie, which so touched that
tender heart that she rapped on Barnaby's door and offered him the rest
of her grape No-Cal, which he refused with bare civility.

It wasn't till afternoon that Susan, driven from the house more by
sorrow than by anger, was pacing morosely along the road to town when
she ran straight into Barnaby, wandering in the opposite direction and
kicking a stone ahead of him moodily with the toe of his tennis shoe.

The two eyed each other, at first warily and then with surprise.

"Where's the book?" were the words that sprang to the lips of both.

And it all came out.

Now it was Susan's turn to feel guilty.  How could she, always the
calm, sensible one, have left their most precious possession on the
porch all this time, a prey to the whim of every passing stranger?
Needless to say, it was not there now when they ran to look.

Who could have taken it, and what might he have wished?

A conference was called, and both houses were ransacked in vain.  John
and big Pete Schroeder appeared, without any fish and without the book,
either, but this was a surprise to no one.  Big Pete Schroeder would be
the last to look at a book in any way, shape, or form.

"The thing is," said Barnaby, when big Pete had ambled away homeward,
"to make a list of every single person who was on that porch yesterday."

"And then interview them all, like detectives in movies!" cried
Fredericka, who could enjoy almost anything so long as it wasn't tame
or dull.

Pencils flew, telephone wires hummed, delegations visited this house
and that, but the book, as Barnaby put it, remained a thing of the past.

Little Stevie Wynkoop, who was five years old and a very secretive
child, caused a false alarm by admitting to having found an old,
ancient book and taken it home without permission, but when asked what
the book _was_, he declined to say.  But Fredericka tracked him to his
lair and hounded and harassed him and told him he was adopted (which
was untrue) till at last he dug the book out from under a pile of toys
and showed it to her.  It was a battered copy of _Bunny Brown and His
Sister Sue on an Auto Tour_ that had come down to Susan from a defunct
aunt.

So it seemed the only clue was a fizzle.

"Do you suppose that's all the magic we're going to get?" wondered
Abbie.  "Did it come into our lives to gladden an hour and then fade
like a dream?"  (For she had been reading the romantic poets lately, to
see how they did it.)

"It can't be," said Fredericka.  "It wouldn't be fair.  We've hardly
had our first magic taste, even."

"Who said magic was fair?" said Barnaby.  "It almost never is.  But I
think it's prob'ly biding its time, just to show us.  It'll prob'ly
turn up in plain sight some moment when we least expect it."

Susan said nothing.  She was too busy feeling remorseful.  But Barnaby
patted her on the back, which at any other time might have seemed
rather insulting but right now was a comfort.  And Abbie said, "There,
there," and even that helped.

By common consent the five children parted early after dinner and spent
a quiet evening.  Or at least it started out that way.  Susan and John
sat in their living room, and Susan hemmed a skirt while John fiddled
with a crossword puzzle, which shows how low their spirits had sunk.
Grannie sat across from them reading.

Grannie often read in the evenings, tutting to herself when she came to
the dangerous parts.  Mostly she read anything she could find about the
West, not the wild and woolly West of television shows, but the real
West she had known as a little girl, seventy or so years before.

Susan had some books by a wonderful woman called Mrs. Wilder, who had
lived in a little house in a big woods and later in a little house on
the prairie, in the olden times, and when Grannie couldn't find new
books about the old West, she frequently read these.  They reminded her
of herself when she was in her prime, she said.

Perhaps here is as good a place as any to explain about Grannie's
character a little more.

It wasn't that she was childish or weak-minded.  On the contrary.  Her
will was almost too strong.  It was just that she had been a tomboy for
twenty years (even when she was teaching school, which she started at
fifteen!) and an active woman for fifty years after that, and now that
she was old, she sometimes forgot that she was a tomboy and active no
longer.

"I'm still the same, inside," she would explain, when Susan or John
begged her to be careful and not climb trees or run or jump.

Susan often thought Grannie must have been a wonderful little girl, and
later on an exciting teacher to have, and wished that she could have
known her then.

And poetic Abbie once came on a poem that reminded her of Grannie.  It
was about a pioneer woman called Lucinda Matlock, who worked hard and
played hard and had twelve children and lived to be ninety-six and
enjoyed every bit of it.  Abbie read it to the others, and they all
agreed that it expressed Grannie to a T.

All this made the five children patient when Grannie needed curbing and
toning down now.

Tonight as Grannie read, her eyes sparkled and her tutting was louder
than usual, causing John to stir restlessly over his puzzle and Susan
to look up from her work more than once.

The second time Susan looked up, her glance stayed fixed and her sewing
fell from her lap and she must have made a sound, for John looked up,
too, and saw what she was seeing.

The book Grannie was reading wasn't one of Mrs. Wilder's stories about
Plum Creek or Silver Lake, and it wasn't the new book of Western
reminiscences Susan had brought her from the library, either.

It was a red book, smallish but plump, comfortable and shabby and
familiar!

So _that_ was where the magic book had been all along, thought Susan.
Grannie must have found it on the porch and opened it and started to
read, and got interested.

But if Barnaby's idea was right and the magic book was different for
each person, what was Grannie reading now that made her eyes shine so
and brought bright color to her cheeks?  A girlhood adventure of her
own or of some other pioneer heroine?

Then, just as Susan was trying to stammer out, "What are you reading?"
Grannie's gaze left the page, and she stared speculatively before her
with the unmistakable expression of an enthralled reader who is about
to wish that her book were true and she were part of the thick of it.

John's and Susan's thoughts were as one and their speed was even
quicker.  Together they sprang across the room just in time to touch
the book and add the words "and take us along, too" as the unspoken
wish formed itself in Grannie's mind.

And the book did.

There was a whoosh, and the colors of the room ran together and shot up
like fireworks.  In a second of dazzlement Susan found time to wonder
where they'd suddenly find themselves next, in a log cabin in a
wolf-haunted woods or on the lone prairie where the coyote howls so
mournfully.

The next second she knew the answer.

Where they found themselves was on an open and windy and wintry plain,
before a little raw new one-room building that looked exactly like
every picture anyone has ever seen of an old-fashioned schoolhouse.
John was standing at her side, looking just as startled as she felt.

But where was Grannie?

Apparently nowhere.

In front of the schoolhouse some children were playing Fox and Geese in
the hard, crusty snow that carpeted the ground.  Leading the game was a
tall girl with sparkling black eyes.  Next minute the game developed
into a snowball fight, and the tall girl pitched snowballs right and
left, throwing hard and straight as any boy.  Then at the height of the
game, when she was victor over everyone else, boys and girls alike, the
tall girl stopped throwing, went to the schoolhouse door, and swung a
big hand bell.  And Susan understood.

Not only was the tall girl the teacher, but the teacher was Grannie,
back when she was in her prime!

Susan looked at John, and he seemed to be realizing the same thing.
And then the boys and girls started filing into the schoolhouse, and
John and Susan filed in after them.

Inside was a potbellied stove by the teacher's desk and two rows of
desks and seats, bolted to the floor.  The boys sat in one row and the
girls in the other, with the littlest down front and the biggest ones
in the back (for Grannie, when she was a teacher, had taught all grades
at once).

Susan and John found empty seats and sat down.

The first lesson of the day was spelling.  Grannie began with the
shortest words and the youngest children; so Susan's mind was free to
wander.  It wandered to Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka.

It was too bad they would be missing whatever was about to happen.
Still, if Barnaby were here, he would have all the ideas and run
everything, the way he always did.  And apparently the book meant this
extra adventure to be just hers and John's and Grannie's.

On the other hand, Barnaby had been awfully good today about Susan's
losing the magic book and hadn't made a single sarcastic remark.  It
didn't seem fair for him and Abbie and Fredericka to be out of it now.

Susan was thinking so hard about this that she forgot to pay attention
to the spelling lesson.  Suddenly she looked up.  The tall girl who was
really Grannie was standing at her side, looking down at her, and her
black eyes snapped.

"Susan, your thoughts are wool-gathering," she said sternly.  "Rise and
spell 'xanthophyll.'"

Susan stood up by her desk and blushed.  She remembered that in the
Little House books "xanthophyll" was the word Laura couldn't spell at
the spelling bee, but Pa could.  She remembered the whole scene in the
book, but she couldn't remember the look of the word.

"I can't," she said.  "I'm sorry."

Grannie's young mouth relaxed a little, and her eyes stopped snapping
and twinkled.  "I couldn't, either, when I was your age," she said,
"and it's not a word I've found occasion to use often, since.  Still,
every piece of knowledge is a piece of knowledge.  X-a-n, zan; t-h-o,
tho, zantho; p-h-y-double l, xanthophyll.  Write it three times on the
blackboard and you will remember."

Susan stepped to the blackboard and did as she was told.  Grannie moved
to the teacher's desk again, and Susan noticed that while she was
holding the spelling book in her right hand, her left hand rested on
another book, on the corner of the desk.  It was a red book, smallish
but plump, comfortable and shabby.

As Susan finished writing "xanthophyll" on the blackboard for the third
time and turned to go back to her seat, she let her hand brush against
the desk (and against the red book) and wished that Barnaby and the
little girls would find their way into this adventure somehow.

Later on she was to be glad that she had.  Right now she turned her
mind to the next lesson.

The next lesson was arithmetic, and John was standing by his desk
struggling to divide 264 by 12 when the door opened and three figures
walked in.  The three figures looked startled, to say the least, and as
if they weren't sure how or why they had come.

"Good morning," said Grannie from the teacher's desk.  "You are new
pupils?"

"I guess so," said the largest figure.

"This is not a guessing game," said Grannie sternly.  "Say 'Yes,
ma'am.'  What is your name?"

"Barnaby," said the figure, "and she's Abbie and she's Fredericka."

"Barnaby, Abigail, and Fredericka," said Grannie, "you may find seats.
I shall not mark you tardy since it is your first day, but be on time
in future."

Fredericka found the last empty seat, down front.  Susan moved over
quickly and patted the place beside her, and Abbie, with a look of
grateful recognition, slid into it.  John was still standing by his
desk to recite and was so startled at seeing Barnaby that he made no
move.  But a boy called Clarence Oleson moved over and patted the place
by _him_, and Barnaby took it.  Susan's heart misgave her.  She did not
trust Clarence Oleson's expression.

"We will resume the recitation," said Grannie.

As John went on with his problem, Abbie whispered, "Where are we?
What's happening?"

"It's the magic," Susan whispered back.  "Grannie found the book and
wished.  She's the teacher, back when she was in her prime."

"Silence," said Grannie, in no uncertain tone.

After that, silence reigned until recess.

During recess, John and Susan and Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka met
in conference, and John and Susan told the others everything that had
happened.  And then Clarence Oleson came swaggering up and proved to be
just as mean as Susan had thought he would be from his look.

"Well, you're a little sawed-off hunk of nothing, aren't you?" he said
to Barnaby.  "Are you called Barnaby because you were born in a barn?
On _our_ farm we always drown the runt of the litter!"

Barnaby's hands made fists, and he moved toward Clarence.  But John got
between them.

"Lay off," he said.

"I can take care of myself," Barnaby muttered angrily.

"I know you can," said John.  "But right now you're not going to."

"Who asked you?" said Clarence.  "No big galoot of a new boy is going
to tell me what to do."  And he reached past John to tweak Barnaby's
ear.

At that moment Grannie appeared in the schoolhouse door.  Her eagle eye
rested coldly on Clarence for a moment, but she said nary a word and
merely rang her hand bell.  Recess was over, and the children trooped
back inside.

After recess, Clarence's behavior continued at a low level.  The lesson
was reading preparation, and Clarence kept pushing sideways in his
seat, crowding Barnaby over till he was right at the edge.  Then
Clarence made a sudden movement, and Barnaby sprawled crashingly into
the aisle.

Grannie looked up sharply at the sudden noise.  Clarence was sitting
far over on his own side by now, with an innocent expression on his
face.

"Silence," said Grannie.

Barnaby picked himself up and his hands made fists again, but he kept
his control and started to study once more.

Next Clarence produced a pin and stuck Barnaby with it hard.

This was the last straw, and Barnaby hit him.

I have said that Barnaby was not at his best with his fists.  But in
this case righteous anger lent strength to the blow.  And Clarence
hadn't expected a sawed-off little runt to show fight and was taken by
surprise.

"Teacher," he bawled, only partly in pretense, "he hit me!"

"Barnaby," said Grannie.  "Come here."

Barnaby went there.

"Hold out your hand."

Barnaby held it out.  Grannie produced a ruler and hit his hand three
times, quite hard.

"There is to be no fighting in class," she said sternly.  "Remember
that."

Barnaby's face was white, but he kept his voice steady.  "Yes,
Teacher," he said.  He couldn't very well say, "Yes, Grannie," and he
had forgotten Grannie's maiden name, if he ever knew it.

Grannie regarded him, and her grim expression softened.  She smiled
slightly and nodded to herself as if in approval.  "Good," she said.
"And now..." and she produced an extremely large pin from her desk,
"you may take this and stick Clarence with it."

There was a murmur of awe from the whole class.

Barnaby looked at the pin.  Then he looked at Clarence with distaste.
"I couldn't," he said.

"Very well," said Grannie.  "Then _I_ shall!"  And she advanced down
the aisle, pin in hand.  With her black eyes snapping and her splendid
tall handsomeness, she presented a truly terrifying picture of justice
aroused and on the warpath, and Clarence fairly writhed in anticipation.

"Please, Teacher, don't!" he cried.  "I'm sorry, honest, Teacher!"

Grannie (or Teacher) eyed him with contempt.  "So you can't take your
own medicine, eh?" she said.  "In that case, hold out your hand."  And
she hit his hand four times with the ruler, harder than she had hit
Barnaby's.

The murmur of awe and admiration in the room swelled to what was almost
a cheer.

"Silence!" said Grannie.  "Barnaby, you may sit with John in future."

Barnaby slid into half of John's seat, and the class quieted down.  But
Abbie could not contain her feelings.  "She _is_ like Lucinda Matlock,"
she cried in Susan's ear, "in the poem!  She's just a wonderful strong
pioneer woman of America!  I always said so!"  Then she broke off as
she felt Grannie's gaze upon her.

"Abigail," said Grannie, "you have something to tell the class?"

Abbie hung her head and blushed.  "I was saying," she stammered, "that
you remind me of a poem."

"Indeed?" said Grannie.  "Then pray recite it for us.  You may rise."

Abbie stood up.  "Well, I'm not sure I'll remember all of it," she
said, "but I'll try."  And she did.

If you would like to know the whole poem that Abbie recited, you may
find it in a book called _Spoon River Anthology_.  But it had not yet
been written when Grannie was in her prime, and she listened to Abbie's
recitation with interest, particularly to the last part where it says:

  "What is this I hear of sorrow and weariness,
  Anger, discontent and drooping hopes?
  Degenerate sons and daughters,
  Life is too strong for you--
  It takes life to love Life."


"Humph!" said Grannie, when Abbie had finished.  "Not much of a poem,
if you ask me.  It doesn't even rhyme."

"Nowadays poets _don't_, always," said Abbie bravely.

"Lazy things!" sniffed Grannie.  "Mr. Longfellow would never do such a
thing.  Or Alfred Lord Tennyson.  Still, what it says is perfectly
true.  It _does_ take life to love life.  Remember that, all of you."

The class nodded as if hypnotized.  As for Abbie, looking at that
splendid young face and those blazing eyes and thinking of the long,
full life Grannie was still to have, she was sure that one person, at
least, would always remember.  Everyone's attention had been so riveted
on Grannie and Abbie and the poem that almost no one had noticed a
sound that was beginning to be heard outside.  But John, always one for
noticing things, had noticed.  The sound was the sound of wind rising.

His eyes went to the window, and he half got up from his seat, raising
his hand.

"Please, ma'am," he said.  "There's a storm coming up."

Now as the others looked, the window went blank with the snow that was
darkening and thickening the air.  The sound of the wind rose to a
howl.  And Susan knew, from reading about them in the Little House
books, that one of the terrible sudden prairie blizzards had come.

"Children," said Grannie with quick decision, "I am going to dismiss
school while there is time to get back to town.  Go and get your coats."

Everyone ran to put on coats while Grannie dealt with the dampers of
the coal stove.  When Grannie opened the door, the wind took Susan's
breath away.  No one could see a foot before his face, but Grannie
turned toward town and started forward.

"All join hands and follow me," she said, taking Susan's hand in hers.

Abbie found herself next to Barnaby in the line.  "Take my sleeve," he
told her.  He seemed to be holding something in his hand, but Abbie
couldn't see what it was through the blinding, muffling snow.

The children staggered on into whirling blackness for what seemed like
hours and was probably all too many minutes.

"I'm afraid we've lost the way," Grannie finally shouted.  The wind
carried her voice away, but Susan could just make out the words.

Behind them Barnaby seemed to be trying to free his sleeve from Abbie's
grasp in order to do something or other with whatever it was he held in
his hand, but Abbie hung on tight and he couldn't.

Suddenly Susan tripped and fell forward into comparative dryness.  "In
here!" she called.

The others followed her into the opening she had stumbled upon.
Grannie had thoughtfully brought matches and a tinderbox with her, and
now she struck a light.  For a moment Susan couldn't imagine where they
were.  Then she realized.  She and the others were inside a sod house
built into a bank, like the one Laura lived in in _On the Banks of Plum
Creek_.  Susan recognized it from the picture in the book.

"It must be a deserted claim house," said Grannie.  "We must have
turned the wrong way.  Now we're farther from town than ever."

"At least we're dry," said Fredericka.

"And warm," said Abbie, for inside the sod house it was surprisingly
cozy.

"Maybe whoever held the claim left a lamp," said John.

He and some of the other boys searched and found one lamp with a little
oil in it.  Grannie lit the lamp and counted noses.  All the children
of the class were here and safe.

"But these storms last three or four days sometimes, don't they?" said
Barnaby.  "Did the person who left the lamp leave any food?"

Everyone searched again, but no food was to be found.  For the moment
they were dry and comparatively warm, but if the storm went on, how
long could they last?

"Well," said Barnaby slowly, "I had an idea.  I thought we might get
lost, and I brought this."  And he showed what he had been holding in
his hand.

What he was holding was the hand bell from the school-house.

The young teacher who was really Grannie looked from the bell to
Barnaby with a peculiar expression, rather as if she didn't know
whether to be angry or glad.

"Taking school property without permission is against the rules and you
must be punished," she said finally, in a voice that was just as
peculiar as her expression.  "Hold out your hand."

Barnaby held out his hand.

The teacher who was Grannie looked around rather distractedly as if she
expected to find her ruler somewhere in the air.  Then she slapped
Barnaby's palm once with her own strong hand.  Then she looked sorry.

"All the same," she said, "it was a very good idea, and I should have
thought of it myself."  And she shook the hand she had struck warmly.

"And now," she went on, turning to the others, "everyone stay safe
inside here while I ring the alarm from the doorway."

"Can't I ring?" said Barnaby.  "I thought of it."

"We could take turns," said John.

And in the end that is what they did.  But Grannie, as teacher in
charge, made a rule that the person ringing the alarm mustn't wander
out of sight of the doorway and mustn't stay outside for more than five
minutes at a time by her watch, for fear of freezing.

When it was Susan's turn to ring the hand bell, she gasped as the wind
of the blizzard struck her.  She had forgotten for a moment how cold
and loud it was.  Surely no one would hear her ringing through all this
howling.  But she swung the hand bell as hard as she could.  Then she
listened.  Was that a sound, far away, beyond the wind's uproar?  She
rang again and listened once more.  The sound, if it was a sound,
seemed nearer.

"It's my turn again now," said Barnaby, surprising her by appearing at
her side and shouting in her ear.

"Listen," shouted Susan.  She let Barnaby swing the hand bell this
time.  Then they both listened.

"Sleigh bells!" cried Barnaby.  "Someone's coming!  Better get inside
in the warm and tell the others!"

And "Sleigh bells!" Susan cried, running into the sod house.  Now
Grannie and the others crowded round the door, and everyone took turns
ringing as loud and strong as each one could.  Always when the hand
bell stopped, the sleigh bells seemed closer.

At last a sleigh loomed big and darker than the snow around it, and
someone called, "Quick!  Hop in!"

"Why, forever more!" cried Grannie.  "Carl Ingoldsby!  What are you up
to, catching your death of cold gallivanting around in this weather?"

Susan looked at John and John looked at Susan.

Carl Ingoldsby had been the name of Grannie's husband, the grandfather
Susan and John had never seen, who had died and been buried out on the
Western plains long ago.  And yet here he was, young and come
a-courting, or at least a-rescuing!

"Save your breath and get in!" shouted Carl Ingoldsby, just as snappily
as Grannie had shouted at him.

And somehow Grannie and all the children crowded into the sleigh.

Carl Ingoldsby turned the horses, and they went trotting off into the
whirling blackness.  Apparently Carl Ingoldsby knew the way, even in a
blinding snowstorm.  Or perhaps the horses had a sense that would guide
them home.

Whichever was true, before long the lights of the little town on the
prairie showed faintly ahead.  Carl Ingoldsby seemed to know where each
child in the school lived, and the sleigh stopped at house after house
until only John and Susan and Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka were
left.  And of course Grannie.

Susan was just wondering what would happen to them and whether they
would be set down on a cold dark Main Street, to find their way home
through the years to the future, when the horses dashed into the open
doorway of a stable.  She could see it was a stable because a lantern
hung by the door, but once inside, darkness reigned again and Susan
could hardly make out the forms of Grannie and Carl Ingoldsby, where
they sat looking at each other.  Neither one made a move to get out of
the sleigh.

"Thanks for the sleigh-ride," said Grannie, rather airily Susan thought.

"Don't mention it," said Carl Ingoldsby.  "Happy to oblige.  Any time."

There was a silence.

"I suppose..."  Grannie's voice broke off and hesitated.  "I suppose
you saved all our lives, in a way."

"Oh, I don't know," said Carl Ingoldsby.  "The storm might have
stopped.  Or somebody else might have found you."

"Well, thanks anyway," said Grannie.

There was another silence.

"What," said Carl Ingoldsby, "if I were to ask you to ride home again
some day?"

"Why not try asking," said Grannie, "and see?"

Carl Ingoldsby gave a chuckle.  "Independent, aren't you?" he said.

"Yes," said Grannie.  "I am."

"What," said Carl Ingoldsby, "if I were to ask you to ride home with me
some day and _stay_?"

This time the silence lasted a long while.  Susan's eyes were
accustomed to the darkness of the stable now, and she could see that
Carl Ingoldsby's arms were around the young Grannie, and she was not
resisting.  And Susan noticed something else.

All through the school day and all through the storm and the sleigh
ride Grannie had held the magic book clutched in one hand.  Now the
book fell from her grasp as she put her hand up to touch Carl
Ingoldsby's cheek.

And Susan picked it up.

As she said afterwards, anybody could tell the adventure was over.

And of course once the book was in Susan's hands, it left off being the
true Western story it had been for Grannie and became the old familiar
magic book the five children had come to know and distrust so well.
And Susan wished.

This time there were no colors to run together and shoot up like
fireworks.  The dark stable merely became darker.  And then it was as
if someone had switched the light on again.

There were Susan and John, at home in their living room, and there was
Grannie, rocking and dozing in the chair across from them.

As Susan watched, Grannie woke with a start.  Then a smile spread
slowly over her face.  "I must have been dreaming," she said.

Susan and John felt very much the same.  And yet if it had been a
dream, how had the book come from Grannie's hands to Susan's, where it
now sat safe and fat and red and mysterious?

Grannie was still smiling.  "I was dreaming of your grandpa," she said.
"He was a fine-looking man.  Fine pair of hands with a team of horses,
too.  Fine man, generally."  Then she struggled up from her chair.
"Time for bed," she announced.  "Where's that book I was reading?"

Susan held the magic book concealed and went to fetch the book of
Western reminiscences from the library.  "You mean this one?"

Grannie took the book.  "It'll do.  It's not the one but it'll do."
And she suffered herself to be helped upstairs.

Later on John caught Susan alone for a moment in the upstairs hall.
"Do you suppose Barnaby and the others got back, too?" he wondered.
"Do you suppose they think it was a dream, too?  Or would they know?"

It was too late to call, for Barnaby's father always went to bed early
when he had a big television show next day, and the bell would wake him.

But at that moment John and Susan's telephone rang.  Susan got there
first.

"Oh good, you're back, too," said Barnaby's voice.  "So are we."

"That was nice, wasn't it?" said Susan.

"Yes it was," said Barnaby.

There was a remembering pause.

"We'll be over early tomorrow with the book," Susan told him.  "Is it
your turn next or Abbie's?"

There was another pause, this time as of inner struggle.  Then
Barnaby's better nature asserted itself.  "Ladies first," he said.
"I'll go tell her."  And he hung up.

Susan reported this conversation to John, and then stopped in for a
good-night look at Grannie.

Grannie was already asleep.  Apparently she was really dreaming now,
for there was a smile on her face.  And as Susan watched, she murmured
in her sleep.

"Mrs. Carl Ingoldsby," she said.

Susan smiled, too, and switched off the lamp.




5.  Thwarting It

When Barnaby came into Abbie's room, she was already in bed (for he had
tiptoed downstairs to the telephone in his stocking feet, after all the
lights were out and their parents were asleep).

But once he'd whispered the news that it was her turn next, she stayed
awake thinking for a long time.  The adventure with Grannie had been
the best yet, maybe because part of it had been serious as well as fun.
Where could she wish them tomorrow that would be even better?

So far the book's magic had been sort of bookish, the adventure that
was more or less Oz and the _Half Magic_ one, and then the Little House
books mixed up with Grannie's own life.  Maybe that was the book's
secret.  Maybe it made only book magic because it was a book itself.

Abbie went over her favorite reading in her mind.  There were the
Betsy-Tacy series and _When Molly Was Six_ (which had been her mother's
own favorite when she was a girl).  But somehow Abbie felt that Barnaby
and John and Susan and even Fredericka would not appreciate a visit
with the classic heroines of these.

Poetry usually held the answer to most things.

"_Hiawatha?_"  No, Abbie had had enough of primitive America for a
while.  "_Evangeline_" was too sad.  "_The Lady of the Lake_" had a
good story and "_The Eve of Saint Agnes_" was thrilling (though full of
hard words) but neither wildest Scotland nor romantic Italy seemed
quite perfect for a day's outing.  And thinking dreamily of Roderigh
Vich Alpine and jellies soother than the creamy curd, Abbie fell asleep.

Wondering a lot about tomorrow the last thing at night often makes a
person wake early and eager to begin it.  You might try this plan the
night before your next arithmetic exam.  Of course, sometimes it works
the other way and you toss on a sleepless pillow only to turn slothful
with the dawn.  This is not advised, before an exam or at any other
time.

But for Abbie on Wednesday morning the former was the case, and she was
up and around and down by half-past six with her bed made and her own
breakfast eaten.  So that when her mother came downstairs ten minutes
later to get breakfast for her father, coffee and eggs were already
bubbling on the stove, and the toast was in the toaster and the honey
in the pot.

Her mother thanked her and said she could come along on the ride to the
station, a thing Abbie always liked to do, for her father was a very
special person to her, and indeed to all the family.

This morning, when he came into the kitchen all dressed up in his city
clothes, Abbie thought again how handsome he was and how nice, and with
that beautiful voice, and wished, not for the first time, that the
important television people would discover this about him, too.  (But
she did not have the book in her hands at the moment, as it was still
at Susan's house; so the wish did not count as a magic one.)

If the important television people discovered how wonderful her father
was, maybe they would let him sing solos all by himself and he would
make more money and her mother wouldn't have to work so hard selling
houses and could stay home, and maybe her father could be home more,
too.

Of course if he were a solo singer, he would still have to work hard,
but maybe it would be at more reasonable hours, and he wouldn't always
be running for the seven-twelve and not getting home rill the eight
thirty-four, just in time to kiss Abbie good night.

And there was more to it.  Her father seemed happy in his work and was
almost always cheerful and fun, but Abbie knew that standing in the
background and singing in the chorus, or a quartet, wasn't really what
he had studied for all those years and hoped to be.

The reason she knew this was that she and her father had a secret.

"_Why_ won't they let you sing by yourself, ever?" Abbie had said once,
when they were alone.  "You're just as good as any of them."

"Well," her father had said, "I don't know about that.  But in the
first place, I'm too short."  To be a leading man, he told her, a
person had to be tall, or at least above middle height.  Unless he were
a comedian, and Abbie's father, while often funny around the house, was
not that.

"But don't say anything about it to the others," he went on.  "Let's
have it be a secret between you and me."

The reason for not telling the others was that Barnaby was too short,
too, and his father didn't want him to worry about it.  Probably he
would choose a career where it didn't matter.

"What about _me_?" Abbie said.  "I'm short, too.  So's Fredericka."

But her father told her that for a girl being too short wasn't a bad
thing and was even at times considered to be a good one.  It didn't
seem fair.

This morning, as they stood on the station platform (for the
seven-twelve was late for once and her father didn't have to run),
Abbie thought to herself that he didn't look too short to _her_.  And
she made one more try.

"Daddy, you know where the microphone is.  Why don't you just walk
straight down to it and _sing_?  Then they'd _know_!" she said.

"All right, I'll remember that.  Maybe I will," said her father.  But
Abbie could tell from the loving note in his voice and the way she felt
him exchanging a smile with her mother above her head that he was only
humoring her.  And then the seven-twelve screamed twice and came into
the station, and her father kissed her and her mother good-by and went
gallantly off, holding himself straight and looking as tall as he
could, as if he were in front of the television cameras already.

But Abbie went on thinking about him all the way back to the little
white house.

Barnaby and Fredericka were up by this time and busy with their own
breakfast and chores, and Abbie helped them, but her mind wasn't on her
work and she served Barnaby Rice Krispies, which he wholly detested,
instead of Bran Flakes, and let Fredericka make her bed without any
hospital corners at _all_.

And then their mother went off to her office and Susan and John
arrived, and Susan handed over the book, and for the next half hour all
was squabble and shove as four eager voices surrounded Abbie, advising
her what to wish and how to wish it.  Abbie's mildness had that effect
on people.

But this morning was different.

"Let's go see the Three Musketeers," John suggested, and "Through the
mountain with Bilbo Baggins the Hobbit," shouted Fredericka.
Apparently everyone else had come to the same conclusion Abbie had,
that the book preferred to take its lucky masters down the ways of
_other_ books.

"_At the Back of the North Wind_," said Susan, tempting Abbie very
much, for she had often longed to go adventuring with the North Wind
and Diamond, as has every reader of the great book of that name (except
for the ending part, which is sad).

But she shook her head stubbornly to each and every offer.

"All right, where _do_ you want to go, then?" said Barnaby finally.

"To New York," Abbie told him, "and watch Daddy's television show."

"Oh, for heaven's sake!" said Barnaby in disgust.  "If _that's_ all you
want, why didn't you just go in with him on the train?"

"He wouldn't have taken me," said Abbie sadly.  "He never will."

And this was true.  Their father always said that it was bad enough
looking at the programs on the set at home, but as for watching
rehearsals, some depths were better left unplumbed, and he would
protect them from the seamier side of life as long as he could.  Which
was a joke, and yet at the same time Abbie and Barnaby and Fredericka
knew that he wasn't really joking.

"He wouldn't want us to do it," said Barnaby now.  "Besides, we can't.
It wouldn't be a magic thing."

"I think television _is_ magic," said Abbie, "or how do you explain it?"

Barnaby couldn't.  His ideas were literary rather than scientific.
"But the book only makes book magic," he objected.

"How do you know?" said Abbie.  "We haven't _tried_ anything else."

"I heard somebody say," put in Fredericka, "that some day pretty soon
there won't _be_ any books.  Television'll take their place."

Everybody shuddered at this thought.

"It won't," said Barnaby.  "It couldn't.  And I don't think we ought to
do anything to encourage it and make it think it can."

"I know," said Abbie.  "I don't think we should, either.  But that's
still the wish I want.  I want to see the rehearsal, and then I want to
see the show."

She had another wish in mind, too, for later on, but she said nothing
about it now.  Wait till the time.

John and Susan and Fredericka were looking at her with a new respect
and as if they hardly recognized her.  Abbie had never been so stubborn
before or struck out on such an original tack, either.  And even
Barnaby seemed to be weakening.

"Well," he said, and broke off, hesitating.  He turned to John and
Susan.  "What do _you_ think?"

"I worry about leaving Grannie," said Susan.  "Won't all that take the
rest of today and tonight, too?"

"That doesn't usually matter, with magic," John pointed out.  "When we
get back, it's usually still the same time it was when we left."

"It might not be _this_ time," said Barnaby.  "If you ask me, making
book magic stoop to television would be thwarting it in the worst way.
It might turn on us.  Still..."  And he broke off, hesitating again.
Abbie could see that he would like to watch Daddy in the show, too.

"Let's see what Grannie's doing now," said Susan, and all five children
ran across the street to the big house.

In the living room Grannie was reading her Western book and hardly
looked up when the five children trooped in.  This was encouraging, and
yet there was no knowing what ideas the book might put into her head to
go and do, next minute.  Of course, after seeing Grannie in her prime
last night, the children felt a new respect.  There didn't seem to be
much that she couldn't do and do well.  But she might forget that she
was in her prime no longer.  Susan was in a quandary.

But at that minute there was a rap at the door, and it was Grannie's
friend Miss Centennial Peterson from down the road, wanting Grannie to
come to lunch with her and stay for supper.  Miss Centennial was lots
younger than Grannie, only seventy-one and still in her first vigor.
So that was all right.

"You see, it all works out," said Abbie, when Grannie's knitting and
her other goods and chattels had finally been collected and she had
been speeded on her way.  "We're meant to go."

"All right," said Barnaby.  "It's on your own head."

"But let's have lunch first," said Fredericka, for they had been
arguing so long that by now it was way past noon.

A sort of picnic meal was rounded up in the kitchen, and everyone
hurriedly chipped in to do the dishes (and chipped three plates in the
process).

And at last Abbie stood with the book in both hands, and everyone
watched respectfully while she made her wish.

The next moment the five children were in the middle of the television
show, in the middle of rehearsal.

Abbie's father always said that once you saw what went on behind the
scenes at a television show, it was a wonder to you that anything ever
came out on the air at all.

And looking around now at the confusion on every hand, the children
could only agree.

In one corner dancers danced.  In another singers sang (and Abbie and
Barnaby and Fredericka's father was one of them).  On the stage
jugglers juggled and acrobats sprang.  Several stars of stage and
screen sat here and there, looking important and waiting their turn.

And around and among and between these wandered the director, talking
every minute and giving orders, with his secretary at his elbow taking
down every golden word.

Abbie had wondered if their presence would pass unnoticed and whether
she should have included something about this as part of her wish.  But
luckily there were some child actors waiting to rehearse in one of the
sketches, and she and Barnaby and John and Susan and Fredericka sat
with these and tried to look like child actors, too.

Fredericka attempted to make friends with the child actors, but they
were too busy combing their hair and complaining about their costumes
and listening to their mothers' advice about how to steal the
audience's attention from the other child actors and made little reply.

And then Abbie said "Shush" as her father appeared on the stage with
some of the other singers.  And even Fredericka quieted down.

The number that was being rehearsed was a song by a famous rock 'n'
roll star.  While the star squirmed and writhed and sang (if you could
call it that), four men singers swayed back and forth behind him and
hummed or uttered nonsense syllables to a counter melody.  This is what
is known in musical circles as a vocal background.

Looking at the stage, Abbie had to admit that her father was the
shortest man on it.  But he looked the nicest, too.

And then, because one of the chords sounded wrong, the director had
each of the quartet sing his part alone, while the rock 'n' roll star
fidgeted and bit his nails and looked bored.

The words of the vocal background were not edifying.

  "Chickadee tidbit, chickadee tidbit,
  Skedaddle skedaddle pow!"

the men warbled in turn, on different notes and in different voices.

But when Abbie's father's turn came, his voice rolled out so deep and
rich and true that her heart ached with love, and she was sure the
important people would discover how wonderful he was right then and
there, without any help from the magic at all.

This did not happen.  All the director said was, "O.K.  Take it
straight on from there."

So Abbie held the book tight and wished the important part of her wish.
What she wished was that the important people would discover her father
tonight before the show was over.

"I'll let you know when," she told the book.

At that moment the director's assistant appeared at the children's
elbow.  "All right, kids, get up there," he said.  "It's time for your
bit now."  And the child actors trooped obediently stageward.

"You, too," he added, as Abbie and the others remained in their seats.
The five children looked at each other, shrugged, and followed the
crowd.

Exactly what the act was that they were supposed to be a part of, Abbie
and Barnaby and Fredericka and Susan and John never knew.  Apparently
the child actors were expected to crowd around the rock 'n' roll star
and ask for his autograph.  But Abbie and Barnaby and Fredericka and
Susan and John had no interest in his autograph, or him either, and
they didn't know what lines to say or where to stand, and they were
afraid any minute Abbie's father, who was still on stage, would
recognize them.

So they stayed as far away from the rock 'n' roll star as they could
and huddled together and hid behind each other and bumped into the
other child actors and got in their way until the scene was one of
utter confusion, and the director pushed around what hair he had in a
frenzy.

"What do you kids think you're doing up there?" he shouted.  "No, I
mean you.  _You_ five."  Then he started counting.  "I didn't order
that many kids.  Those five must be gate-crashers.  How did they get in
here?"

Everyone in the studio now turned to look at the five children, and
everyone included Abbie and Barnaby and Fredericka's father.  He
looked, looked again incredulously, and started forward.  Abbie
clutched the book to her and begged it to help.  And it did, in the
simplest way it knew.

Abbie's father stopped short, blinking.  And the director said, "Where
are they?  Oh, they've gone.  Good riddance."

"What's up?" hissed Fredericka.

"We're invisible, I _think_," said Abbie.  "To _them_, I mean."  (For
they could still see each other perfectly well.)

"And now," said the director, "where was I?"  Then he sank into a
chair.  "It doesn't matter.  I can't go on.  Those kids have shattered
my mood.  Might as well break for dinner now.  Everybody be back in one
hour."

And the crowd started filing out the doors.

Fredericka now suggested that there were all manner of interesting
things five invisible children could find to do in a deserted
television studio.  "We could broadcast from coast to coast.  I'll do
my scarf dance."

But Barnaby told her sternly that they'd caused enough trouble already,
and they'd better make themselves scarce from now on till the actual
program began.

So the five children left the studio and wandered out into the street,
which happened to be Broadway.

New York City has a magic of its own, even when you are not a child and
not invisible.  When you are, it is even better.  And John and Susan
and Barnaby and Abbie and Fredericka now tasted it to the full.

They pressed unseen through the madding crowd, causing people to cry,
"Who're you pushing?" to other people who hadn't been pushing one bit.
They rode the subway to Forty-second Street, changed trains, and rode
back again.  They walked a block across town and gazed upon the topless
towers of Rockefeller Center.  They entered a doughnut shop and
invisibly ate doughnuts and paid for them with invisible hands until
quite an interesting panic spread among the city's other
doughnut-fanciers.

During the stroll, Abbie was with them in body but not in spirit.  She
was too busy watching all the clocks they passed and waiting for it to
be time to get back to the studio.

Eventually it was, and the five invisible forms entered the theater
part and secured seats in the front row.  When people came and sat on
their invisible laps they squirmed and made their invisible knees as
knobbly as possible till the people moved away, saying, "Wouldn't you
think the television company could afford _springs_?  _I_'m going to
write to Mr. Minow!"

And at last the drums rolled and the spotlights beamed and the grand
super-spectacular transcontinental variety show began.

During the early moments Abbie's father was not conspicuous.  In the
opening number he stood in the back row.  In the next two songs he was
part of a group that sang vocal backgrounds out of range of the camera.
Halfway through the program he carried on a tree that was part of the
scenery.  He did this so well and so neatly that Abbie wanted to
applaud, but she restrained herself.  The time would come.

And it did, with the entrance of the rock 'n' roll star, whose number
was to be the finale of the show.  He began his song, and Abbie's
father and the three other men danced onto the stage behind him.  Abbie
waited till her father was right next to the star, so his face would
surely show in the camera.  Then she looked at the book.

"Now," she told it.

The next moment, on the great stage and in the living rooms of fifty
million television fans throughout the country, a surprising scene took
place.

The rock 'n' roll star squirmed and writhed, as was his habit, but no
sound fell from his lips.  The four singers swayed behind him and their
mouths made words, but no sound came from three of _them_, either.

Only Abbie's father's voice rang out over the nation, sounding richer
and truer than ever.

  "Chickadee tidbit, chickadee tidbit,
  Skedaddle skedaddle pow!"

he sang.  And again,

  "Chickadee tidbit, chickadee tidbit,
  Skedaddle skedaddle pow!"


A look of surprise appeared on his face as he realized something
unusual was happening, but he went right on, just as he had been
rehearsed to do.

  "Chickadee tidbit, chickadee tidbit..."


Abbie's heart nearly burst with pride in him and in herself, too.  He
was her father and he was singing a solo on television at last, and now
the whole world would know how wonderful he was, and she had done it!

"Good girl!" breathed Barnaby in her ear, as he realized what her wish
had been.  Fredericka got the idea only a second later and clutched
Abbie's arm.  Susan and John, not being musical, needed to be explained
to.

As for the studio audience, first it gave a gasp of surprise.  Then a
wave of delighted laughter swept through it, followed by a burst of
applause that grew and grew and kept right on till the end of the
program.  When the child actors pranced on for their little closing
bit, not one word they said could be heard.

And even when the show was over, the audience didn't seem to want to
stop clapping.

"That little fellow sang right out!" said the man behind Abbie.  "He
took his part good!"

"He was better than the star, if you ask me," said the woman next to
him.

As for Abbie, she could hold herself back no longer.  She left her seat
and ran right up the steps onto the stage, and the other four were not
far behind her.

Her father stood in the center of the stage, surrounded by the director
and the star and what looked like a hundred other people, all talking
at once and waving their arms and undoubtedly congratulating him on his
success.

And as Abbie looked at his nice puzzled, modest face, she forgot to be
proud of what she'd done and just thought what a wonderful father she
had, and not too short at all.

And she ran straight toward him.




6.  Being Thwarted

Abbie ran straight toward her father.  Then she stopped.

The director and the star and all the other people weren't
congratulating him.  They were angry.

"You sang in the wrong place!" the director was shouting.  "You spoiled
the whole show!"

"I didn't," said Abbie's father stoutly.  "I sang just the way we
rehearsed it.  Something must have gone wrong with the microphone."

"The nerve of him!" cried another man, who must be the engineer.
"Trying to put the blame on me!  My microphones are perfect!"

"I'm rooned!" cried the great rock 'n' roll star.  "I'll sue the
station and the network and you worst of all!  You've rooned my
career!"  He shook his fist in Abbie's father's face.  "You'll hear
from my lawyers in the morning."  And he flounced away.

The five children looked at each other.  And while Barnaby did not say
"I told you so," Abbie could tell what he was thinking and she knew
that he was right.  She had thwarted the magic and gone too far, and it
had turned.

"I don't think the audience noticed anything," their father was saying
now.  "They seemed to applaud a lot.  I think maybe they liked it."

"Who cares if they liked it or not?" cried the director at screamlike
pitch.  "_They_ don't matter!  You're fired and you'll never work on
this program again!"

"Daddy!"  Abbie couldn't help crying in tones of utter remorse at these
words.

And because when magic goes wrong, it often all goes wrong at once,
suddenly she and Barnaby and Fredericka and Susan and John were
invisible no longer, and her father and the director and all the others
looked at them and saw them.

"_You!_" cried the director, making as if to tear his hair, only he had
little to tear, being bald for the most part.  He turned on Abbie's
father again.  "Are those _your_ kids?  This is the last straw!  You
smuggle your kids in here and ruin the rehearsal, and then you sing in
the wrong place and spoil the show!  I'll see that you never work on
any television network again!"

He went storming off into the wings, and his followers followed him.
And now most of the other singers and actors crowded round Abbie's
father and patted him on the back and asked him sympathetically what
had happened.

"I don't know," he said miserably.  "I swear I wasn't wrong, but I
guess I must have been."

The other actors departed, shaking their heads and looking sorry, which
showed that their father was as well liked at work as he was at home.
But Abbie paid small heed to this small comfort.  She was clutching the
book hard and pleading with it silently in her mind.

Maybe it would relent and they would find themselves back home at the
same time it had been when they left, and they could spend the rest of
the day right up till show-time wheedling the book and flattering it,
and maybe it would unmake the magic and not let the awful thing happen.

But it didn't.  She and Barnaby and the others stayed right where they
were, and the awful thing was true.

Their father looked up and gave them a shaky smile.

"Hi, kids," he said.  "How did you get here?"

Abbie opened her mouth but no words came out.

"We wanted to watch you rehearsing," said Barnaby, "so we clubbed
together and came in on the express."  Which after all was nearly the
truth, for the magic had certainly been quicker than any local.  "I'm
sorry, Dad," he said.  "I guess we all are."

But his father didn't scold them one bit, which somehow made it worse.
"That's all right," he said.  "If you wanted to watch me work, it's
probably a good thing you came today.  It may be the last chance you'll
ever get.  Did you buy roundtrips?"

"No," said Barnaby truthfully.

"Can you take us home?" said John.  "I'll mow lawns all week and pay
you back."  For if Barnaby's father was out of a job, every penny would
count.

"So will I," said Barnaby, who hated mowing lawns above all things.

His father took out his commutation railroad ticket and looked at it.
"Six rides left," he said.  "That'll use _that_ up.  The way things
look, maybe I won't have to buy another."

Then he seemed to decide that this was self-pitying and unworthy talk.
Making a comic face, he threw an arm round Fredericka and an arm round
Abbie and grinned at the other three.  "Come along," he said.  "Home's
the best place at a time like this."

Abbie could not repress a sniff, and he gave her a special smile.

"Cheer up," he said.  "It's not _your_ fault."

And of course it was, but she could never tell him so because he would
never believe it.

Perhaps it would be best to draw a veil over the five children's
homeward journey and the rest of the evening that followed.

Except to say that Abbie's father smiled and made jokes and tried to
entertain them all the way home, which brought Abbie nearer to crying
than ever, and yet she couldn't because if her father was wearing a
smile to hide a breaking heart, surely the least she could do was do
likewise.

And to say that when Susan and John reached Miss Centennial Peterson's
house, Miss Centennial and Grannie were deep in a game of two-handed
pinochle and hadn't worried or noticed how late it was at all.

When Abbie was finally alone in her own room and could cry without
upsetting her father, she found that her thoughts lay too deep for
tears and all she could do was think them.

Presently Barnaby stole in and sat on the foot of her bed in the dark.
(Fredericka was young and heartless enough to be already asleep.)

"Don't feel too bad," he whispered.  "I'd have done the same thing if
I'd thought of it.  You meant it for the best."

"That's no excuse," Abbie whispered back.  "Who _doesn't_ mean things
for the best?  It's the way the things work out that counts.  I should
have thought."

"I've been thinking now," Barnaby told her.  "You keep the book
tomorrow and keep on wishing.  I'm willing to give up my turn and not
have any wish at all, and I think John will be, too.  That ought to be
enough extra magic left over to fix even this up."

"Thanks," said Abbie.

When he went away, she felt a little better but not better enough.  She
could hear her father and mother still talking downstairs about what
they would do now and how they would make ends meet.  After a while she
went into the hall and sat on the top step and listened.

"We'll get along," her mother was saying.  "Don't worry."

"I won't," said her father, but his voice said that he was.

There was a silence.

"I nearly died when you sang out of turn," her mother said.  "But it
was good to hear you singing alone again."  Then she chuckled.  "And it
_was_ funny.  You should have seen the expression on your face."

Her father laughed, too, and Abbie felt warm inside.  That was the kind
of people her mother and father were, people who could still laugh when
life looked darkest.  That was why she was sure they'd come out all
right in the end, no matter how poor.

But she would do all she could to help.  And she went back into her own
room and begged the book to show its nicer side with her last waking
thought.

The next morning she woke early, but Barnaby was up and dressed before
her.  He and Fredericka came running into Abbie's room and handed her
the morning paper, folded back at the radio and television page.

"Read that," said Barnaby, pointing at a paragraph in the critic's
column.

Abbie read:


"Amid the welter of trite-and-true clichs one charming moment occurred
when a member of the singing group suddenly trolled forth an absurd
solo at the wrong moment.  The look of comic surprise on the face of
the singer nearly convinced this reviewer that the carefully rehearsed
episode was truly spontaneous."


"What does all that mean?" she wondered.

"It means," said Barnaby, "that he liked it."

"Oh," said Abbie.  "Thanks," she added to the book.  And she fetched
her manicure scissors and cut the clipping out, with a scalloped edge,
and put it on the tray with the breakfast that she and Barnaby and
Fredericka now prepared and served their father and mother in bed.

"Well," said their father when he had read the clipping, "that's
something to put in my scrapbook, anyway."

"Will it make a difference, Roy?" asked their mother.

"I shouldn't think so.  I doubt if that director can read.  And now,"
and he attacked his breakfast, "this is what I call luxury.  I've been
wanting a vacation for years.  After we finish this elegant collation,
who's for a picnic at Candlewood Lake?  You," he told their mother,
"are staying home from the office today."

"Roy, I can't afford to," said their mother.  "And are you sure we can
spare the gas?"

"We aren't going to have any talk like that," said their father.  "It's
not pretty talk.  I'll find some kind of job next week, but right now
I'm going to get to know my family.  I think they're worth it."

"Can Susan and John come, too?" said Fredericka.  "And Grannie?"

"Why not?" said their father.  "They seem to be part of the family,
too."  And an hour later the little car left the driveway with eight
people crammed into it somehow.

Candlewood Lake proved all that could be desired, and fish were caught
and swimming prevailed and Grannie found what she was sure was a
copperhead snake and quelled it with her stern pioneer gaze, so that it
slunk away.  And altogether no one brooded upon the dead past or
thought about last night at all, except that Abbie took the book along
with her and ever and anon threw it a meaningful glance.

It was nearly dinnertime when the happy voyagers arrived back at the
little white house, and the phone was ringing as they turned into the
driveway.  Abbie and Barnaby and Fredericka's father ran to answer it
at the extension on the porch.  Whoever was calling seemed to be
talking a blue streak, for their father kept listening and listening
and saying nothing but an occasional "Oh," while his face grew more and
more surprised every minute.  When he finally hung up, he seemed
incapable of speech, but merely stared round at them all with an
expression of utter stupefaction.

"What was it?" said their mother.

"It's that director.  He said they'd been trying to reach me all day.
It seems that I was the hit of the show.  It seems every critic on
every paper said the same thing, and people have been phoning the
studio and some even sent telegrams.  They want me to let bygones be
bygones and come back at twice the salary, and they want to feature me
by name as guest star next week and have me sing 'Chickadee Tidbits'
all over again.  Only the song writers are turning it into a whole big
number."

"What did you say?" said their mother.

"I told him I would," said their father.  "Only first I made him admit
I didn't make a mistake last night."

"Then everything's going to be all right after all?" said Abbie.  And
she clasped the book to her breast.

"Of course it won't last," said her father.  "Crazy novelties like this
never do.  But we ought to make a little money while it does."

"Maybe enough to buy that house over in Silvermine that I was telling
you about," said their mother.  "The one that's a bargain and really
big enough."

And then the telephone rang again.  It kept on ringing even after
dinner.  Sometimes it was long distance and sometimes it was telegrams.
The Ed Sullivan Show wanted the children's father to be a guest and
sing "Chickadee Tidbits."  So did the Garry Moore Show and the Perry
Como one.  A record company wanted him to make a record of "Chickadee
Tidbits" right away.

"They say it'll be the biggest thing since 'Mairzy Doats,'" said
Abbie's father, in rather a peculiar voice.

"What's the matter?" said Abbie, who happened to be alone in the room
with him at the moment.

"Oh, nothing.  It's just, I never minded singing trash when I was one
of a group.  I had to be a good musician to do that, and the harmony
made the words sound better.  But for a grown man to stand up all by
himself in front of a lot of other grown-up people singing,

  'Chickadee tidbit, chickadee tidbit,
  Skedaddle skedaddle pow!'

for a living all the rest of his days....  Well, when I was young and
hopeful and went to the Conservatory, I never thought I'd finally go
down in history quite that way, that's all.  Not that I'm not grateful."

The telephone rang again.

"What was it?" said Abbie when her father had hung up, his expression
more peculiar than ever.

"It was the song writers from the show.  They've written me a new song
they want me to introduce after I've sung 'Chickadee Tidbits' a few
more times.  They even sang it to me over the phone."

"How does it go?" said Abbie.

"It goes,

  'Picalilli kumquat, picalilli kumquat,
  Pedunkle pedunkle eek!'"

said her father.

He caught Abbie's eye.  And they both started to laugh.

But that night in bed Abbie thought serious thoughts.  When she found
she was still thinking them in the morning, she left the house before
any of the others were up and went for a walk.  And she took the book
with her.  After all, Barnaby and John had given up their wishes and
wouldn't be needing the magic.  But maybe she would.

As she walked, she thought about her father and about the wish.  Lots
of good things were going to happen, in a money way, because of it.
And yet Abbie wondered if her father were really going to be as happy
as he'd been before she made it.

She had heard of a thing called human dignity, and it seemed to her
that her father had always had quite a lot of this, small-part singer
or not and too short or not.  Something told her that he would always
go on having it, but something also told her that singing,

  "Chickadee tidbit, chickadee tidbit,
  Skedaddle skedaddle pow!"

for a living was going to make it harder for him to keep a firm hold on
it.

She thought maybe if she could make a poem about this and tell it to
the book, the book might know the answer.

Abbie was a poet who had not made many poems, as yet.  The thoughts
were there in her mind, but so far she could rarely bring them out of
it and onto the paper.  A line or two would usually come, and sometimes
a whole verse, but that would be all.

There was a particular deserted woods down the road, where she liked to
go to think out her poems.  There was a sunny clearing at the near end
of the woods and a rocky glen beyond, and if she couldn't find a line
or two in the one place, she usually could in the other.

Today she perched on a log at the edge of the clearing (for the grass
was still dewy), took out the pencil and paper she had brought along
with the book, and wrote down,

  "Alas, for human dignity!"


Then she sat and looked at the sun climbing higher in the sky and a
brown butterfly on some orange butterfly weed and two towhees that were
darting near her and shrieking far too loudly (for their nest was
nearby and they thought the poem was a magic spell to blight their
offspring, only Abbie did not know this), and no words came.  Her
thought was perfectly clear, but it wouldn't take shape.  So she
decided to try the rocky glen instead.

There was a big rock at the top of the glen where you could sit and
look far down at the little stream below, where bloodroot grew in
spring and cardinal flowers in summer, all among the dappled shade.  It
was a place for thinking vast thoughts.

But today as Abbie approached the rock, she saw that a man was already
sitting there.  Furthermore, the man had a pencil and paper and was
writing.  Quite a coincidence, thought Abbie, as she drew nearer.  The
man was so intent on his work that he didn't look up, even when she
came quite near.  He was small and untidy, with rather wild gray hair
and large horn-rimmed spectacles, and altogether he looked like nothing
so much as the pictures of writers you sometimes see on the covers of
books.  This gave Abbie courage.

"Are you an author?" she said suddenly.  She had never met a real one.

The man peered at her nearsightedly over his spectacles.  "More or
less," he said.  "I'm a poet," he added rather apologetically.  "Does
that count?"

"Why, so am I!" said Abbie, delighted.

"Good," said the man, and went on writing.  But he didn't seem to mind
Abbie's being there; so she sat beside him on the rock, as one author
by another.

"Do you _finish_ many poems?" she asked after a bit.

"Yes," said the man, "I do."

"I don't," said Abbie.

"You will," said the man, "if you keep trying."

There was another pause.  And since her own poem didn't seem to be
getting any further, Abbie looked idly at what the man was writing.

"That's not a poem," she said, "is it?"

The man looked at her.  "What makes you think so?"

"It doesn't rhyme," said Abbie.  "And the lines are all different
lengths."

"It's a play," said the man.  "It's my first play.  But it's a poem, in
a way.  It's an opera in a way, too.  At least part of it has to be
sung.  That's what makes it so hard."

"To finish?" said Abbie.

"_No_," said the man rather defensively.  "It _is_ finished.  I'm just
polishing.  No, I mean that's what makes it so hard, getting it on the
stage."

Abbie nodded wisely.  In her experience of the entertainment business,
hopes were often blasted.  "You mean nobody'll want to put on a play
like that."

"Oh, it'll be put on all right.  You see," and again he looked rather
apologetic, "I happened to win a poetry prize a few years back.  And a
man came to me and said if I'd write a play, he'd produce it, no matter
what it was.  I think he's crazy, myself.  It won't make a penny.
Probably won't run three weeks."

"What's it about?" said Abbie.

"That's a good question," said the man.  "You might say it's about
modern times and what's wrong with them.  Or you might say it's about a
nice little man who's lost in a world of bombs and advertising and big
business, and yet he won't give up.  Or you might say it's about human
dignity."

"_Really?_"  Abbie beamed at him.  "This is a coincidence.  That's what
_my_ poem's about, too!"

"It is?" said the man, looking at her with new interest.

"I think it sounds like a wonderful play," said Abbie.  "I don't see
what you're worried about."

"Finding the right man to play the part, for one thing," said the man.

"You want some big star, I suppose," said Abbie.

"No, that's just what I _don't_ want.  I want somebody who's good, but
people don't know about him yet.  I've been looking at actors and
listening to singers till I'm sick of the thought of them.  I've even
suffered through television shows.  I saw a little man the other night
who might almost do.  He had the voice for it and the right face, too.
Friendly-looking and lost and puzzled."

Abbie had an exciting thought.  "Was he singing 'Chickadee Tidbits'?"

"Some trash or other.  I even thought of finding out his name and
sending him the play to read.  But he probably wouldn't understand a
word of it.  Probably just another mindless idiot."

There was a silence.  Abbie could hardly trust herself to speak.
Finally she said, "Will you do me a favor?"

The interest went out of the man's face, and he looked tired and cross.
"No," he said, "if you mean will I read your poem for you and tell you
how to finish it, I will not.  Students always ask me that, and it's
something you have to figure out for yourself."

Abbie forgot her father and "Chickadee Tidbits" and everything else but
her own outraged artistic feelings.  "Of _course_ I didn't mean that!
I wouldn't let anyone else _touch_ my poems or even look at them!"

It was the man's turn to be silent.  When he spoke, his voice was
gentle.  "That shows you're a true poet," he said, "and I apologize.  I
see I misjudged you.  Why not show you forgive me by making an
exception and letting me see your beginning?  Since we're working on
the same theme?"

With many misgivings Abbie handed him her sheet of paper.

  "'Alas for human dignity,'

he read.  He seemed to think for a minute.  Then he handed the paper
back.

"That's a very good first line," he said.  "In fact, it's so good that
I wouldn't try to do anything more with it now.  Put it away and take
it out every year or so and look at it.  Some year you'll know what to
say, and then you'll have a poem.  And now, what was the favor you were
going to ask me?"

"If it isn't too much trouble," said Abbie, "will you walk me home?  I
want you to meet my father."


Later that morning Abbie left her father and the famous man (for that
is what he was and her father had recognized him right away) talking to
each other in the living room and went out on the lawn, where Barnaby
and John and Susan and Fredericka lay idly chatting.

"You've still got the book," said John, seeing it in her hands.  "I
suppose we might as well take it back to the library, since the magic's
all finished."

"Is it?" said Abbie.

"Barnaby said would I give up my wish," said John, "and I said I would,
and I guess it worked.  Your father's going to be famous, singing
'Chickadee Tidbits,' and that's a pretty good happy ending.  Nothing
more'll happen now."

"Won't it?" said Abbie.

"Only let's not walk to the library just yet," said Fredericka, "It's
too hot."  For the fresh promise of the morning had turned to blaze and
humidity, as too often happens in June.

"Who's the man with Father?" said Barnaby.  "What are they doing?"

"I think they're talking business," said Abbie.  She sat down and
pulled up a blade of grass to nibble at the juicy white part.
"Daddy'll prob'ly tell you all about it."

At that moment her father and the famous man came out on the porch.

"I still say you ought to think twice," the famous man was saying.
"It'll be hard work, and it won't make you rich.  You'd do far better
with that 'Chickabiddy Itch,' or whatever it was."

"Let's forget about that," said Abbie's father.  "And I don't mind how
hard it is.  It'll be an honor to work with you, sir."

And they shook hands.

The famous man started down the walk and stopped near Abbie.  "That's a
good father you've got there," he said.  "And _you_"--he turned back to
the porch--"have quite a daughter."

"I know it," said Abbie and her father at the same time.

"We shall meet again," said the famous man.  And he walked away up the
road.

Abbie's father came to her and stood looking down.  And in spite of the
mystified others, for a minute it was as if he and she were alone
together on the lawn.

"I wonder if you know what you've done for me," he said.  "You've
brought me the biggest chance of my life, just when I thought it was
too late.  Do you know that man's probably the greatest living poet in
this country?"

"No, I didn't," said Abbie.  But looking back, she wasn't surprised.
"He's awfully understanding," she said.

She remembered wonderingly that the greatest living poet in the country
had said her first line was a good one.  With a shiver of joy and awe
in her heart, she promised herself that she would do just as the great
man had said and think about human dignity every so often, and when she
finally had a poem, she would show it to him again, if they were still
friends.  And she felt somehow that they might still be.

But first, she would show it to her father.

Right now her father was staring at the playscript he held in his
hands.  "I can't believe it yet," he said.  "How did it happen?  How
did you find him?"

Abbie thought of all the things that had happened since the day before
yesterday that she could never tell him because there were no words for
some of them and the rest he wouldn't believe.

Then she looked around at the others and winked.

"I made a wish," she said.




7.  Keeping It?

That night after dinner Abbie's father read the play out loud to the
whole family, and to John and Susan because they asked to be included.

Parts of it were exciting, and parts were so funny that Abbie's father
could hardly read for laughing.  Other parts were hard for the children
to follow (though Barnaby claimed he understood every word), but the
poetry was so beautiful that Abbie felt humble.  When she said as much,
her father admitted to feeling humble, too, at the thought of acting a
character that was so long and complicated and demanding and rewarding.

"Are you sure you ought to do it, Roy?" Abbie's mother wondered.

"I'm sure," said Abbie's father, "that I ought to try."

And then everyone separated for bed.

But for the third night that week, Barnaby came tiptoeing into Abbie's
room, after all the lights were out.

"I've been thinking," he said.  "I promised to give up my wish if it'd
help Father, and so did John.  But how can we be sure we have to now?
It was _your_ wish that made that poet turn up.  Maybe he'd have come
along anyway if John and I hadn't promised a thing.  I don't think it'd
do any harm to test the book and see if there's still some magic left."

"Maybe not," said Abbie.  But when Barnaby had departed for his own
room, she lay waking and doubtful.  It seemed suspiciously like
double-dealing to her.  Still, who was she to say so?  She had _had_
her wish, and it had turned out in the end to be the best wish of all.

And Barnaby hadn't had a turn but had been having ideas and helping the
others, from the beginning.  Who could blame him for wanting a wish of
his own before all magic failed?

Meanwhile, in the house across the street, John was having the same
thought.  But because his mind worked more slowly than Barnaby's, light
didn't fully dawn until breakfast-time next morning.  When it did, he
hustled Susan through her oatmeal and across the street, where Barnaby
and Abbie and Fredericka were weeding the petunia bed, which was their
morning chore.

Many hands made light work, and soon the petunias were free of the
sourgrass and plantains that had gotten into the bed with them, and the
five children sought the shade.

"Now," said Barnaby, and he and John started talking, both at once,
each explaining his own idea.  But since their ideas were exactly the
same, the general sense came through.

"How about it?" said Barnaby finally.  "Shall we have a try?"

"Why not?" said Fredericka.

Abbie said nothing, but she felt troubled.

As for Susan, she was only half listening as she idly glanced through
the book, reviewing its colorful descriptions of their adventures in
the past.  Now she closed the cover, but it fell open again at the back
flyleaf, and something caught her eye.  She looked closer.  Then she
looked up.

"We can't," she said.  "You forgot.  So did I.  It's a seven-day book,
and today's Saturday.  It's due back at the library right now."

"Then the magic's over," said Abbie.

"Not necessarily," said Barnaby.  "I could have my wish, and _then_ we
could take it back.  It'd still be today."

"What about me?" said John.

"I was forgetting," said Barnaby.

"I wasn't," said John.  "I could have my wish, _too_, and then we could
take it back."

"Two wishes in the same day?" Susan was doubtful.  "It might be awfully
hard on it."

Barnaby had an idea.  "Or even better," he said excitedly, "why take it
back at all?  Till we're good and ready, I mean.  We've kept books out
overtime before this when they were due and we hadn't finished with
them.  We could club together and pay the fine!"

Susan still looked doubtful, and Abbie thought it was time to speak.

"It'd be wrong," she said regretfully.  "I _know_ it would.  It'd be
breaking the rules of the magic, and you know what happens when
somebody does _that_!"

"That's usually the most exciting part," said Fredericka.  "_Lets!_"

"Three against two," said Barnaby.  "That's fair enough."

He looked at Abbie.  But what could Abbie say?

"All right, then," he went on.  "We win.  The book stays out till we're
through with it.  You won't mind if I have my turn today, will you, old
man?  You can have yours tomorrow.  I know just what I'm going to wish."

"Yes, I _do_ mind," said John with unwonted stubbornness.  "I know just
what _I_'m going to wish, _too_."

"Later," said Barnaby, reaching for the book.  But John got in his way.

"Your family's had the book for the past three days," he said.  "It's
time _we_ had a chance.  Besides, I'm oldest."

"But wait till you hear what my wish _is_," said Barnaby.

"I don't want to," said John.  "You're always so sure your ideas are
best.  Well, maybe somebody else can have an idea for a change!"

Abbie looked worriedly from one to the other.  "It's all going wrong,"
she said.  "It started the minute you said you'd keep the book.  Let's
change our minds before you start fighting.  Remember last time!"

Once in the past John and Barnaby had had a fight, and it had been
awful, maybe because they were usually best friends, and when best
friends fall out, it is worse than any other quarrel.  All their regard
for each other seems to sour and turn to spite and meanness.  And the
hurts that friends can do each other cut deeper and take longer to heal.

Right now John and Barnaby were eying each other in a way that reminded
Abbie of that other awful time.  John's face was red and his forehead
creased in an ugly frown.  Barnaby was pale and he was smiling, but it
was a dangerous smile.

"You couldn't have an idea like this one," he said tauntingly, "in a
million years."

"That's the worst of you little runts," said John, "always boasting
'cause you're too weak to do anything else!"

"Little" is a fighting word, and so is "runt," and "weak" is
unforgivable.  To hear them all in one sentence was too much for
Barnaby, and his smile seemed to freeze on his face.  "Oh, can't I?" he
said.  "Where's that book?"

Dodging past John, he grabbed it rather roughly from Susan's hand.

"You can't push _my_ sister around!" cried John.

"He didn't," said Susan mildly, but John was past heeding.

"You give that back," he said, and he, too, laid hold of the book.

"Stop them, somebody!" wailed Abbie.  "Let's take the book back to the
library right now, before it's too late!"

But it already was.

The tug of war the book was undergoing proved too much for its age-worn
spine.  Suddenly it gave way, and John was left clutching a few
torn-out pages while Barnaby waved the rest of the book triumphantly
before his eyes.

"Just for that," he cried, "I'm going alone.  I don't need _any_ of
you!  Good-by!"

And he was gone.

John looked stupidly from the place where Barnaby had been standing to
the piece of book in his hand.  His face was pale now and not angry at
all.  "Gee," he said.  "I didn't mean _that_ to happen.  Why'd I get so
mad?"

"It's the magic," said Abbie.  "It _wants_ to go back to the library.
When you said it couldn't, it made you get all horrible."

"I know," said John, shamefaced.  "I could hear myself being awful, but
I couldn't stop.  I'm sorry."  He looked at the torn pages in his hand.
They were blank, save for the back flyleaf of the book, from which the
library slip stared up at him ironically with today's date stamped on
it.

Susan saw this at the same time, and now it was her turn to utter a
cry.  "Oh!" she said.  "You've got the _last_ pages.  That means
Barnaby's off somewhere in the middle of some adventure with a magic
book that hasn't got any ending!  And _that_ prob'ly means his
_adventure_ won't have an ending and he'll never get out of it and come
home again!"

"We'd better find him right away," said John, all his anger forgotten
in concern for his friend.  "Where would he be?"

"Somewhere in some book," said Fredericka.  "Trust Barnaby!"  But her
smile was a shaky one.

As for Abbie, she was near tears, but she forced her mind to think.
"Maybe _Robinson Crusoe_," she ventured.  "One whole year he hardly
read anything else."

"Well," said John, "here goes.  I hope."

Everyone joined hands, and he wished on the tattered remnant of magic
that was all they had left.  And perhaps because the end of a book is
its most important part in a way and a key to all that has gone before,
the magic worked as well as if its outward and visible form hadn't been
mutilated at all.  The next instant the four children found themselves
standing on a rocky and beach-rimmed isle by a blue and sounding sea
under a hot and cloudless sky.

In the distance a familiar figure was silhouetted against the horizon.
It wore a jacket and cap of goatskin and carried an umbrella of the
same material.  Following it at a respectful distance was another
figure, of native aspect.  Otherwise, and in every direction, the
island was plainly uninhabited.  As Fredericka said afterwards, desert
was putting it mildly.  And the only extra footprints on the sand were
the four children's own.

"He isn't here," said Susan.

"Unless he's turned _into_ one of them," said Abbie, pointing at the
distant figures.  But this was plainly nonsense.  Robinson Crusoe and
Friday are Robinson Crusoe and Friday forever and ever, and _no one_
could take their place, magic or not.

"Where'll we try next?" said John.  "What's he been reading lately?"

"Dickens," said Fredericka.  "Ever since we saw that old movie of
_David Copperfield_ on television, he's been working his way through
our set of Complete Works.  He says they're worth it.  _I_ say they're
too long.  Too sad, too."

"We might as well try everything," said John.  Once more the four
children joined hands.  But first they rubbed their footprints out
carefully so Robinson and Friday wouldn't think ghosts had been
visiting their beach.  And _then_ John wished.

It was quite a change from the island's tropic glare to Christmas Eve
in old London.  The children's breath smoked on the chilly air, and a
few snowflakes fell.  Chimes rang and carol-singers sang carols.

"Humbug!" muttered an old gentleman, emerging from his office.  But
"Merry Christmas!" said almost everyone to almost everyone else.

A ragged boy who was sweeping the street crossing didn't seem merry at
all, however, and Abbie, touched by his poor and friendless looks,
pressed her only nickel into his hand, hoping he could later exchange
it for coinage of the realm at the nearest bank.

"Move on," said a passing policeman.

The boy moved on, and Abbie ran to join the others, who were looking in
at a window of one of the houses.

Inside the window a poor but happy family was finishing its Christmas
pudding and drawing round the hearth, where chestnuts sputtered and
cracked, while the father of the family poured holiday drinks from a
jug.

"God bless us every one," said the crippled son of the family, raising
his custard cup (without a handle).

But Barnaby was not among those at Tiny Tim's Christmas dinner.

Inside the Old Curiosity Shop across the street, where the four
children ran to look next, Little Nell and her grandfather were
hopefully packing for their long, wandering journey into the country.

But Barnaby was not among the other curiosities in the shop.

"This is no good," said John.  "That Dickens wrote about seventy books,
didn't he?  We'll never find the right one this way."

"And maybe the right one isn't Dickens at all," said Abbie.

"We need a system," said John.

"Well," said Fredericka, "there's that bookshelf at home by Barnaby's
bed where he keeps all his favorite ones."

"Why, yes," said Abbie.  "We could go home and make a list and then try
them all one by one."

"Reading from left to right," put in Susan, who liked things to be
methodical.

John shook his head.  "_Our_ book wouldn't stand it," he said.  "It'd
wear out."  And indeed the few pages in his hand were already looking
weather-beaten, what with exposure to the tropic sun followed suddenly
by snowflakes melting all over them.  "Besides, think of all the
_other_ books he's read from the library.  He could be in any one of
them.  And he's taken out hundreds more than any of us.  Lots that
we've prob'ly never heard of, even!"

"Wait," said Abbie, for these words had given her an idea.  But it
needed thinking out, and maybe she would be betraying a secret.

"You remember," she began slowly, "that book of his own that he's
working on?"

"Is there really one?" said John.  The others had heard of Barnaby's
book, but they'd never given it much thought.  Probably it was just
another of his ideas.

"Yes, there really is," said Abbie.  "At least he has these adventures
he makes up when he can't sleep, and he's put some of them down on
paper.  Well, I was thinking, if you were mad at people and running
away from them, wouldn't a story of your own be just the place you'd go
and hide in?"

"What's his story about?" said John.

"He wouldn't ever tell me very much," said Abbie.  "All I know is, he
calls it 'Barnaby the Wanderer,' and it's about this boy sort of like
_him_, except he goes wandering around on his own having adventures all
by himself.  So you see the being alone part works out, too."

"Where does he wander?" said Fredericka.

"Just about everywhere, I guess.  All over the world, and I know he
goes into the past, but not the future, because Barnaby said once he
hasn't worked that part out yet."

"That's something," said John.  "That narrows it down.  He's somewhere
in the present or the past, and he's somewhere in some country."

"_Our_ book'll know," said Abbie.  "Just wish to be with him and let
the magic figure out where."

"But would our book know about a book that's not finished yet, and it's
still just in somebody's mind?" said Susan.

"I think," said Abbie, "that our book would know about _everything_."

"Let's try," said Fredericka.

For the third time the four children joined hands and for a third time
John wished.

"We want to go after Barnaby the Wanderer," he told the magic,
"wherever he's wandering."

And the magic took them there.


Barnaby the Wanderer wandered along the road.

It was a good road to wander along because _it_ wandered, _too_, all
over the map and in and out of the centuries.  Today, for example, when
he went through that last valley, it had been Old Roman times, but now
that he was climbing the hill, it was Merrie England and the Ages were
Middle.

He had been delayed a little in the valley because Julius Caesar was
conquering Gaul down there at the moment, and the leader of one of his
cohorts had suddenly developed the falling sickness, and Barnaby the
Wanderer had to step in and save the day.  When the battle was over and
won, Caesar wanted him to join the army and be second in command.  But
Barnaby the Wanderer would never stay, no matter how hard people
begged.  Always he must wander on.

Right now he wandered up the hill into the Age of Chivalry.  He could
tell it was the Age of Chivalry because of all the castles scattered
here and there about the landscape and all the knights he could see
riding in different directions on different quests.  But Barnaby the
Wanderer was the most gallant knight among them.  And soon he had a
chance to prove it.

As he reached the crest of the hill, a lady galloped toward him on a
palfrey, closely pursued by a giant on a black steed.  Barnaby the
Wanderer knew the giant well by sight.  He was a particularly mean
specimen who made a habit of kidnaping ladies and taking them to a
dolorous tower, where he married them and treated them in a Bluebeard
manner.  But this time he had met his match.

Barnaby the Wanderer drew his lance and barred the way.

"Oh gramercy," remarked the lady, reining in her horse and preparing to
watch the combat with interest.

"Out of the way, minikin," said the giant rudely, sneering down at
Barnaby the Wanderer from his vast height.  "Your puny lance would be
but a mere pinprick to such as me!  Besides, you're too short to reach!
Yah!"

Barnaby the Wanderer wasted no breath in answering back.  His strength
was as the strength of ten because he was Barnaby the Wanderer.  With a
mighty heave he sent his lance vaulting into the air.  Its point
entered the giant's throat in the space between helmet and breastplate,
and he toppled from the saddle and crashed to the ground.  Barnaby the
Wanderer whipped out his sword and wapped off the giant's head, thus
rendering him harmless.

"Oh, thank you!" cried the lady.  "Did you do this for love of me?"

"No, I didn't," said Barnaby the Wanderer.  "I did it to show I could
and because he thoroughly deserved it."  And mounting the giant's horse
he rode off into the sunset.

"Stay with me," called the lady after him in languishing tones.

But Barnaby the Wanderer would never stay.  He had a rendezvous with
destiny.

As he rode on, though, he rather wished he had someone with him to talk
to and maybe boast a little about recent events.  He remembered some
friends he used to have, in another time and country, and wondered what
they were doing now.  Probably they were wondering and worrying about
him.  Very well, let them wonder.  He must follow his fate alone.

At this moment the sun went behind a cloud and a mist rose from the
earth.

"This is unusual," thought Barnaby the Wanderer.  "For me the sun
shines always fair."

But this time it didn't.  The mist grew until it mantled the entire
landscape.  Trees turned to huddled shapes, and who could say where was
land and where was air?  Suddenly the horse shied and would go no
farther, but stood shivering and staring into the blankness with the
rolling eye of fright.

Barnaby the Wanderer dismounted and tied the horse's reins to a bush.
At least it _looked_ like a bush and _felt_ like a bush, but what with
the mist growing ever thicker it might have been something else.

"Where am I?" thought Barnaby the Wanderer.

But he wandered on, leaving the horse snorting with fear behind him.
Nothing must keep him from his chosen road.  Besides, what with the
mist now eddying and wreathing in tendrils about him and seeming to
cling to his clothes and trying to hold him back, he could see better
on foot and closer to the ground.  But he wished he had not chosen to
walk alone, just this once.  He thought of friends left behind and
wished one or all of them were with him now.  No matter.  He would show
them.  Or if he never returned, they would be sorry when he was gone.

What made the mist nastier than most mists was that it seemed to have a
voice, or voices.

"Hist," whispered the mist.

Barnaby the Wanderer stood still.

"List," whispered the mist.

Barnaby the Wanderer listened.

  "Listen, listen, do not hasten.
  Enter not the Western postern
  Where the ghastly cistern glistens,
  Lest you learn the last, worst lesson,"

whispered the mist.

"Humph!" said Barnaby the Wanderer aloud.  "No mere mist can mistlead
_me_.  I am Barnaby the Wanderer!"

"Mere, mere, mirror!" shrieked a sudden voice in his ear, followed by a
peal of witchlike laughter.

"Ponder the pun," added a quieter voice in his other ear.  But when he
reached out his hand, there was no one there.

Still, he knew where he was now, or thought he did.  He was in a rime
that never was on land or sea, in that Grimm, Thurber-ish country where
witches are worse than ever was in Oz, and there are gloomy castles
with thirteen clocks all stopped, and a Todal that gleeps and a Golux
that harkens and warns.

He thought of other creepy legends, of the headless horseman of Sleepy
Hollow and the Come-at-a-body that has more legs than arms and more
hair than either.  And he thought that this was not a time or a place
to be alone in.

Still, all the more glory to him who explored it and lived to tell the
tale, thought Barnaby the Wanderer on second thought.  And he took out
his pocket compass, though he could hardly see it through the moist
mist, and turned toward the west.

As he stepped westward, the mist seemed to thin, and ahead the land was
bright.  Suddenly the foggy, dewy strands fell away, and his heart
lifted as he emerged into a sun-drenched clearing.  Straight before him
was a gate, flanked on either side by a tall thorn hedge.

When Barnaby the Wanderer had last seen the sun, it was setting, but
now it shone at high noon.  Perhaps in this part of the country they
had Daylight Saving, he thought.  Or more likely here the time stood
still.

The gate was built of stone and prettily planted about with clumps of
narcissi, now in full bloom and scenting the air.  There were letters
carved on the gate's pediment, and he wandered closer to read them.

"Abandon Hope, All Ye Who Center Here," said the letters.

Barnaby the Wanderer thought he had read this sentence before,
somewhere.  But he thought that whoever had carved it on the gate
hadn't gotten all of the words exactly right.

He hesitated.  A gate might well be a postern, and this was almost
surely the Western one, and he remembered the warning words of the
mist.  He had no wish to abandon hope or to learn any last worst
lesson, either.  But he was curious to see what was inside.

Then for the first time in a long while he remembered the magic book,
which he'd put in his pocket for safekeeping, back when he was fighting
the giant.  He slapped his pocket to see if it was still there, and it
was.  Surely it would protect him.  Not that he needed protecting, of
course.  Barnaby the Wanderer would always come out on top and without
any help from anybody.

The gate was ajar, and he slipped through it.

For a moment he was disappointed at what he saw.

What he saw was a garden with a pool in the middle.  And the pool
didn't look like a ghastly cistern at all.  It looked like an ordinary
(though very handsome) marble pool.  Probably there would be goldfish.
He stepped closer to look.

There were no fish in the pool, only water, but water that was clearer
and brighter than any he had ever seen before.  And there, staring up
from the water (and seeming to smile at him as Barnaby himself smiled
in recognition) was his own reflection.

But never in any glass had he seen himself so clearly.  Now for the
first time he realized just how handsome and brilliant and wonderful he
really was, more so even than he had always suspected.

"I am Barnaby the Wanderer!" he cried in tones of glad discovery.

And he fell on his knees by the pool to look closer.

Then as he looked the image changed.

Written in the face in the pool he suddenly seemed to see all the base,
unworthy thoughts he had ever had and all the bad things he had ever
done, rude, inconsiderate things and careless, forgetful things and
hasty, hotheaded, spiteful things.  And the face in the pool now seemed
to him mean and selfish and hideous beyond belief.

He tried to tear his eyes away, but he couldn't.  Something held them
there.  And he realized that he was under a magic spell and that the
magic was stronger than he was.

In a panic he scrabbled in his pocket for the book and wished to be
anywhere else in the world rather than here, but home with his family
and friends would be best of all.

Nothing happened.  Except that the face in the pool seemed to grow
bigger and look worse.

Then he remembered that one of the bad things he had done was to tear
the magic book, and now the magic had probably leaked out of it and he
was probably doomed to kneel here staring at his own ugliness forever.

"I am Barnaby the Wanderer!" he cried, to reassure himself.

But that magic charm didn't work, either.  And Barnaby the Wanderer
knew despair.

From despair to remorse is but a step.  He went over his worst deeds in
his mind and regretted every one of them.

Then as the sun beat down and the face stared from the pool, all of the
past seemed to blur and run together in his brain.  His head ached, and
even today's adventures faded and were forgotten.  When he tried to
think of home, he couldn't remember where he lived or the names of his
sisters.

"I am Barnaby the Wanderer!" he tried to say again.  But he had
forgotten the right words.  "I am Barnaby the Barnaby" was what came
out.  And after that, "Barnaby, Barnaby, Barnaby" was all he could find
to say.  He thought it was someone's name, but he had forgotten whose.

The magic book slipped from his fingers and fell at the edge of the
water.  In the pool the face seemed to swell until it filled the world
and dominated the universe.  Barnaby leaned closer, staring into its
eyes.  But he had forgotten what face it was, or why he was looking at
it.

And the waters of the pool lapped nearer and nearer to the magic book.

If John had worded his wish differently, the magic might have taken the
four children directly to the narcissus-y pool.  But he had asked to
follow Barnaby, wherever he was wandering; so now he and Susan and
Abbie and Fredericka found themselves walking a winding and hilly road.

The first thing they met was the corpse of the giant.  Susan and Abbie
shut their eyes, but John and Fredericka surveyed it with interest.

"Pretty good," said John, "for a little fellow."  And his tone made
amends for the "runt" he had meanly uttered before.

"David and Goliath," agreed Fredericka, "would be putting it mildly."

The mist delayed the four children a little, but not so long as it had
Barnaby, for it was not in a talking mood at the moment.  The horse
tied to the bush proved a puzzlement, but kind Abbie undid its reins
and it galloped happily away to be a free wild horse forever.

Westward the land was brighter, and the four children turned toward it.
A second later they came into the clearing.  The gate stood open, and
they hurried through.

They were just in time.

The lapping waters of the pool had reached the book by now, and a
second later they might have carried it away, to what dark depths of
oblivion who could tell?

But John ran forward and snatched it up and put his few last pages with
it.  And now that the book was whole again, the spell was broken, and
Barnaby wrenched his eyes away from the face in the pool and turned and
saw and knew them.

"You came," he said.  "Thanks."

John put the two pieces of book into his hands.  "Here," he said.

Barnaby looked at the book.  Then he handed it back.  "No," he said.
His eyes were on John's.  "Take it," he said.  "It's all yours."

And everything between them that could never be talked about they had
said in those few words.

There was a silence.  Susan was watching John.

"Aren't you going to wish?" she asked.  "It's your turn now.  What was
that adventure _you_ wanted?"

"_The Three Musketeers_," said John slowly, "but now I don't know."

"Why do we need _them_?" said Fredericka, jigging up and down on the
edge of the pool.  "All they'd prob'ly do would be come riding to the
rescue, and we've already rescued Barnaby perfectly well by ourselves!"

"Don't!" said Barnaby, in quick alarm.  "Don't boast; it's dangerous.
And come away from that pool before you look in."  He pulled his sister
to a safe distance; then he turned back to John.

"Wish _something_," he said.  "I'll feel a lot better about everything
if you do."

"All right," said John.  "First of all I wish we were home."

And they were.




8.  Giving It Back

"And now," said John, "the next thing to do is take that book back to
the library."

There was a chorus of protest from the others, sitting beside him on
the steps of the big white house.

"Why?" was the general sense of everyone's remarks.

"Because I think it's time," said John.

"Without any adventure of your own?  It doesn't seem right," said
Susan.  "In every book I ever read there was a wish for each one."

"Well," said John, "I've been thinking it over, and this is what I
think.  If I have a wish, then it's all sort of rounded out and the
magic can end and maybe never start up again.  But if I don't and we
take the book back, then there's still unfinished business.  And maybe
some day the magic'll come back and take up where it left off."

Everyone gasped mentally at the nobility of this self-sacrifice.

"You mean we'll find the book again some day?" said Fredericka.

"That," said John, "or in some other form."

This was an exciting idea and showed definitely that Barnaby was not
the only one who could have these.  But Barnaby was still unhappy about
the justice of it.

"I'll always think it was my fault," he said, "and it _will_ be.  Can
you condemn a fellow human to the pangs of guilt?"

But he meant it.

"Well," said John slowly again, "I'll tell you what let's do.  We'll
take the book back, but we'll take it back _my way_."

"But first," said Susan, "wait till I get something."

She ran to fetch glue and Scotch tape and a needle and thread, and she
and Abbie fell to mending the damage the boys had done.  And the book
seemed so glad to be its full self again that the paper practically
leaped to meet the glue and the torn binding all but embraced the
benevolent needle, till in the end you would hardly have known that the
hands of wrath had ever rent the book in twain in the first place.

"Now," said John.  And he wished.

"What book are we part of now?" said Abbie a few seconds later, as the
five children found themselves floating through the air with the
greatest of ease on newly fledged wings.

"Lots of different ones," said Barnaby.  "Flying comes into just about
every magic book I ever read.  It's just about everybody's first wish."

Fredericka, more daring than the others, now attempted to loop the
loop, but she wasn't quite used to her wings yet and lost altitude
dangerously, nearly grazing the tops of some tall trees.

"Auks!" said a bird-watcher who happened to be standing below.

"Hawks?" said his wife, who was rather deaf.

"No, auks," said the man.  "_Great_ auks, by the size.  And they're
extinct, you know.  I shall write to Miss Bristow's bird column."

But otherwise no one looked up and saw them all the length of lower
Weed Street.  It is surprising how few people do look up during the
course of a day, though they might find it rewarding if they did.

At the corner of Weed Street and Richmond Hill, John perched in an oak
tree, and the other four flocked to nearby branches, greatly to the
annoyance of seven bird families of various species who were already
nesting in the tree and who now all started uttering their different
calls at the top of their voices, in shrill complaint at the crowded
conditions.

"We change here," said John, and indeed they had, for their wings had
already vanished.  "I couldn't decide between wings and magic carpets;
so I wished both."

At this moment their particular magic carpet arrived, right on cue, and
the five children clambered on.  Riding it was even more fun than
flying had been, for it involved less of what tennis players call
"form."  All the five children had to do was sit while the carpet rose
stiffly in the air and then took off at a swift horizontal.  As a great
writer on the subject has put it, it was like tobogganing, only there
was no doormat to stop short on.  (I think the great writer must have
been thinking of the kind of tobogganing that is done on front
staircases, with tin trays, a sport that might well be revived more
generally.)

The shooting, sliding feeling went on and on without a bump, but only
as far as the library roof, to which the carpet soared swift as any
homing pigeon and without having to be steered at all.

"Look," said John.  "No hands!"

Luckily the roof was a flat one, and the carpet paused on it long
enough for the five children to clamber off, before proceeding on its
way, probably back to some Arabian night.

There was a trap door in the roof, and it was accommodatingly unlocked.
Where John led, the others followed.  They went down a ladder and found
themselves in the upper part of the library, where they had never
ventured before because only grownups were allowed.

On every hand were what looked like thousands of books, ranged on
shelves, stacks and stacks of them.

"Think of all those that we haven't read yet!" said Abbie.

"Maybe some of them have magic inside, too!" said Fredericka.

"_All_ of them, I should think," said Barnaby, "one way or another."

They went down a staircase and through a door at the bottom to the main
floor, and no one noticed or questioned them.  But just outside the
children's room they stood hesitating.

"I hate to say good-by," said Susan, and she voiced the thoughts of all
five.

"Maybe it's just _au revoir_," said Abbie.

"If the magic ever does come back into our lives," said Barnaby to
John, "you get first turn.  Needless to say."

And the five children went into the children's room, Susan leading the
way and carrying the book because it was she who had found it in the
first place.

She thought Miss Dowitcher looked at her a bit strangely when she saw
what the book was, but "Oh, that!" was all she said.  "Did you enjoy
it?"

"Yes," said Susan, "we did.  It got a little bit torn just at the end,
though."

Miss Dowitcher riffled through the back pages.  "I don't see where,"
she said.

And neither could Susan, now.  The book had grown together and was its
old plump, comfortable, shabby, but untorn self again.  And Susan
noticed something else about it.

As Miss Dowitcher laid the book aside with other books that were to be
put back on the shelves, Susan nudged Barnaby and Barnaby nudged Abbie
and Abbie nudged John and John nudged Fredericka and they all looked
where Susan was looking.

On the book's spine, where before the old gold lettering had been
rubbed away, new letters shone.

_Seven-Day Magic_, the letters read.

"It's got a name now," said John.

"And we made it," said Barnaby.

"Only it doesn't say who the author is," said Susan.

"That's 'cause there wasn't room to put all of us," said Fredericka.

"I wonder who'll take it out next," said Abbie.  "And will it be a
magic wishing book for them, _too_, or just a book of stories about
_us_?"

Miss Eulalie Smythe Prang looked up from the far end of the table where
she was sitting and sighed, putting her hand to her head as if it ached.

"Please," she said.  "Can't we have quiet?"

The five children went out of the library and along the village street
that turned into the curving country road home.






[End of Seven-Day Magic, by Edward Eager]
