by Edward Eager
"I was just going to," said Roger, picking the Natterjack up gently. "Bring the pies, Ann. I mean Samantha."
Seeing the point at once, Ann took three more turnovers from the larder shelf.
"Strange-like fare that be for an old toad," said the hateful helper of the sheriff, eyeing them suspiciously.
"The best piecrust," Eliza told him haughtily, "is none too good for any pet of ours!" Arid bearing the Natterjack (and the turnovers), the three children marched out of the house.
Once outside, however, their calm gave way. Everyone talked at once, but Eliza was loudest. "What'll we do?" she cried. "We've got to get them fed and rescued, and that sheriff'll be out searching the barn in no time at all!"
The Natterjack seemed to have grasped the situation without having it explained. "You take your thyme," it said. "Rub an' whiff, and wish you'd been there five minutes ago."
"Can we do that?" said Ann. "Will it work?"
"I told you before," said the Natterjack, "that's splendid thyme you've got there. So long as your h'aims are splendid, it'll accommodate itself." And it gave the three children a nod of unusual approval.
So Ann (who luckily had remembered to tuck the sprig of thyme in her nightgown sleeve when she got undressed) rubbed, and they all whiffed, and the next moment they and the Natterjack were standing in the great gloomy barn.
At first it seemed to be deserted. Then by the light of the moon outside the window the three children saw three pairs of eyes looking down at them cautiously from the hayloft.
"Here. Quick," said Roger, and he and Ann held out the apple turnovers. "We're sorry to start with dessert," he went on, as the hungry travelers jumped down from the loft and fell to eating, "but you'll be where you can get more soon."
"I'll make it be dinnertime when they get to Canada," said Ann. "I'll make it be a time when they served free dinner to all runaway slaves." She looked at the Natterjack to see if this were the way to get wishes by thyme-travel. Again the Natterjack gave an approving nod.
"Wait," said Eliza. "There's something I have to do here, first." So the others waited.
What Eliza did was climb up to the loft and prop a whole stack of moldy hay against the half-open barn door, where it would plop down on the heads of any who tried to enter.
"There," she said, jumping down from the loft. "That's taken care of."
And she was none too soon, for a sound of running feet was heard from without, showing that the extra five minutes were up. Quickly Ann rubbed her sprig of thyme. The three children took a deep whiff, and Ann wished.
It was thoughtful of the magic to pick Niagara Falls as the place for them to enter Canada, for none of the three children had ever been there before, and the sight was thrilling. Eliza for one could hardly be torn away from the water's edge, and wanted to go over the falls in a barrel right now. And when the others dissuaded her, she wanted to sit down and have some of the dinner the runaway slaves were enjoying. For Ann had wished it to be dinnertime when they arrived, and so of course it was, and the three children were hungry all over again.
But Ann thought they had best be getting back to the house by the sea, for fear the mother of John and Abigail and Samantha would be worrying.
When the three children said good-bye to the three runaways, the ex-slaves fell on their knees and kissed their hands in gratitude.
"Don't do that," Roger told them. "Don't ever kneel to anybody or kiss anybody's hand again. You're free people now."
"Hallelujah! Praise the Lord!" said the ex-slaves.
At the last moment Eliza remembered the red bandanna and tried to give it back to the boy Bono, but he begged her to keep it as a gift, in token of everlasting gratitude, and Eliza was nothing loath.
And again Ann rubbed her sprig of thyme (which instead of getting worn out by all the rubbing seemed to be growing perkier and more bloomy with each splendid wish), and the next moment she and Roger and Eliza found themselves back in the kitchen.
An unpleasant scene was in progress. The success of Eliza's booby trap had been all that she could have hoped for. The sheriff and his helper and the lofty gentleman had burst in the barn door, and the lofty gentleman had been in the lead and had borne the brunt of it.
His top hat was crushed and there were wisps of hay sticking in his side whiskers and tickling him inside his collar and cluttering his fine suit. He was shaking his fist now and hurling threats at everyone in sight.
"Just let me get my hands on those three young scamps!" he was saying. "They planned this, besides stealing my slaves!"
"Not at all," said the mother. "We always leave the barn door arranged so. It's a special invention for keeping out unwelcome intruders. My little girl invented it. She's very clever." And her eyes smiled at Eliza.
The lofty gentleman whirled on the three children. "So there you are!" he said. "What have you done with my stolen property?"
"We haven't done anything with anybody's property," said Roger. And he was telling the truth, for how can one man be the property of another?
"'Pears like he's right," muttered the sheriff, scratching his head (which also contained its portion of hay). "Horses was all stabled. Warn't no time to get away on foot. Warn't no place to hide, neither!"
The gentleman opened his mouth to retort. Then he couldn't think of anything to say. He shut it again, and turned to his wife. "Come, Veronica!" he said. "I have seen enough of Yankee customs! We're going back to Virginia this very minute!" And jamming his ruined hat on his head, he stalked out the door. His wife sailed after him, her nose in the air. The child Lily Sue followed, beginning to cry again.
"Oh, stop that sniveling!" the voice of Lily Sue's mother was heard in the hall, followed by a loud slap, and then silence.
Back in the kitchen everyone giggled with relief, even the sheriff. A moment later he and his helper took their leave, with many apologies.
As soon as they were safely gone, the mother ran to embrace the three children. "John! Abigail! Samantha! What happened? Where did you put our three friends?"
"We got them away. They're going to be free now," said Roger, feeling this was as close to the truth as he could come without awkward questions.
"And to think," cried the mother in self-reproach, "that I tried to keep it from you! I thought you were too young to know. But you have proved otherwise. From now on, you may help me with the Underground Railroad as long as the need for it continues. But now back to bed. Even heroes must have their sleep. Put that nasty toad out in the garden first. I can't think how it can have got in the house."
"Can't we take it to bed with us just this once?" pleaded Ann, fearful that the Natterjack might be mislaid and left behind in the nineteenth century (though she need not have worried. All time is the same to a Natterjack).
"Oh very well, this once," said the mother. "Why you should choose such a horrid pet I cannot imagine. Though after all it was helpful tonight," she added, with a relenting smile.
The three children went upstairs, Eliza carrying the Natterjack. They put on their own clothes and assembled in the girls' room. Ann rubbed her sprig of thyme.
"There," she said a moment later, poking the sprig back into the flowery bank, where it attached itself and grew again.
"And a splendid time was had by all," sighed Eliza, in tones of satisfaction.
The three children lolled back on the blossomy slope under the sun of a twentieth-century midafternoon. The Natterjack squatted nearby, digesting a leafhopper.
"What I'm wondering," said Eliza, after a bit, "is about the real John and Abigail and Samantha. Where were they while we were there? And did all that happen to them, too, or just to us?"
"Anyway," said Roger almost enviously, "they're going to have a wonderful time from now on, helping runaway slaves practically every night."
"So that's another good turn we did, besides helping Bono get to Canada," said Ann.
"One good turn deserves another," said Eliza, "and we did two. We ought to get a spe
cially good adventure next time."
"No bargaining," muttered the Natterjack. "Wait till your next chance comes."
"When'll that be?" said Eliza.
"All in good time," said the Natterjack. And it hopped away, leaving them with that to puzzle over.
Later that day Eliza remembered the red bandanna handkerchief and realized she'd left it in her nightgown pocket when she changed clothes, back in eighteen fifty-something. "Darn," she said. "I wanted it for a souvenir." Then Ann called her for a game of hide-and-seek and she forgot all about it.
It was two days afterward, on a morning of rain and northeast wind, that old Mrs. Whiton suggested Ann and Eliza and Roger might enjoy playing in the attic. And they did, for the attic was full of wonderful things like old chess sets and models of clipper ships and bound volumes of The St. Nicholas Magazine.
It was Ann who wondered what was in the big cedar chest in the corner and it was Roger who figured out how to open it. But it was Eliza who found the red bandanna handkerchief, neatly folded on top of the things inside (which otherwise proved to be dull old extra sheets).
"It's the same one! I know it is!" she cried. "It's got the place where it tore a (little when we tug-of-warred it!"
"Let's ask old Mrs. Whiton," said Ann, and they ran to find her.
"So that's where it's been," said old Mrs. Whiton, straightening out the bandanna's faded folds. "I haven't seen it in years. Bono's kerchief, we always called it. It was given to my husband's great-aunt Abigail by a runaway slave boy she saved on the Underground Railroad."
"So you see?" said Eliza, when the three children were alone again. "The real John and Abigail and Samantha must have been there all along!"
"Then are they us?" said Roger ungrammatically, trying to puzzle it out, "or are we them?"
"Don't," said Ann. "That kind of thing makes my head ache. It's worse than long division."
"I guess it's all just part of the Mystery of Time," said Roger, sagely.
"And we've only just begun to explore it," said Eliza. "Compared with what's still to come, we haven't seen anything yet, hardly!"
And they hadn't.
4. All in Good Time
"I'm disappointed," said Eliza.
"What in?" said Roger, shouting to be heard over the waves, for the three children were sitting on the beach at high tide, several mornings later.
"The magic," said Eliza.
"I don't see how you can say that," said Ann. "It's been just lovely."
"Oh, it's been all right in its way," said Eliza, "so far. Only it's all been kind of nonfiction! Like those books where you get Highlights of History, with kind of a story wrapped around. Or those television shows where You are There. We've had the Revolution and the Civil War. Any day now we'll get around to the election of Calvin Coolidge. There's no variety."
"Variety is the surprise of life," said Ann, who had heard this somewhere.
"Exactly," said Eliza. "Without it all is dead bones."
"We've learned how to use the thyme wishes better," Roger pointed out. "Once we get started we can just keep on wishing it were time for whatever it is we want to wish for next!"
"It'll be simple from now on," said Ann. "All we do is, we look in the garden catalog first and pick out a kind of thyme that sounds like fun."
"Are we to be the mere toys and baubles of mere plant life?" said Eliza. "Suppose the time I want to go to isn't in their old catalog?"
"We could hybridize," suggested Roger, dubiously.
"You mean go to sleep for the winter?" said Ann.
"No," said Roger. "It means crossing two kinds of plants. I think you kind of mix the pollen."
"And then wait around for a year to see what happens!" scoffs Eliza. "That's no good!"
"Anyway, there're enough kinds already," said Ann. "There's golden thyme that we haven't tried, and lemon thyme and..."
"Oh, sure," said Eliza, "and learn all about fruit-growing in sunny California! That'll be dandy!"
"You're just out of sorts," said Roger. "You must have got out of the wrong side of the bed this morning. Let's throw her in the ocean and wake her up."
So they did, and all argument dissolved in the briny joy of sheer wateriness. But their swim was of short duration.
Old Mrs. Whiton appeared and called from the rock stair. "Children, come in." So they went in, and climbed the steps to find her still waiting at the top. "Hurry and dress," she said. "Today we're going to Boston." And since old Mrs. Whiton's word was law in that house, they hurried to do just that.
Strange as it might seem, it turned out Jack had no engagement with a teenage girl that day. "I might as well come along, too," he said, which was most unusual of him.
As the girls were dressing in their room, Ann had a sudden thought. "Jack's coming," she said.
"I know," said Eliza.
"Well," said Ann, "I was sort of thinking. He almost never does. We almost never have a good time together, all of us. And I was thinking. 'All in good time,' the Natterjack said. This must be it!"
"First one dressed gets to ask," said Eliza.
The race was very nearly a tie. Eliza rushed down the stairs and out into the garden only a few seconds ahead of Ann. Roger appeared, saw where they were going, and followed.
The Natterjack lay upon the sundial, awake but torpid. It didn't seem interested in going anywhere or doing anything, even when Ann explained about the trip to Boston, and Jack's coming along.
Ann's face fell. "Oh," she said, disappointed. "I thought..."
"You said 'All in good time,'" Eliza reminded the Natterjack, accusingly.
"Did I say that?" said the Natterjack.
"Yes," said Eliza, "you did."
"Well ..." It seemed to hesitate. "It would be 'ighly irregular. I 'aven't been off this 'ere acre in 'alf a century. Besides, where would I find the thyme?"
"We could take a supply along," suggested Roger.
"No being carried in pockets, mind," said the Natterjack. "'Orrid close they is, for breathing."
"Don't worry, you'll have every comfort," Eliza assured it.
She and Roger and Ann raced for the kitchen. To wheedle an empty coffee tin from Mrs. Annable was the work of but a moment.
Back in the garden, Ann and Eliza made a soothing nest of thyme clippings for the Natterjack to repose on, in the bottom of the coffee tin. They put in snippets of as many different kinds of the creeping plant as they could find, just in case. Eliza put in any random creeping insects she came upon, too, for fear the Natterjack might feel hungry en route. Roger made air holes in the top of the tin with the can-opener blade of his jackknife. Ann lifted the Natterjack carefully from the sundial and placed it tenderly on its flowery cushion. It relaxed, and almost seemed to smile. Roger fixed the lid on tight.
"There!" said Eliza. "The three faithful attendants bore the Sleeping Beauty to the waiting chariot!" For the Willys-Knight was already honking in the driveway. Eliza and Roger and Ann ran toward it, Roger carrying the Natterjack-tin carefully in a horizontal position.
If old Mrs. Whiton noticed the tin, she did not mention it. She had decided to drive into Boston herself today, which she did sitting straight and fierce, and flinging her arm out so wide and wildly at the turns that Ann was afraid she might dislocate something. She spoke little except to point out an occasional point of interest, but Jack was in an unusually good mood, regaling the company with song and story as they drove, till it seemed no time at all before the tall buildings of Boston began to show in the distance, and all was billboards and filling stations.
"It's like having the old Jack back with us again," muttered Eliza to Ann. "All he needs now is a magic adventure to make him practically as good as new." And she cast a meaningful glance in the direction of the tinned Natterjack.
If you have ever been to Boston (and everyone should go there at least once), you will know that as a city it is a bewildering mixture of modern improvements and the relics of antiquity, and it is interesting, for ex
ample, to come out from buying plastic clothespins and chocolate-strawberry-marshmallow-banana splits in a department store glittering with neon, and find yourself face to face with the Old South Church. And the streets have wonderful old names like Milk and Pump.
Jack had brought his color camera along, and took snapshots of all the important landmarks, and more than once Ann's eyes or Roger's wandered hopefully toward the Natterjack, when they came to a historic spot that might make a thrilling adventure. When old Mrs. Whiton drove them past the Bunker Hill monument, Roger wanted to plunge back through time and enlist in the battle right now, and when they went by the harbor where the Boston Tea Party had been, even the shy and retiring Ann yearned to be there with blackened face, tomahawking tea casks right and left with the rest of the Sons of Liberty.
But Eliza was adamant. "No," she said. "It would be instructive—in disguise—and that's one thing I won't bear!"
After the harbor, old Mrs. Whiton said there was one more surprise she'd like to show them, if they didn't mind going home a long way round, and of course they didn't. So then they drove over a bridge like pepper pots, and along the still waters of the Charles River, and past the red-and-white buildings of Harvard University (only that wasn't the surprise), and after that the scenery started getting more country-ish again. Pretty soon they passed a sign that read, "Concord, five miles." Eliza nudged the others.
"More history," she muttered. "Those old minutemen again. We've had that!"
But when they came into the town itself, her heart relented, and she and Jack and Ann and Roger didn't need to know anything about New England architecture to realize that Concord was a perfect place, with its beautiful, serene old gabled houses looking as if they had been sitting there squarely and at peace forever.
Old Mrs. Whiton drove slowly past one of the oldest-looking houses, a small brown one, and brought the car to a stop. "This," she said, "is the house where Louisa Alcott lived. It's the house she wrote about in Little Women. I thought you might like to get out and take a really good look."
Her last words were unnecessary. Eliza and Ann were already clambering out of the backseat, with rapt faces.