by Edward Eager
"Aren't you ashamed of yourself?" said Jo to the man.
"No I ain't," said the man. "Take or be took by, that's the rule of life. Grab or be downtrod!"
"No such thing," said Jo. "If you would put your shoulder to the wheel and learn to know the happy weariness that comes from honest toil, you would see things differently."
"Wouldn't neither," said the man. "I tried working once. All I got was tired and no richer."
"Think of the terrible influence on your poor family, if you go on as you are," said Jo. "Already they are showing the effects of an unfavorable environment. I don't mean to be rude, but your wife is not a good housekeeper. And your baby is undisciplined."
"It certainly is," said Ann. "It stole my ring with the garnet."
"It did?" said the man, pleased. "Clever little fellow!"
Jo was still not discouraged. "You must have a better side somewhere," she said. "No matter how hardened in crime you are, you, too, must have been an innocent baby once. You, too, must have had a mother!"
"I never!" said the man. "I was born an orphing."
"You must have had someone," insisted Jo.
For the first time the man's hard exterior showed signs of softening. "Aunt Jerusha!" he murmured. "Good old Aunt Jerusha! Hain't thought of her these forty years!"
"Exactly," said Jo, triumphant. "Then think of her now. Think of that gentlewoman caring for you and watching you flower into manhood!"
"She warn't gentle!" said the man, indignantly. "She were tough! Cuff you as soon as look at you, she would!" And his face relaxed in a look of happy remembrance. Jo was quick to press home her advantage.
"Think of her poor hands, weary with cuffing!" she said. "Think of her arm, weary with switching. Think of her face, worn with the care of thinking up new punishments, all in hope that you'd grow into a good man! And think of how you have repaid her!"
The man looked from Jo to the Natterjack-dragon and back again. His lip trembled. "'Tain't fair," he said. "Gangin' up on a man's soft spots, reformin' him against his will! 'Tain't no-ways fair!"
"Why don't you give in?" said Ann. "It's easy being good, when you get started."
"It's fun, too, in a way," said Eliza, "now and then."
The man hesitated. Then he made up his mind. "All right," he said. "I've tried everything else. Might as well try that!" And his iron control gave way, and he burst into sobs of repentance. "Ain't it awful?" he said, between sobs. "Ain't it horrible to think what I've went an' become? Maybe it's 'cause Aunt Jerusha died and there warn't no more cuffing! Maybe if one of you was to cuff me now, I'd be a better man!"
Laurie and Jack and Roger were perfectly willing, but Jo dissuaded them. "No," she said. "He has reformed at last, and that is punishment enough."
"Yes," said Ann, carried away by the emotion of the moment, "let's turn the other cheek and heap coals of fire on it!"
"Do I have to give the ring back, too, Clarence?" asked the woman.
"Yes, Eupheemy, you do," said the man. "If we're going to reform, might as well go the whole hog!" And the woman handed it over.
Everyone was being so noble that Ann almost hated to take it. If it hadn't been a present from her favorite Aunt Jane, she wouldn't have.
"Of course," said the Natterjack, speaking for the first time in quite a while, "that isn't quite h'all there is to it. H'it isn't quite as h'easy as that! There 'as to be signs of h'improvement in future. The first thing to do is clean up this messy room!"
And urged on by gentle shoves from the Natterjack's dragonlike claws and hot gusts of its smoky breath, the man and woman proceeded to give the room such a thorough cleaning as it had never known in all its days, dusting and sweeping and scouring and waxing till they were nearly dropping with weariness. When it came time for beating the carpets on the line in the yard, the Natterjack took pity on the man and woman and offered the use of its tail. All the neighbors and passersby took one look at the carpet-beating dragon, and rushed inside and locked the doors and sent for the police, and the man and woman were later forced to move out of town, for harboring undesirable pets. But that is another story.
"And now," said Eliza to the Natterjack, when the house cleaning was finally over, "let's all go back to dragon-time with you. Did you used to eat many princesses? Was it you who fought Saint George? Can we watch?"
"Let's not," said Ann. "Let's go back to Concord and have sledding and apples and gingerbread instead."
The Natterjack shook its head regretfully. "HTm afraid we can't do h'either," it said. "When this 'ere magic stops, it stops. The next whiff will take h'each of us back to 'is own century. It's time to say good-bye."
"Couldn't we have a stopover on the way?" pleaded Ann, loath to leave the magnificent Jo behind in time forever. As for Jack, he said nothing, but his face as he looked at Jo was more crimson and his eyes more glazed than ever.
"I'll see what I can do," said the Natterjack, "but it's 'ighly h'improbable."
"And if not," said Jo, with a mock-sentimental face, "let's bear it cheerfully, and keep each other green in memory's garland!"
"And we can always reread the book," added Roger.
"Don't forget to write it," said Ann. "Little Women, it's called."
"Little Women!" said Jo. "What a good idea. I'll think it over."
Ann held the sprig of golden thyme, and they all whiffed. Maybe it was because the Natterjack tried hard, or maybe it was because Ann loved the March family so. In any event, though the magic didn't manage to arrange a stopover, it did sort of overlap for a moment.
So that although Ann and Roger and Eliza and Jack found themselves back in the twentieth century on a sunny day in July, yet through the windows of the little brown house they could still see the March family, gathered about a wintry fire in the parlor. Beth must have recovered from her cold and Amy come back from visiting Aunt March, for they were present, too. Jo was reading aloud from one of her stories, while Meg sewed a fine seam, Amy touched up a watercolor, and Beth sprinkled her flowers and hummed a hymn tune sweetly under her breath.
For a moment the bright picture hung on the air. Then it wavered and vanished. Ann looked down. In one hand she held the coffee tin with the now toadlike Natterjack; in the other were a few strands of golden thyme that she must remember to put back in the bank when she got home. She and Jack and Roger and Eliza turned regretfully from the window. They went slowly to old Mrs. Whiton and the car, where once again they sat by the curb. Old Mrs. Whiton did not seem to have minded waiting.
"Well?" she said. "Was it interesting?"
"Yes," said all four children at once.
"I thought perhaps it might be," said old Mrs. Whiton. And flinging one arm wildly out in a left-turn signal, she started the motor and turned the car into the traffic that was homeward bound.
5. Common Time
"I miss Mother," said Ann.
"Not that she doesn't write," put in Roger quickly. "Almost every day."
"I know," said Eliza, with sympathy. "Only the letters you get never tell about the things you want to hear, do they?"
"Ours are mostly about rehearsals," said Ann.
"They haven't had time to look at the Tower of London yet," said Roger.
"Ours are mainly weather," said Eliza. "It's still foggy in London."
The three children were sitting on the beach. Some days had passed since the one they spent in old Concord with the March family. July was lengthening into August, and that time had come that you all know only too well, when everything stops growing, and the leaves hang heavy, and no birds sing, and even the most ideal vacation takes on a certain sameness. And the thought of summer ending and school beginning again would be almost welcome, if it weren't so utterly unthinkable and horrible.
Later on the summer usually picks up, but the time I mean always comes along sooner or later, in the middle, and it has to be lived through.
"What would you do in London," said Ann, "if you were there? Besides the Tower of London and
where the Bastables lived, I mean."
"Look at the Queen," said Eliza, promptly.
"Watch them changing the guard at Buckingham Palace," said Roger. "What would you?"
Ann thought. "I guess just see Mother," she said.
There was a silence.
"Well?" said Eliza. "Why don't we? Why don't we go there and do them all?"
"Could we?" said Roger.
And then Jack came out from a solitary swim and joined them on the sands, and they had to start over with explanations.
"I don't see why not," said Jack, when all had been unfolded. "We could think ourselves there, the same as any other place." For in spite of his meeting with the teenage Marches, he still refused to use the word magic about the adventures.
"But it wouldn't be a time-wish, exactly, would it?" puzzled Roger. "It'd be more space. We've never tried before to go to a time that it's the same time as it is here," he went on, not very clearly, but everyone knew what he meant.
"But it isn't," said Jack. "It's a different time there in London right now. They put the clocks back. Or forward. I forget which. Anyway, it doesn't matter. All time is the same, really."
This was getting too difficult for Ann, and Jack tried to explain.
"It's a new theory. Suppose you were up in an airplane."
"I wouldn't be," said Ann, who preferred keeping both feet on the ground.
"Suppose you were. You could look down and see us, here on this beach, and you could see the Boston road, over beyond the woods, too. But it'd take us half an hour to walk from here to there. Time's like that. It's all there, Henry the Eighth and Lincoln and yesterday and today, all happening over and over all the time. Only it takes time to get from one to the other. Do you see?"
"No," said Ann.
"What I want to know," said Eliza, "is how can I get up in that airplane and have it all at once!"
"You can't," said Jack.
"You can if you have a Natterjack," said Roger.
Everyone had been so busy arguing that everyone had forgotten about the wish. Now with one accord the four children rose from the sand, clambered up the rock stairway and ran for the thyme garden. They found the Natterjack and all started talking at once.
But the Natterjack, when it had sorted out what they wanted, looked doubtful.
"That's a 'ard wish, that one there is," it said. "I don't know if it's h'in me to h'accomplish it."
"But we deserve a hard one!" said Eliza. "We've been doing all kinds of good turns!"
"Not so many last time," said Roger. "It was Jo and the Natterjack did them mostly."
"I washed all those dishes," Eliza reminded him. "Stacks and stacks there were!"
"And I," said Ann shyly, "told Jo to write Little Women."
"And that'll be a good deed to the whole world for untold centuries," said Eliza triumphantly. "So you see?"
"Just try," Jack urged the Natterjack. "It'll be simple." And he started telling it all about being up in the airplane and all time going on at once.
The Natterjack regarded him coldly. "Some people," it remarked, "are so smart they'd teach their grandmother to suck h'eggs!"
"Oh, you know about that theory?" said Jack. "I thought it was new."
"Know about it?" said the Natterjack. "I h'invented it! Notwithstanding which," it went on, "I 'aven't made a wish that wasn't a New h'England wish in longer than I like to remember. H'it'll take some thinking h'out."
It thought, and the four children watched.
"Common time," it announced after a bit, "that's what's wanted. Time that's common to h'everybody. Common thyme with an 'h' would be the plant required, an' that don't grow in this 'ere garding. Nothing that's common does," it added, rather smugly.
"Couldn't we find some?" said Eliza.
"As to finding it," said the Natterjack, "nothing could be h'easier. You'll find it in the kitchen garding with the rest of the salad stuffs. But as to what you'll do with it when found, you're on your h'own. What goes on in kitchen gardings is no concern of mine. I wouldn't stoop to it." And it started hopping away.
"Wait!" cried Eliza. "You can't desert us at a time like this."
"Why not?" said the Natterjack. "You know 'ow to get h'in an' out now. D'you suppose I've nothing better to do than tag along h'every time? D'you suppose your h'adventures are the h'only ones I 'ave to keep track of?"
The four children had never thought of this before. They thought about it now. As for the Natterjack, it hopped into a drift of the woolly-leaved thyme, pulled a few strands over its face for all the world like a woolly counterpane, and went to sleep.
"It isn't coming with us," said Ann.
"We'll have to do it by ourselves," said Roger.
Everybody hesitated. Everybody, that is, but Eliza.
"So much the better," she said, tossing her head. "We can be free as air, without a lot of hindering advice. Come on."
The four children went through the boxwood hedge, past the sundial, along the flower borders, now heavy with hollyhocks and drowsy with hummingbirds, around the house and past the kitchen.
But at the kitchen door Mrs. Annable appeared, with the message that Jack was wanted on the phone. He went in the house while the others waited, fidgeting. Pretty soon he came out again.
"It was Candy Drake," he said (for that was the appetizing name of a new teenage girl he had just met). "She wants me to come over. She's got some new dance records. A lot of the kids'll be there."
"Well?" said Eliza coldly. "Don't you want to see Mother?"
It was pitiful to watch the struggle in the face of the hapless youth. At last the call of the teenager won over the lure of enchantment in the soul of Jack. As usual, he veiled his regrets with a show of contempt. "Have fun," he said. "Play your magic games. I've got better things to do." And he started along the cliff in the direction of Candy Drake's house, walking fast and riot letting himself look back.
"'The shadows of the prison world begin to close around the growing boy,'" quoted Eliza.
"Let him go. It's his loss," said Roger.
And he and Eliza and Ann went into the kitchen garden.
In its brick-walled enclosure grew tomatoes and carrots and onions and peas and pepper and squash vines and mint, surrounded by a border of chives and a lower, gray-green plant, stiff and erect, not flat and creeping like the blossomy mounds in the garden on the bank. But after the three children had cautiously smelled, and Eliza had nibbled its holiday-tasting leaves, all agreed that it could only be common, or kitchen, thyme.
"I feel naked without the Natterjack," said Ann.
"I feel poised on the brink," said Roger.
"Pooh. We know what to do," said Eliza. "Rub and whiff, the same as always."
"Better say our wish first, to let the magic know," said Roger, "so there won't be any mistake."
"I want us to be with Mother," said Ann.
"I want us to be with my mother, too," said Eliza.
Nobody put in anything about wanting to be in London, because where else would their mothers be?
Roger broke off a stalk of the gray-leaved plant and rubbed it, and they all breathed in.
A second later the three children stood looking around them in utter surprise.
"This doesn't look like any part of London I ever heard of," said Eliza.
"What happened?" said Ann. "Did the play go on tour?"
"It couldn't," said Roger. "It hasn't opened yet."
"The magic must have gone bad," said Eliza. "The thyme wasn't common enough. It took us somewhere else by mistake."
The three children were standing on hot yellow sand, and around them palm trees were tropically grouped. A hot round sun was poised directly overhead, and in the middle distance on all sides waves were breaking.
"It's an island," said Roger. "In a Southern sea, from the look."
"Castaways on a coral isle!" said Eliza. "That's better than nothing, isn't it? Let's make the most of it!"
"I want to see Mother,"
said Ann stubbornly.
But neither their mothers nor anyone else was to be seen. Then suddenly Roger pointed. "Look!" he said.
What he was pointing at was a column of smoke that was rising from a far part of the island.
"At least it's inhabited," said Eliza, "and not desert."
"Yes, but by what?" quavered Ann.
"Let's find out," said Roger resolutely. And the three children started off in the direction of the smoke column, Ann hanging back only a little. As they drew nearer, they noticed four shapes sticking up against the horizon that were different from the surrounding palms.
"What are those funny-looking trees?" Ann wondered.
"They're not trees, they're totem poles," said Eliza.
"They're not either," said Roger, after a few more steps. "They're people!"
"It's four children," said Ann. "What are they doing up there, pole climbing?"
"Shush!" said Eliza. "Look down below."
The three children stopped short.
An unusual tableau met their gaze. Stretched out on the sand lay a whole tribe of bead-clad natives, taking a midday nap, or siesta. In the center of the group a caldron bubbled over a fire, and that was where the smoke came from. And to one side of the caldron four children hung aloft, tied to spears that had their pointed ends stuck in the sand.
"It's cannibals!" hissed Eliza. "And captives! We must have been sent to rescue them! The magic must have stopped off here on the way, for us to get our good deed over first!"
Three of the four trussed-up children seemed to be peacefully sleeping, but the fourth and smallest was awake. Now she looked down at them, and Ann clutched Roger.
"Where have we seen that little girl before?"
"I don't know," said Roger. "She does look sort of familiar."
"I don't seem to see her very clearly," said Eliza.
"Don't you?" said Roger. "I do."
"Hello," called the little girl suddenly. "My name's Martha. Who are you?" And then Ann knew.
But what she knew seemed so impossible that for a second she couldn't take it in.
The others were talking, introducing each other and asking questions.