Family Sabbatical (Nancy Pearl's Book Crush Rediscoveries)

by Carol Ryrie Brink

  The Ridgeway children did not waste time thinking about Madame Duprés’s daughter. It was hard enough having a whole schoolful of French children to try to understand, without looking forward to another one right in the same house with them.

  Considering what there was to work with, the Christmas-tree decorations had turned out very well. There were stars and colored chains and paper snowflakes and cornucopias. These were laid very gently and carefully into a box and kept under George’s bed, where his rock collection used to be.

  “But I’m not too sure we’ll be able to find a tree,” Father said. “The French people value their trees very highly, and they don’t have as many to spare as we do in the United States. I don’t know whether we shall find Christmas trees for sale or not.”

  “Well,” Mother said, noticing how the children’s faces had fallen, “if we can’t buy a real tree, we’ll make one out of coat hangers.”

  “Coat hangers!” cried the children. “How terrible!”

  “Let’s not cross any bridges until we come to them,” Mother said. “Maybe we’ll find a tree. I don’t know. But the main thing to remember about our plans for Christmas this year is that they are likely to be different. We’ll have to make the best of what we find.”

  “Okay,” the children said.

  “Thanksgiving was different, and still we had a good time,” George said later. It was their second Thursday afternoon in Paris, and the sun was shining. Susan and George and Dumpling were on their way to the Jardin des Plantes to visit the zoo. They were going by themselves today, because they knew the way now.

  “Yes,” Susan said, “Mother is right about making the best of what we find. The troubles we had with Halloween came from trying to do things just the way we do them at home—marshmallows, for instance, when nobody in France seems to know about marshmallows. When you are in Rome, you have to do as the Romans do.”

  “But this is Paris, Susie,” Dumpling said.

  “Well, that’s only a saying,” Susan said, “but it means the same thing. We could just as well say, ‘When in Paris, you must do what the Parisians do.’ ”

  Dumpling did not say anything. Her feet seemed to drag as if she were very tired.

  “Hurry up, Dumpling,” George said. “You walk as if you’re going to school instead of to the zoo.”

  “I don’t care,” Dumpling said.

  “Well, I do,” said George. “I want all the time we can have to look at the animals. I don’t want to waste it walking along and walking along and walking along slow.”

  Dumpling sighed. She made her feet go a little faster. “It’s a long way,” she said.

  It is really too bad to begin a visit to the zoo with tired feet. To have tired feet when you come away from the zoo—that is perfectly natural. But one should always start out fresh and lively.

  Dumpling hung by her arms on the railing around the lion’s cage. She rested her chin on the railing around the tiger’s cage. Her eyes looked far away, as if she were thinking of something else. Even the monkeys did not make her laugh.

  George ran from cage to cage, laughing and shouting and explaining. He kept urging the girls to hurry.

  Susan was interested and amused, but also she was a trifle worried about Dumpling. “Don’t you like it, honey?” she asked.

  “Yes, I like it,” Dumpling said.

  “But you don’t look as if you’re having fun.”

  “My legs are tired, Susie.”

  “Oh, phooey!” said George. “You should have stayed at home, Dumpy!”

  At this Dumpling began to cry—not loudly, as when she had lost Irene, but very softly and hopelessly, with a bit of a sniffle.

  “Oh, phooey!” said George again.

  “Listen, George,” said Susan. “Dumpling and I will go sit on a bench and wait for you. You go on and see all the animals as fast as you can, and when you’re through we’ll go home.”

  “Where will you be?” asked George.

  “We’ll be by the farm-animal pen where the nice little lambs are. You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Dumpling?”

  “Yes, Susie,” Dumpling said with a long, quavering sniffle and a sigh.

  George went racing off, because he could hear the seals barking and splashing not far away, and he was certain that the keeper must be feeding them their fish.

  Susan and Dumpling hunted for a bench to sit on that would be near the little lambs. The first bench they came to was full of nursemaids who were knitting and gossiping and minding babies in perambulators. But the second bench they found was empty, and just what they wanted. It was right in among the pens of sheep and goats. In fact, it was nearly surrounded by wire fences, so that they were almost in a little pen by themselves.

  “Look, Dumpling, there are the lambs,” Susan said.

  “Uh-huh,” said Dumpling, sitting on the bench and leaning against the back of it.

  “Are you warm enough, honey?”

  “Yes, I am quite hot, Susie.”

  “Well, let me know if you get cold.”

  “Tell me a story, Susie.”

  “All right,” Susan said. “It will be a story about lambs. Once there were three lambs, Dumpling—you know, like the three little pigs—and they had always lived at home in a nice little pen with a wire fence around it. But one day they decided to go out into the world and seek their fortunes.”

  “Why did they do that, Susie?” asked Dumpling drowsily.

  “Well, goodness,” Susan said, “you have to make something happen in a story, and that’s always a good way to start. So, as I said, they decided to go out into the world and seek their fortunes, but they didn’t know how they were going to get over the fence. They kept trying to jump over, and finally the biggest one made it. Jump! He went right over the top, and found himself on the outside. Then the next one discovered that somebody had left the gate open just a teeny-tiny bit, and so he pushed and pushed, and he got outside. But the littlest one was still in, and he couldn’t get out. He began to cry, ‘Baa-aa! Baa-aa! Take me, too, please. Don’t forget me.’ ”

  “His legs were tired,” Dumpling said. “But why didn’t he come out of the gate, like the second one, Susie?”

  “Oh, bother!” Susan said. “I never thought of that. Well, so he did. And they all went away down the road, trot, trot, trot.”

  “Here comes the big one now, Susie,” Dumpling said.

  Susan had been shut away inside herself, as you have to be when you are making up a story. She had been looking with her mind’s eye at a nice little pen all entwined with morning glories, and down the road of her imagination she was seeing three small white lambs with blue ribbons around their necks go trot, trot, trot, on the way to seek their fortunes.

  Therefore it was something of a shock to her to look where Dumpling was pointing and behold a very large sheep with curling horns coming steadily toward them.

  “Well, speaking of angels!” Susan said in surprise. As soon as she had said it, she thought that there was really nothing very angelic in the appearance of this lamb. As a matter of fact, he was a ram instead of a lamb, and not at all gentle looking.

  “I think this is the one that jumped over the fence first,” Dumpling said, “but he’s larger than I thought he’d be, Susie.”

  “Dear me!” said Susan. “Go away, lamb, lamb, lamb! Nice lamb! Good lamb! Shoo! Go on away!”

  The animal kept right on coming. His eyes were yellow, and they had a strange way of looking at Susan and Dumpling, but it was not with love. His horns were large and curled back on either side of his head. The head looked hard and strong.

  “I wish George was here,” said Susan. “He’d know what to do.”

  The creature was quite close now, and there was no way for the two girls to get out of the small enclosure without pushing him aside to get by. He had them in a corner. He lowered his head in a way that looked playful, but perhaps was not. Then he came closer still and butted Susan’s knees with the top of his head. He bu
tted them gently, and maybe it was only in fun, but Susan didn’t have that kind of sense of humor.

  “Stop that!” she said. “Go away now!” The ram drew back a little, and his eyes glittered.

  “He’s going to do it again, Susie,” Dumpling said. “Look out!”

  “Quick, Dumpling!” Susan cried. “Get up on the bench!”

  They just had time to scramble up on the bench before the ram came over again and gave the bench a smart butt with his horns. Luckily he hit the bench instead of Susan’s knees.

  “Help! Help!” cried Susan. “Au secours!” But nobody seemed to be in sight. The nursemaids had left the other bench and were pushing their perambulators away down at the end of a long avenue of trees.

  The ram was really interested now. He looked at them with his yellow eyes, and he almost seemed to be smiling with a wicked kind of pleasure. He drew off again for a short distance, and then came at them again. Wham! The bench really tottered this time, and Susan and Dumpling had to dance to keep their balance.

  “Susie, I’m scared,” said Dumpling, beginning to cry.

  “Don’t let him see it,” cautioned Susan, and to the ram she shouted, “Go away! Stop it! Behave yourself!”

  “Maybe he doesn’t understand English, Susie,” Dumpling wailed. Susan thought this over. It was one of Dumpling’s wise remarks.

  “Va t’en! Va t’en, petit cochon!” shouted Susan. She knew that petit cochon means “little pig,” but, under such trying circumstances, she couldn’t be expected to remember the word for “ram.” Anway, she was sure that va t’en meant “go away.” But if the ram understood, he took it for an insult. Why shouldn’t he? French people consider it the greatest insult to address anyone as a pig—unless, of course, he happens to be a pig. The ram looked at them with very angry eyes. Then, wham! he hit the bench and nearly tipped it over.

  “Quick! Over the back!” cried Susan. She climbed over the back of the bench and pulled Dumpling over after her. They had only a moment to spare.

  Wham! went the ram’s horns against the bench. And now he had pushed the bench as far as it would go into the corner of the fence. Dumpling and Susan were safe for the present in the small triangle made by the fence corner and the back of the bench. But any moment Susan expected to see the bench turned into kindling wood. Then she and Dumpling would be next.

  “Get behind me, Dumpling, way in the corner of the fence,” she cried, and at the top of her lungs she shouted, “Au secours! Help! Au secours!”

  After what seemed to Susan a long time, there was shouting and running. A zookeeper came from one direction and George and other people came from other directions. The keeper shouted at the ram and took him by the horns and led him away, to shut him back inside the fence where he belonged.

  The ram went quite meekly when he felt the keeper’s hands on his horns. But he looked back at Susan and Dumpling as much as to say, “Well, it’s all over, but didn’t we have a lot of fun while it lasted?”

  It seems that someone had left a gate open just a teeny-tiny bit and the ram had pushed and pushed—and, well, Susan never did finish the story about the three little lambs with blue ribbons around their necks.

  Susan’s knees were quite weak when the adventure was over, but George didn’t seem to feel that anything unusual had happened. “Are you rested now?” he asked. “Come on. You ought to see the seals.”

  “No,” Susan said. “Now we go home.”

  Dumpling didn’t say anything. But on the way home she had to stop by the way and lose her lunch in the gutter.

  “Like the poor little girl who was sick on my desk the day I started school,” Dumpling said later, when she was telling Mother all her troubles.

  “What little girl?” asked Mother sharply.

  “Why, the one whose desk I sit in,” Dumpling said. “The poor little girl had been sick, and they cleaned up the desk with a wet cloth.”

  “Jonathan,” Mother said to Father, “you must go and get a doctor right away. She’s burning up with fever. Dumpling, Mother’s going to put you right to bed.”

  It turned out to be measles, and soon Dumpling was covered with large red spots. The French doctor came, and his treatment seemed rather strange to the Ridgeways. But, as none of them knew any more about medicine than he did, they obeyed his orders.

  First of all they constructed a tent of cheesecloth over Dumpling’s bed. Inside the tent, in a spirit lamp, they boiled water with strange-smelling oils floating in it.

  There lay Dumpling, very red and speckled, like a queen under a canopy, and all about her floated a strong smell of incense. They called her “Your Highness,” and “Queen of Timbuktu,” but Dumpling gave them only the faintest flicker of a smile. She seemed to feel very tired.

  Since the Ridgeway children shared everything, it was natural that they should share the measles. Very soon there were three cheesecloth tents and three vapor lamps. George and Susan never felt very bad or had very many spots. It was worth all the inconvenience of being sick, because they did not have to go to the Earnest Camel’s school and sit cramped up in the first-grade seats.

  Susan lay back on her pillows and made up hundreds of stories and romances. Some she told to George and Dumpling, but many of them she kept entirely to herself.

  George cut animals out of colored paper, and of course, his tent was a circus tent. His steam lamp was the steam calliope, but only he could hear the tune it played.

  Dumpling lay still, as Susan did, but if she thought of any stories, she never told them, and she didn’t care to have any of her toys in bed with her.

  If only she had Irene, Susan thought. But Irene was at the bottom of an oubliette. There was no use looking to her for help.

  One day when Susan was feeling quite herself again, she said, “Dumpling, how would you like it if I wrote a letter to Mademoiselle? It could be from you, and you could tell me what to say.”

  “I would like that,” Dumpling said.

  Susan got paper and pencil and wrote, “Dear Mademoiselle—”

  “Susie,” said Dumpling, “if you don’t mind doing it again, I would like to say ‘Dear, darling Mademoiselle.’ ”

  “Okay, honey,” Susan said. “What next?”

  “Dear, darling Mademoiselle,” dictated Dumpling, “we miss you. We like the kind of school you have better than the one the Earnest Camel has. We all have measles now with tents and red spots. Dear Mademoiselle—dear, darling Mademoiselle, I will tell you something sad. I dropped Irene into a dark hole in a castle and she is still there. We miss you. Love from Dumpling.”

  “That’s a very nice letter, Dumpling,” Susan said, “and I’ve written down everything you said except your name. You can print that yourself.”

  George wanted to write a letter, too, all about the animals in the zoo. Susan wrote one in French, which made it difficult, like a puzzle, but with a little help from Mother it turned out quite well. When all the letters were finished, the envelope containing them required two stamps instead of one.

  “Mademoiselle will be pleased,” Susan said. “Now how about the princess?”

  So they wrote letters to the princess, too. But by that time they were tired, and the letter to the princess was thin enough to go for one stamp.

  Now that Susan began to feel better, she was full of ideas. One evening after George and Dumpling had gone to sleep, Susan lay wide awake, thinking about Dumpling and Irene and Christmas coming nearer every day. She could hear Mother and Father talking in their room. She got up and put on her robe and slippers and went next door where they were.

  “Well, greetings, daughter,” said Father. “Aren’t you asleep yet?”

  And Mother said, “Hi, Susie.”

  Susan went right to the point of her thinking. “You know,” she said, “George and I don’t want Christmas presents for ourselves, but don’t you think we should all do something special for Dumpling?”

  “I agree,” said Mother. “Have you thought of something?” />
  “Mother, I was wondering,” said Susan. “Do you think we could possibly make her another Irene?”

  Mother reached for her workbasket. “Look,” she said. “I’m trying, Susan.” Out of Mother’s workbasket came the parts and pieces of a rag doll.

  “Oh, Mother,” Susan said, “it’s Irene all right, except that she’s very small. The real Irene was very large.”

  “I know,” Mother said. “It’s certainly true that this Irene is going to be very much smaller than the first one. But she will be easier for Dumpling to carry. She’ll fit into her hand instead of having to be dragged along by the arm. Besides, I didn’t have materials or stuffing for a big one, and I thought—”

  “I know what you thought,” said Susan. “You thought that nothing anyone could make would be exactly Irene to Dumpling.”

  “That’s it,” Mother said. “I decided that it might really be better if there was a difference in size.”

  Susan was silent a moment, then she said, “Mother, you know what? George and I could make furniture for a doll this size. We could make chairs and tables and a bed and bedclothes.”

  “Oh, Susie,” Mother said, “that’s a wonderful idea!”

  “A small Irene,” Susan said, “and all her little things! I believe Dumpling would really go for that!”

  After Susan had returned to bed, ideas kept going around in her mind. The chairs and tables could be made of cardboard boxes. There could be a little fringed tablecloth and a small clay flowerpot with tissue-paper flowers. Suddenly she remembered a tiny gilt tea set she had seen in the window of a shop near the Luxembourg Gardens. The cups were not as big as thimbles. It was a tea set for fairies or for a very small Irene.

  But that would cost money, Susan thought. We’ll have to make these things. As she fell asleep, she was thinking, A little braided rug! I could make a little rug!

  Mickey and Minnie

  I hate to mention this,” Mother said, “but I’m afraid we’ve got mice.”