“Ouch,” said Mr. Bunny when he bumped against the wall and accidentally stuck himself.
“You look enchanting,” said the duchess charitably. “Not up to hedgehog snuff, of course, but much better than before. You can certainly pass. I can bring you to dinners and teas. If anyone suggests you look like rabbits I will say, ‘But look at the quills.’ It will work, I think, yes, it will work.”
“OW!” said Mr. Bunny, sticking himself again accidentally and jumping into the air in a most unhedgehoglike manner. “The quills have got to go. And how the heck can you be Mrs. Treaclebunny’s cousin? You’re a hedgehog and she’s a rabbit. It doesn’t make sense.”
Mrs. Bunny put her hands in front of her face in agony. Could he never control himself? Why must he always ask the questions that everyone else knew better than to ask? And why did he never mind the embarrassment this caused Mrs. Bunny?
“So many want to be hedgehogs, but so few are,” said the duchess. “Every so often we hedgehogs have a misalliance in the family because of this. There is so much social climbing. Particularly among rabbits. Hedgehogs never need social-climb because we are at the top. But other animals—they all want to be hedgehogs.”
“I don’t,” said Mr. Bunny.
“HUSH,” said Mrs. Bunny, pulling his tail.
“We hedgehogs are used to it. But when such a misalliance happens in the family, we feel it is best for all concerned to hide it.”
“I don’t see how you figure you’re better than rabbits,” said Mr. Bunny, beginning to shift from foot to foot truculently.
Uh-oh, thought Mrs. Bunny, pulling at her fur. Couldn’t Mr. Bunny understand that you just don’t talk to a duchess that way? He was going to screw up all her chances of being queen if he didn’t put a lid on it. With social climbing it was essential to know how to grovel.
“How are we better than you? We are better than you, you ridiculous lapin, because we can do this.” The duchess curled herself into a ball and rolled forward, accidentally bumping into Mrs. Bunny.
“OW,” said Mrs. Bunny.
“Well, I could go around doing somersaults and sticking people with forks; I don’t see that it would make me superior,” said Mr. Bunny.
“Shut up,” said Mrs. Bunny sotto voce.
“I don’t get that at all,” said Mr. Bunny.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up,” muttered Mrs. Bunny into Mr. Bunny’s ear while pretending to fix his collar.
But the Duchess of Bungleyhog was paying no attention. She seldom did to rabbits.
“Now I’m off to the hunt. Cheerio. Do enjoy your stay. I’ll arrange some dinners and teas with your betters and we’ll see if we can’t get you at least one rung up the social ladder. Perhaps we can get you into viscountdom or maybe earldom.”
“OOOOOO!” trilled Mrs. Bunny shrilly. “Did you hear that, Mr. Bunny, you could be pronounced an earl.”
“I could be pronounced a fried egg too, Mrs. Bunny. Try not to shriek in my ear every time you hear a title. I don’t wish to be a member of the aristocracy, but if I must, I prefer not to be a deaf member.”
“Try not to annoy my staff and don’t engage in any obvious rabbit behavior,” said the duchess, who hadn’t listened to a word anyone but she herself had said, as was her habit. “Remember, you’re hedgehogs now.”
Then she swept out.
“I’ve had enough of this nonsense,” said Mr. Bunny. “What does she take me for?” He started to pull out his quills.
“No, no!” said Mrs. Bunny. “Please, Mr. Bunny. For just a while longer. It’s a means to an end. It’s a shortcut to being queen. And as soon as I’m queen, we can go home.”
“Humph,” said Mr. Bunny again, but he stopped pulling out quills. He was certainly ready to go home. He’d had quite enough of the whole traveling business. He wanted his own hutch and comestibles that didn’t clot. “Coming all the way across the ocean to room with bushes!”
“Those are not ordinary bushes, Mr. Bunny. Those are hedgerows,” said Mrs. Treaclebunny. “England used to have miles and miles of hedgerows until the duchess’s ancestors decided to collect them. Her family has been digging them up and bringing them to the castle for a century now. The British keep complaining that miles of hedgerows have disappeared over the years but no one knows where they’ve gone. Someone suggested that flying saucers took them while making the crop circles.”
“Flying saucers!” snorted Mr. Bunny. “The fantasy worlds some people live in!”
“Anyhow, Mrs. Bunny,” said Mrs. Treaclebunny. “I told you Bungs would help us up the social ladder. In no time at all we shall be queens. I haven’t told her that’s the ultimate goal yet, but she has oodles of brilliant connections. We can have tea and make our way up from duchesses to earlesses to princesses, and then in very little time queendom will be upon us.”
“Oh! Oh!” said Mrs. Bunny, clasping her paws in rapture.
“Queendom will be upon us?” said Mr. Bunny. “I thought it was only Mrs. Bunny who wanted to be queen.”
“The idea has grown on me,” said Mrs. Treaclebunny. “I especially like the thought of ruling. When I was a young bunny, ruling the world was one of my career aspirations. But my family could only afford nursing school.”
“But, Mrs. Treaclebunny,” said Mrs. Bunny, “I really think there can be only one queen.”
“Yes, exactly,” said Mrs. Treaclebunny. “I will be queen and you can be the subqueen.”
“Why do I have to be the subqueen?” asked Mrs. Bunny. “It was my idea.”
“Because my cousin is the duchess,” said Mrs. Treaclebunny, and that was the end of that. “Now, the duchess has gone on a hunt. We have a free day before the social climbing begins. What shall we do with our first day in England? Shall we explore the nearby village of Bellyflop?”
“Bellyflop!” said Mrs. Bunny, falling over in disbelief. “Are we that near to Bellyflop? But that’s where Madeline is staying.”
“Is it? That’s an amazing coincidence,” said Mrs. Treaclebunny.
“The kind usually found only in books,” agreed Mr. Bunny.
“Which is very convenient, as I shan’t have to make it up when I come to write up our adventures in my new book,” said Mrs. Bunny. She got out her writing book and scribbled:
Note to self, amazing coincidence that the bunnies now practically next door to Madeline. Or perhaps—synchronicity?
“Not again!” said Mr. Bunny, who was reading over her shoulder. He tried to read the notes she took for her new books whenever possible. Now and then he forged a few in Mrs. Bunny’s handwriting, hoping she would mistake them for her own.
Mr. Bunny—the first super rabbit? Mind like a steel trap! read one.
Mr. Bunny—so funny ought to do stand-up! read another.
Mr. Bunny, so brilliant! Like staring at the sun!
He had crossed this last out as perhaps too over-the-top. Writing was so difficult.
“I suppose we can agree to disagree,” said Mrs. Bunny as they hopped across the moat. She was not going to argue with him very strenuously. It was enough that he hadn’t pulled out his quills.
“Pffff,” said Mr. Bunny. He wasn’t going to argue with Mrs. Bunny. He just wanted to see her crowned and get home in time for the football season.
It was a short hop to the village. When the bunnies got there Madeline’s family’s sweet shoppe was easy to find. It had a large sign out front saying SWEET SHOPPE.
The shoppe was already open and behind the counter were Mildred, Flo, Madeline, Katherine and a little man the bunnies didn’t recognize. Mildred and Flo and the man were in such a loud conversation that no one even heard the shoppe bell tinkle as the rabbits entered.
“I’m terribly sorry. I shall have my secretary fired at once, of course. Dear, dear, to think you crossed the Atlantic under such a misapprehension,” said the little man with a worried expression.
“Not to mention circumnavigating the North and South American continents,” said Flo. “But
hey, man, it’s not the destination, it’s the journey.”
“Yes, ahem, as I was saying, to think you came all this way because my secretary made a typo.”
“So,” said Mildred, “you’re saying that the sweet shoppe didn’t clear a hundred thousand pounds in the month of August alone, as we read in your letter?”
“Ahem, not quite.”
“So it made only ten thousand pounds?”
“No, no.”
“Well, thank heavens for that, because ten thousand pounds isn’t enough for Zanky’s thirty acres,” said Mildred.
“So! What did it clear?”
“Well, under the circumstances, I’m not sure you want to know,” said the man.
“Just tell us!” yelled Mildred.
“One thousand pounds,” said the man in a small voice.
“WHAT!” said Mildred.
“Of course, that’s about sixteen hundred of your Canadian dollars. Give or take a few dollars. That’s a little better. Although”—he paused and cleared his throat and finished in a smaller voice—“not really.”
“One thousand pounds? That’s all the shop made in August? One thousand pounds? We’d have to stay here a couple of years to make enough to buy Zanky’s acreage.”
“Yeah, and we’ve got to be on the cruise ship for our return gig,” said Flo. “We can’t stay two years, man.”
“We’re in a recession. So many out of work, you see. So much unemployment. There just hasn’t been money for extras in so many households. And I’m afraid sweets are, ahem, rather an extra. Now I must get back to my office. Sorry for the confusion. And who knows, perhaps you can find a way to turn a better profit in August. Don’t you have that Yankee ingenuity we hear so much about?”
“Yankees are American,” said Katherine.
“We’re Canadians,” said Madeline. When would people learn to tell the difference?
“Right. Still, I hope you enjoy your stay.”
When the man left, Mildred pulled up a chair and sat down heavily. “Well, that’s that,” she said. “We may as well just turn around and go home.”
“Hey, synchronicity. I’m the Dalai Lama of sugar, remember? I’m bringing sugar to the people. Who cares if we make any money?”
“Flo, the whole point of coming here was to make money so that we could buy Zanky’s thirty acres,” said Mildred wearily.
“The whole point of buying Zanky’s thirty acres was to have money for my college education,” Madeline whispered to Katherine.
“We don’t know what the point of anything is,” said Flo. “It’s in the stars, man.”
“Your college education?” said Mildred, who had overheard Madeline.
“Well, if you sold your vegetables at the market you would make money. And you never care about money, so I thought I could use it for college,” said Madeline.
“Oh man, more school?” said Flo. “That’s, like, perverse.”
“But could I have it?” asked Madeline. “Just hypothetically?”
“College? I thought you wanted to be a silversmith. College is just nonse—” began Mildred, when the bell on the door tinkled and in strode a woman. She was dressed all in tweeds with her hair in an updo and wearing a pair of dark glasses. She looked rich and busy and very important and very British, but when she spoke she had an American accent.
“How do you do? The Twickenham Twill school is having a charity fete, and we are asking local shoppe owners to set up booths selling their wares and donate the … HARRY?” She pushed up her sunglasses and stared. “And under all that dyed blond hair, my gracious, can it be? Is it you, Denise?”
Mildred blushed. “I just had my hair dyed for … an … event. It’s usually still brown. But can it be you? Starlight Heavens from the Haight?”
“I prefer to be called Lady Henderson now,” said Starlight Heavens. “Or Jean. I married a lord. I live on the outside of this extremely amusing little British village. My husband inherited the family estate. We live in a manor house.” She could not help preening when she said this.
“Ooo!” said Mrs. Bunny.
“Shh,” said Mr. Bunny. So far no one had noticed them hiding behind a large candy carton in the corner.
“Wow,” said Flo. “Cool.”
“Are you still teaching yoga? And doing those macramé wall hangings?” asked Mildred, who kept touching her hair self-consciously and looking uncomfortable.
Lady Henderson gave a tinkling little laugh. “Oh no. I’m very busy running the manor house.”
“You gotta paint and mow the lawn and stuff, I guess. And put out mousetraps. Old houses,” said Flo, nodding sympathetically.
Lady Henderson laughed again. “No, Harry, we have servants for that. But that’s precisely what I mean. I have so many servants to manage. And then there are the charity fetes for the children’s school. They go to public school, of course.”
“We go to public school,” said Katherine from behind the counter.
Lady Henderson hadn’t noticed the girls. Now she peered over the counter at them. “Yours, I suppose?” she asked Mildred, taking a step back as if the girls perhaps needed delousing.
“Madeline is our daughter,” said Mildred. “This is Katherine. She’s spending the summer with us. We aren’t Harry and Denise anymore. We prefer to be called Flo and Mildred now.”
“On the lam?” said Lady Henderson. “Anyhow, little girl, in England public school is what you would call private school. You do not go to public school in our sense of the word.”
“How does she know?” muttered Katherine to Madeline when Lady Henderson had turned back to Mildred.
“I see you’ve bought this old white elephant. I hope you didn’t do it for the money. No one shops here. No one of importance. We all get our sweets from London. In fact, I don’t know anyone who patronizes the local shoppes. Except, of course, those who are not our type. Oh, I forgot … perhaps they’re your type.”
“Well, now that you’re here, want to buy something? We have dolly mix and Gin Gins and Gray’s Herbal Tablets,” said Flo, reading names off boxes and canisters.
Lady Henderson took another step back.
“Good gracious, I never buy such junk for little Ermintrude and Alfred. They get their chocolates from the Queen’s chocolatiers. After all, we have to prepare them for their places in society. They were born at the Queen’s hospital, of course, with the Queen’s own obstetrician on hand. And then they went to Sloane Street Prep Preschool to get into Her Ladyship’s Kindergarten so that they could proceed to Twickenham Twill Elementary and on to Oxford eventually.” This took all of Lady Henderson’s breath and she stood panting.
“All that school,” said Flo sadly, shaking his head.
“Well, we don’t want them to grow up to be shoppe owners,” said Lady Henderson. “Not when their father once had dinner with the queen.”
“Dinner with the QUEEN?” cried Mrs. Bunny.
At that, Flo turned his head and spied the bunnies behind the carton. He whispered to Mildred, “Man, remember when the kidnappers drugged us and we hallucinated rabbits? Well, it’s happening again.”
“Shut up,” said Mildred.
“Who cried out ‘Dinner with the QUEEN?’ ” demanded Lady Henderson, looking around.
Mildred kicked another carton in front of the bunnies. She was pretty sure the rabbits didn’t exist, but then why did Lady Henderson hear them? Mildred didn’t have time to think about it now—she must salvage the situation. She squealed, “Who shrieked ‘Dinner with the QUEEN?’ That was me.”
“No, it wasn’t,” said Lady Henderson.
“Of course it was. Unless you’re hallucinating talking rabbits or something,” laughed Mildred.
“Our sort never hallucinates,” said Lady Henderson, sniffing.
“Anyway,” said Mildred, quickly changing the subject, “Madeline plans to go to Harvard when she graduates. I plan to buy a large organic vegetable farm with the money we make on the shoppe this summer. And th
at, of course, will more than finance Harvard.”
“What? Make money on this shoppe?”
“Yes,” said Mildred stubbornly.
“But this shoppe doesn’t make money, dear,” said Lady Henderson, laughing.
“It will. We have plans,” said Mildred.
“That’s adorable. You know,” said Lady Henderson, turning to Madeline, “Harvard is difficult to get into. It’s not like one of your little provincial universities. You are lucky to be in Canada. It’s so easy to get into schools there. I was going to ask you to have a booth at our fete and donate the proceeds but, of course, I can see now you need every nickel. Too bad, because it’s quite a large affair. We invite the locals from six counties, so it would be a very good advertisement for you. Lots of your sort shopping and playing games. You wouldn’t feel too outclassed.”
“We’ll be at your charity fete,” said Mildred through gritted teeth.
“Yeah, man, we, like, always like to give back,” said Flo. “And meeting you here is, like, more synchronicity.”
Mildred kicked him.
“Well, toodle-oo,” said Lady Henderson, and she swept out.
“Toodle-doodle-poodle-oo to you,” said Mildred. Her arms were crossed and she was beginning to twitch.
Madeline was staring at her mother, who had always taught her that everyone was equal and money was the root of all evil. This was not Hornby Island Mildred or even Cruising Mildred. This was some strange new Mildred whom Madeline had never seen before. Off her own turf, Mildred seemed to be like a rudderless ship that floundered on the open sea. I wanted her to be different, thought Madeline, but not like this and not like Cruising Mildred. When she thought about it, she realized she had never had a concrete idea of the way she wanted Mildred to be. Only the ways she didn’t want her to be.
Mildred’s live-and-let-live ways seemed to have disintegrated in the presence of Lady Henderson. Madeline looked worriedly at her mother’s twitching face.
Lord and Lady Bunny—Almost Royalty! Page 10