“No, ma’am,” Art said politely, “I don’t believe I do.”
“Well, good!” Mrs. Keppel exclaimed. “Then you can help cheer him up. Though I must say”—she thrust the picnic hamper at Jeff and handed a six-pack of soda to Art—“he’s been a lot better the last couple of days. More like his usual happy self.”
“I’ll do what I can for him,” Art promised solemnly.
The boys carried their supplies out to the tent. Dark was settling in, and Jeff lit the lantern while Art unrolled the bedrolls.
“Do you really miss Ernie Barber that much?” Art asked curiously. “I never thought you liked him much, even though you let him hang around.” He threw himself down on his bedroll and reached for a sandwich.
“I don’t miss him, but I guess I feel sorry for him,” Jeff said, surprising himself with his answer. “Nobody liked him, and now nobody misses him—except his folks, of course.”
“So who’s fault is that?” Art muttered. He lay back with a sigh. “Hey, this is great!”
Jeff agreed. A warm wind whispered through the trees, and insects thrummed their soft summer songs. This was what he’d been waiting for ever since school ended. This was vacation.
The tent flaps parted and Mrs. Keppel peeked in. “I’m going to call on Mr. and Mrs. Muggin,” she said. “You boys will be all right, won’t you?”
“Ma!” Jeff protested. Sometimes her mothering got really embarrassing. “Why wouldn’t we be all right? And why are you going over there?” Even with Margo locked up and far away, he knew he’d never want to go near that house again.
“Because I feel so sorry for Celia Muggin, that’s why,” Mrs. Keppel said. “They gave that awful girl a nice home, and what thanks did they get? Arson, for heaven’s sake! I know she’s sick, but still … I’m just glad she’s going to be put away where she can’t hurt anyone. And to think she was working for Dr. Palm!” Mrs. Keppel shuddered.
Art looked over at Jeff. “She worked in your doctor’s office?”
“That’s right,” Mrs. Keppel replied. “Anything could have happened. Celia says she’s a registered nurse, but frankly I doubt it. Mrs. Deckerman told me her Rosalie saw Margo Muggin hanging around the schoolyard the day Ernie Barber fell off that slide. She just stood there and watched the whole thing, and she never tried to help poor Ernie at all. That doesn’t sound like a real nurse to me.”
When she had gone, Art opened the cake box and helped himself. “Margo was at your doctor’s office that day you came running out like a scared rabbit, right?”
Jeff nodded.
“Well, tell me, man. Get it over with.”
Jeff leaned back, hands folded behind his head, and started to talk. He stared up at the roof of the tent, and he told Art every scary, far-out, absolutely unbelievable thing that had occurred, beginning with the day of Ernie Barber’s funeral.
When he’d finished, Art looked dazed.
“You’re not kidding me, Keppel? All that stuff really happened?”
“It happened,” Jeff said. “You think I’d make it up?”
Art gave a long, low whistle. “You mean you’ve been running two steps ahead of a ghost and a witch all this time! Man, that is the worst thing I ever heard of. I’m just glad you didn’t tell me the first time I asked you what was going on. I might have turned around and zapped right back to my grandma’s house in Chicago.”
Jeff unwrapped a peanut-butter sandwich and popped open a can of soda. “I’ll tell you something else about Margo Muggin,” he said. “The worst thing of all. I just realized it a few minutes ago when my mom was talking about Margo.”
Art stared at him, openmouthed.
“If Margo was near the playground when Ernie fell off that slide, he must have seen her standing there staring at him with those glittering eyes, and it scared him so much that he lost his balance. She made it happen. No wonder Ernie’s ghost wanted revenge!”
“Wow!” Art slapped his forehead. “And I thought she was such a nice lady!”
For a while both boys were silent, listening to the night sounds and thinking. Then Art sat up and reached for the popcorn.
“You know what I heard?” he asked. “I heard that Ernie Barber’s folks are going to give a scholarship next year. The Ernest P. Barber Good Citizenship Award. How about that?” He rolled his eyes. “I wonder what the P. stands for. Did he ever tell you, Keppel?”
There was a very small roll of thunder, far away.
Jeff took a slice of chocolate cake. He hesitated. “No, he never told me,” he said, finally.
It was the least he could do for Ernie.
All rights reserved, including without limitation the right to reproduce this ebook or any portion thereof in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the publisher.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, events, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Text copyright © 1998 by Betty Ren Wright
Illustrations copyright © 1998 by Jacqueline Rogers
Cover design by Connie Gabbert
ISBN: 978-1-5040-1342-0
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In Holiday House: The First Sixty-Five Years (2000), Russell Freedman and Barbara Elleman describe the early days of the publishing house, which was founded in New York City:
In 1935, a new firm called Holiday House set up three desks in the corner of a printing plant and prepared to publish its first list of books. “The event was unique in at least one respect,” Publishers Weekly would say. “The new company was the first American publishing house ever founded with the purpose of publishing nothing but children’s books.”
The first of its kind, then—a specialized publisher with a unique program and a diminutive catalog, small enough to fit in a child’s palm. The catalog announced five books, three nursery rhyme broadsides, and the publisher’s intentions: “… Its editorial policy embraces only such books as are worthy of inclusion in a child’s permanent library.”
And so began our history. Holiday House “has changed over the years, sometimes by design and sometimes not. And it will continue to evolve and adapt. Yet in many ways it remains the same old place: relatively small, very independent, and completely devoted to its authors and illustrators.”
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The Ghost of Ernie P. Page 10