“I just miss her so,” said Con. “If we can’t have the ghost of a dog, I wish we had a real dog.”
“But, Con—”
“No, truly, I wouldn’t be frightened if we had a dog like her—just like her. It would have to be a bitch—she was black, wasn’t she, Lizzie?”
“I thought so. A glossy black. I remember, her collar was red. Red against black; it looked smart.”
“A glossy black bitch with a whippy tail and those big, soft ears that flew out. That’s what I’d like.”
“Oh, Con!” cried Lizzie. She had always longed for them to have a dog, and it had never been possible because of Con’s terrors. Until now…
Con was still working things out: “And she must be a jumper and a runner, and she must love running after a ball. And we’ll call her—what ought we to call her, Lizzie?”
“I don’t know. …”
“It must be exactly the right name—exactly right. …”
He had stopped swinging; Lizzie had stopped pushing him. They remained quite still under the sycamore tree, thinking.
Then they began to feel it: something was going to happen. …
For one last time, a quittance for them …
The sun had already set; daylight was fading. “What is it? What’s happening?” whispered Con, preparing to step out of the tire, afraid.
“Wait, Con. I think I know.” Thinking, foreseeing, Lizzie knew. “The ball’s destroyed; it’s a ghost ball now, a ghost ball for a ghost dog. Look, Con! It’s being thrown!”
“Being thrown?” repeated Con. “But—but—who’s throwing it?”
“I don’t know, but look—oh, look, Con!”
They could not see the thrower at all, but they thought they could see the ghost of a ball, and they could certainly see the dog. She waited for the throw and then—on the instant—was after the ball in a straight line of speed, and caught up with it, and caught it, and was carried onward with the force of her own velocity, but directed her course and began to come back in a wide, happy, unhurried curve. The yellow ball was between her teeth, and her tail was up in triumph—a thing they had never seen before. She brought the ball back to the thrower, and the thrower threw again, and again she ran, and caught, and came loping back. Again, and again, and again.
They could not see the thrower at all, but once the ghost of a voice—and still, they could not tell: man, woman, boy, or girl?—called to the dog.
“Listen!” whispered Lizzie, but they did not hear the voice again.
They watched until darkness fell and the throwing ceased.
Con said, “What was her name? Nellie? Jilly?”
Lizzie said, “No, Millie.”
“Millie?”
“It’s short for Millicent, I think. An old name, Millicent.”
“I’m glad now about the yellow ball,” said Con. “And we’ll call her Millicent—Millie for short.”
“Her?”
“You know, our dog.”
They left the tire under the sycamore and went indoors to tackle their parents.
About the Author
Philippa Pearce was born in 1920 and grew up in a millhouse in the village of Great Shelford in England. The millhouse, the river, the garden—all of these settings have played important parts in Ms. Pearce’s books.
The Daily Telegraph recently described Philippa Pearce as “possibly the greatest living British writer for children.” She is the author of many books, several of which are considered classics both in the United States and in her native England. Her award-winning titles include Tom’s Midnight Garden, which won the Carnegie Medal and is an ALA Notable Book, The Battle of Bubble and Squeak, which won the Whitbread Award, and Mrs. Cockle’s Cat, which won the Kate Greenaway Medal. Three of her books—Minnow on the Say, The Battle of Bubble and Squeak, and The Shadow Cage and Other Tales of the Supernatural—received Carnegie Commendations. She lives in Cambridgeshire, England.
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Story Credits
“Still Jim and Silent Jim,” copyright © 1959 by Philippa Pearce, was first published in 1959 by Basil Blackwell and Mott Ltd.
“What the Neighbors Did,” copyright © 1967 by Philippa Pearce, was first published in Twentieth Century, First Quarter 1967, and subsequently adapted for broadcasting in the BBC School Broadcasting series Living Language.
“Return to Air,” copyright © 1969 by Philippa Pearce, was originally written for the BBC School Broadcasting series Over to You in 1964, and first published, in a slightly different form, in The Friday Miracle and Other Stories, edited by Kaye Webb, published in 1969 by Penguin Books Ltd.
“In the Middle of the Night,” “The Tree in the Meadow,” “Fresh,” “The Great Blackberry Pick,” and “Lucky Boy,” copyright © 1972 by Philippa Pearce, were first published in What the Neighbors Did and Other Stories, published in 1972 by Longman.
“Bluebag,” copyright © 1976 by Philippa Pearce, was first published under the title “The Nest” in Cricket, vol. 3, no. 2, August 1976.
“The Shadow Cage,” “Miss Mountain,” “Guess,” “At the River Gates,” “Her Father’s Attic,” “The Running Companion,” “Beckoned,” “The Dear Little Man with His Hands in His Pockets,” “The Dog Got Them,” and “The Strange Illness of Mr. Arthur Cook,” copyright © 1977 by Philippa Pearce, were first published in The Shadow Cage and Other Tales of the Supernatural, published in 1977 by Kestrel Books.
“Inside Her Head,” copyright © 1980 by Philippa Pearce, was first published in Puffin Post, vol. 14, no. 3, in 1980.
“Black Eyes,” copyright © 1981 by Philippa Pearce, was first published in Black Eyes and Other Spine Chillers, edited by Lance Salway, Pepper Press.
“His Loving Sister,” copyright © 1982 by Philippa Pearce, was first published in Ghost After Ghost, edited by Aidan Chambers, Kestrel.
“A Prince in Another Place,” copyright © 1983 by Philippa Pearce, was first published in They Wait and Other Spine Chillers, edited by Lance Salway, Pepper Press.
“Who’s Afraid?” copyright © 1984 by Philippa Pearce, was first published in Hundreds and Hundreds, Puffin.
“The Road It Went By,” copyright © 1985 by Philippa Pearce, was first published in Outsiders, edited by Bryan Newton, Collins Educational.
“A Christmas Pudding Improves with Keeping,” “Samantha and the Ghost,” “Auntie,” “Mr. Hurrel’s Tallboy,” “The Hirn,” and “The Yellow Ball,” copyright © 1986 by Philippa Pearce, were first published in Who’s Afraid? and Other Strange Stories, published in 1986 by Kestrel Penguin Books Ltd.
“The Rope,” copyright © 1986 by Philippa Pearce, was first published in The Fiction Magazine, vol. 5, no. 5, July 1986.
“The Nest Egg,” copyright © 1989 by Philippa Pearce, was first published in Once Upon a Planet, an anthology of stories and extracts in aid of Friends of the Earth, published in 1989 by Puffin Books.
“Early Transparent,” “The Fir Cone,” “Nutmeg,” and “Mrs. Chamberlain’s Reunion,” copyright © 2000 by Philippa Pearce, were first published in The Rope and Other Stories, published in 2000 by Puffin Books/Penguin Books Ltd.
Copyright
Familiar and Haunting: Collected Stories contains new stories first published in Great Britain in 2001 as The Rope and Other Stories, as well as stories from three collections previously published in the United States as What the Neighbors Did and Other Stories (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1973); The Shadow Cage and Other Tales of the Supernatural (Thomas Y. Crowell, 1977); and Who’s Afraid? And Other Strange Stories (Greenwillow Books, 1987). The stories appear in this collection in the same order they did in their original collections, except that “Mrs. Chamberlain’s Reunion” has been moved so that it could be included with the supernatural tales in “Part Two: The Haunting Stories,” and “Black Eyes” and “Who’s Afraid?” have been moved so that they could be included with the reality-based tales in “Part One:
The Stories.”
Familiar and Haunting: Collected Stories
Text copyright 1959, 1967, 1969,1972, 1976, 1977, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1986, 1989, 2000 by Philippa Pearce
Collection copyright © 2002 by Philippa Pearce
Pages 391—392 constitute an extension of the copyright page.
The right of Philippa Pearce to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by her.
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
EPub Edition © SEPTEMBER 2010 ISBN: 978-0-062-04432-7
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Pearce, Philippa.
Familiar and haunting : collected stories / by Philippa Pearce.
p. cm.
“Greenwillow Books.”
Summary: A collection of thirty-seven stories previously published in magazines or books, including tales of animals, ghosts, and everyday life.
ISBN 0-06-623964-8 (trade). ISBN 0-06-623965-6 (lib. bdg.)
1. Children’s stories, English. [1. Short stories.] 1. Title.
PZ7.P3145 Co 2002 [Fic]-dc21 2001040400
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 FIRST EDITION
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