Nancy and Plum

by Betty Macdonald

  Then Mr. Campbell and Miss Warren came in and the phone rang and it was Miss Waverly.

  Miss Appleby said, “Peggy Waverly, get in your car and come over here to the library right away. It’s terribly important and too long to discuss on the phone.”

  Miss Waverly said, “But I’m all packed to leave for Florida.”

  And Miss Appleby said, “This is right on your way and it’s an opportunity you wouldn’t miss for the world.”

  She hung up the phone, turned to the Campbells and said, “Now you run along home and don’t worry. Everything will be all right and Nancy and Plum won’t have to stay at Mrs. Monday’s. You’d better go home and bake a big chicken pie, Mary Ann, because I have a hunch Peggy, Mr. Remson, Nancy and Plum and I will all be there for supper.”

  Mrs. Campbell took out her handkerchief, dabbed at the corners of her eyes and said, “I couldn’t ever make a chicken pie as good as the one Nancy made.”

  Miss Appleby said, “I’m glad to know that Nancy’s such a good cook, but I’ll take a chance on supper at your house, any day.”

  When they got in the car, Mrs. Campbell said, “I want to stop at Gatsby’s department store a minute. Those children can’t sleep in your nightshirts forever and I’m going to get them each a pair of shoes.”

  “How can you get them shoes without trying them on?” Mr. Campbell asked.

  “This way,” Mrs. Campbell said, reaching in her purse and taking out the two cardboard insoles. “I drew around their bare feet to make these,” she said. “And I’m going to get them those pretty colored tennis shoes. Bright red for Plum and blue for Nancy. I’m going to buy them some new blue jeans and T-shirts, too,” she added defiantly.

  Mr. Campbell said, “Anything you get Nancy and Plum is all right with me. Got enough money?”

  “Plenty,” said Mrs. Campbell through set lips.

  “Well then,” said Mr. Campbell, “I’ll pick you up here in about half an hour.”

  When Mr. Campbell stopped for Mrs. Campbell, she was laden with packages and he sheepishly admitted that he had done a little shopping, too.

  He said, “I looked in those bundles of ‘treasures’ as they called them, and, Mary Ann, those kids don’t have anything. A string of broken beads, a dried june bug, a snake’s skin and some rocks full of fool’s gold is all Plum had.”

  Mrs. Campbell said, “And Nancy had a little china doll with the head off, some paper dolls cut out of a magazine and a little locket with a broken chain.”

  Mr. Campbell said, “Well, I bought Plum a pocketknife. A very good one with two blades, a screw driver, can opener, nail file, scissors and an awl in it.”

  Mrs. Campbell said, “A knife, Angus? I certainly hope she won’t hurt herself.”

  Mr. Campbell said, “Plum won’t hurt herself. You don’t need to worry about her.”

  “What did you get Nancy?” Mrs. Campbell asked.

  “A little sewing box,” Mr. Campbell said. “It’s green leather and it has scissors, a thimble, needles, pins, a tape measure and little spools of different colored thread. Do you think she’ll like that?”

  “Well, I should say so,” Mrs. Campbell said, “I’d like one myself.”

  They both laughed. Then Mrs. Campbell said, “I bought them pajamas, bedroom slippers, tennis shoes, blue jeans and T-shirts.”

  Mr. Campbell said, “I got a couple of other little things, too. Straw farmer hats and some bubble bath.”

  “Oh, Angus,” Mrs. Campbell said. “Bubble bath! I know they’ll love that.”

  By five o’clock, Mrs. Campbell had the chicken pie in baking, the table set, the salad made and she was frosting a huge coconut cake. Mr. Campbell had the barn swept, the milk-room floor scrubbed and big welcome wreaths of flowers ready to slip over the heads of Nellie, Herbert, Wild Rose and Susie as soon as he heard the car.

  Then came six o’clock. Mrs. Campbell took the chicken pie out of the oven, wrapped a damp tea towel around the salad and put her big yellow mixing bowl over the coconut cake. Mr. Campbell separated the milk, fed the calves and kept his eye peeled on the road in from the highway.

  Then seven o’clock came. Mrs. Campbell put the chicken pie back in the oven, peered anxiously at the salad and opened the canned peaches. Mr. Campbell, who by this time had changed his clothes and was all washed and combed, lit his pipe and went out on the back porch.

  Then at last, far down the road, appeared the lights of a car, Sandy began to bark and Mr. Campbell called, “Mary Ann, Mary Ann, they’re coming.”

  Mrs. Campbell smoothed her hair down with her hands, hung her apron behind the stove, checked the floor to be sure there wasn’t a speck or a crumb on it and went out on the porch. Mr. Campbell put his arm around her and said, “I’m praying, too, honey.”

  Slowly the car crawled up the road. Mrs. Campbell’s heart pounded thump, thump, thump and her mouth was so dry she couldn’t swallow.

  She said, “It’s going to be awfully hard for me to be nice to that Mr. Remson.”

  He said, “Oh, that won’t be hard once we have Nancy and Plum. Just remember that he’s an old bachelor and doesn’t know a thing about children.”

  She said, “But I keep thinking of him turning those babies over to that Mrs. Monday.”

  He said, “Well, at least it hasn’t hurt them any. They are the prettiest, smartest, most well-behaved children I’ve ever seen.”

  She said, “That anybody has ever seen.”

  Then the car was at the door and Nancy and Plum were on the porch hugging and kissing the Campbells and shouting, “We’re back. We’re back!”

  Mr. Remson looked pretty sheepish as he waddled up the steps and shook hands with the Campbells. He said, “That woman fooled me completely. Terrible creature. When we went up to get Nancy and Pamela, we found them locked in the attic and they haven’t had a morsel of food since they left here.”

  Miss Waverly said, “Speaking of food, let me help you, Mary Ann. Where’s an apron?”

  Mrs. Campbell said, “Everything’s ready. I baked you another chicken pie, Plum.”

  Plum said, “Oh, boy,” and gave Mrs. Campbell another hug.

  Nancy said, “Is there anything I can do to help?” Mrs. Campbell thought she sounded a little wistful, so she said, “Do you know what Angus said today when I told him I was going to bake a chicken pie? He said, ‘It’s going to be pretty hard to eat your cooking now that I’ve tasted Nancy’s.’ ”

  Nancy said, “Oh, Uncle Angus, you shouldn’t talk like that!” But she looked very pleased.

  Then they were all sitting at the kitchen table, even Danby, the chauffeur, eating chicken pie, hot biscuits, spring salad, pickled beets, coconut cake and canned peaches.

  When Uncle John passed his plate for a third helping of chicken pie, Plum nudged Nancy and whispered, “I bet he’d like to live here, too.”

  After supper, while the grown people held a conference in the parlor, Nancy and Plum surprised Mrs. Campbell by washing the dishes and tidying up the kitchen. Nancy was just sweeping up the crumbs while Plum held the dustpan, when Mrs. Campbell came out to get a glass of water for Uncle John. She told the girls they shouldn’t have bothered, kissed them and told them there were a few little surprises for them up on their bed.

  They came down in a few minutes in their new blue jeans, T-shirts and tennis shoes, wearing their straw farmer hats, carrying the knife and the sewing box. The conference in the parlor was just breaking up and Miss Waverly was telling Uncle John that she thought that prosecuting Mrs. Monday would be far too upsetting to the children. In her opinion the best thing to do was give Mrs. Monday a warning and then to help the children forget all about her and to start in fresh at the Campbells’.

  Miss Appleby said that she thought that as long as the Campbells would not accept payment for Nancy and Plum’s board, she thought Uncle John should put the money in the bank for their college education. She said, “You can send them clothes and books, the expensive toys such as sleds and bicy
cles, pay their dentist bills and give them music and dancing lessons.”

  Uncle John said, “Very well. Just send me a list of what you need and I’ll send a check.”

  Plum said, “We don’t need anything. Look at us. New jeanies, new shirts and new shoes!”

  She lifted up her left foot and kissed her new red tennis shoe.

  13

  “Merry Christmas, Everybody in the Whole World!”

  IT WAS CHRISTMAS EVE. Big snowflakes fluttered slowly through the air like white feathers and made all of Heavenly Valley smooth and white and quiet and beautiful.

  Tall fir trees stood up to their knees in the snow and their outstretched hands were heaped with it. Those that were bare of leaves wore soft white fur on their scrawny, reaching arms and all the stumps and low bushes had been turned into fat white cupcakes.

  Mrs. Campbell sat in the rocking chair by the stove in the kitchen putting the finishing touches on Plum’s angel costume. Nancy’s was on the ironing board ready to be pressed. As Mrs. Campbell worked, she hummed and rocked and took care that Penny’s three kittens, who were playing around her feet, didn’t get under the rockers.

  Mr. Campbell came up on the back porch, stamped the snow off his boots, took off his cap and banged it against the house, slipped off his gloves and slapped them together, then took the broom and swept off the top of his boots and his knees. He came into the warm kitchen, hung his jacket, cap and mittens behind the stove and said to Mrs. Campbell, “Well, that’s a load off my mind. Plum’s Christmas present got here right on schedule. A beautiful little black filly with a white star on her forehead. I named her Noel. Nellie is so proud she is ready to bust.”

  Mrs. Campbell said, “Oh, Angus, how wonderful! Born Christmas Eve and named Noel. Plum will love that and just think, a horse of her very own. Well, I have Nancy’s present all wrapped. I thought for a while I’d never finish ironing those little clothes. I certainly hope that I’m not just imagining that she will like the lady doll and trunk of clothes that my grandmother had when she was a little girl. The doll is still very pretty with real hair, eyelashes and eyebrows but the clothes are so old-fashioned. Hoop skirts and so many petticoats.”

  Mr. Campbell said, “You know Nancy will like that doll better than anything in the whole world. She’ll like it because it is old-fashioned and because it has a trunk full of clothes.”

  Mrs. Campbell said, “Well, I certainly hope so. My heavens, that doll has everything. Little fans, necklaces, capes, bonnets, mitts, parasols and dozens of petticoats and dresses. And that trunk is almost full size. Don’t you think the girls should be back by now?”

  Mr. Campbell said, “Oh, they’ll be along in a minute. Cutting your first Christmas tree is a very important job and takes lots of picking and choosing. What are you making there?”

  Mrs. Campbell said, “Plum’s angel costume for the program at the schoolhouse. Nancy’s is all finished. See!” She held up the long white satin dress and stretched out the gauzy wings.

  Mr. Campbell said, “Gosh, Mary Ann, that’s beautiful.” He fingered the satin and said, “Where did you ever get such fine goods?”

  Mrs. Campbell snapped off a thread between her teeth and said, “My wedding dress, that’s where. For weeks those children have been talking about the program and their angel costumes and for weeks I’ve been wracking my brain trying to figure out what to make them out of. Then day before yesterday, I was up in the attic rummaging around in the old trunks and I came across my wedding dress, all wrapped in tissue paper and certainly as useless as a white elephant. I took it out and looked at it and I confess, Angus, I got very sentimental thinking about that day in June fifteen years ago. Then I said to myself, ‘Listen, Mary Ann Campbell, one wedding is all you’re ever going to have, and what earthly use to you is all that white satin and veiling?’ Right then and there I knew what I was going to do.”

  Mr. Campbell leaned down and kissed her cheek and said, “I think angel costumes are the best use for your wedding dress I’ve ever heard of. What bothers me, Mary Ann, is the fact that this will be Nancy and Plum’s first Christmas and I’m afraid we haven’t enough for them. They know we don’t have much money but after all they are only children and undoubtedly expect all kinds of miracles.”

  Mrs. Campbell said, “I’ve thought of the same thing a million times, but I have decided that to Nancy and Plum the most wonderful thing of all is that they have a home and a family on Christmas. Stuffing the turkey, getting and trimming their own Christmas tree, going to the school program in the sleigh, these angel costumes, having Old Tom and Miss Waverly for Christmas dinner, the presents they had Uncle John buy for the other children at Mrs. Monday’s, are the important things to those children. Not expensive gifts. Anyway, I sent away and got them each a pair of party shoes and I have made them each a new dress. Plum’s is cherry-red velveteen and Nancy’s is sky blue. I also got plenty of little things for their stockings.”

  Mr. Campbell said, “So did I.”

  There was a loud knocking on the door. Thinking it was the children, Mrs. Campbell quickly gathered up the angel costumes and hid them under her apron. Mr. Campbell opened the door. It wasn’t Nancy and Plum. It was Danby, Uncle John’s chauffeur, standing on the porch beside two beautiful sleds and a huge box.

  “Come in, come in,” Mrs. Campbell said. But Danby said no, he’d left his car down the road and he had a big load of packages to deliver to Mrs. Monday’s.

  “Oh, Danby,” said Aunt Mary Ann. “Did Mr. Remson get everything on the list?”

  “Got the list right here,” said Danby, pulling off one of his heavy woolen gloves with his teeth, and fumbling in his inside pocket. When he found it he read it off to Mrs. Campbell—

  Eunice—large girl doll—blond curls—blue eyes—real eyelashes and eyebrows.

  blue coat and bonnet with fur.

  nightgown.

  bathrobe, bedroom slippers.

  4 school dresses.

  2 pinafores.

  2 party dresses.

  ski suit.

  skis.

  roller-skating costume.

  roller skates.

  ice-skating costume.

  ice skates.

  Girl Scout uniform.

  Camp Fire Girl uniform.

  ballet dress.

  toe shoes.

  cowgirl set.

  2 sweaters.

  play coat.

  jeans.

  plaid shirt.

  Allan—electric train—large size with lots of tunnels—signals—stations—switches.

  Todd—same.

  David—same.

  Tommy—cowboy suit.

  two-gun holster with guns.

  lariat.

  real cowboy boots.

  hat.

  pocketknife with five blades.

  Mary—cowgirl outfit.

  two-gun holster with guns.

  lariat.

  real cowboy boots.

  hat.

  pocketknife with five blades.

  Sally—same.

  Evangeline—same.

  The rest of the little boys had sleds and new mittens, a cap and a sweater and all the children big candy canes—books—large boxes of crayons and coloring books.

  When Danby finished, the Campbells said, “Oh, Danby, how wonderful! What a thrilling Christmas this will be for those poor little souls. Imagine that poor little David getting nothing but two suits of long underwear last Christmas.”

  Danby said, “Mr. Remson told me to deliver the boxes to Old Tom and have him distribute the gifts. They are all wrapped real fancy.”

  “How wonderful,” said Mrs. Campbell.

  “All the credit goes to Nancy and Plum,” Mr. Campbell said. “If they weren’t such unselfish children they could have had all that money spent on presents for them.”

  “Oh,” said Danby, “their uncle said that he appreciated their unselfishness but he just sent along these sleds and this box for them. Well, I must
get along. Mr. Remson told me to give any of the kids that wanted, and were going home, a ride to the city.”

  “How nice,” said Mrs. Campbell, “and how much pleasanter than riding on the train with Mrs. Monday and that horrid little Marybelle. Well, a merry, merry Christmas to you, Danby, and thank you so much for driving way out here in the snow.”

  “ ’Twasn’t anything,” Danby said. “Merry Christmas to you all, too,” he called as he hurried down the steps and disappeared into the snowstorm.

  “Just wait until Nancy and Plum hear that Uncle John got everything on their list. They’ll be the happiest children in Heavenly Valley. Now, Angus, you hurry and put on your jacket and take those sleds down to the barn and hide them. I’ll just see what’s in this other box.”

  Mr. Campbell slipped on his jacket, grabbed up the sleds and ran down to the barn. As he opened the door, he could hear Nancy and Plum’s voices down the lane.

  Mrs. Campbell spread newspapers on the floor, brought in the huge box and cut the strings. As she raised the lid, yards and yards of white tissue paper fell to the floor. Carefully she reached in and lifted out first a beautiful little dark green coat trimmed with gray squirrel, a darling little hat and a gray squirrel muff. “For my Nancy,” she said, her eyes bright with happiness.

  Then a beautiful little bright red coat trimmed with gray squirrel, a darling little hat and a gray squirrel muff. “For my Plum,” Mrs. Campbell said, a smile lighting up her whole face.

  Then black patent-leather party shoes, silk socks, heaps of lacy underwear and two party dresses, with the fullest, whirliest skirts ever made. Dark green taffeta for Nancy, dark blue taffeta for Plum.

  There were also two packages for Old Tom, one a very large box, two beautifully wrapped silver and green packages for Miss Waverly and, to Aunt Mary Ann’s astonishment, a small box marked “Mrs. Campbell from a very grateful Mr. Remson” and a small box marked “Mr. Campbell from a very grateful Mr. Remson.”

  “My goodness, my goodness, what a Christmas this is going to be,” she said. Then hearing Nancy and Plum on the back porch, she grabbed up the packages for Old Tom, Miss Waverly, Angus and herself and stuffed them in the front hall coat closet; snatched up all the clothes, ran upstairs and laid them out on the girls’ bed.