by Janet Lunn
“OK,” he shouted again and soon his head appeared above the floor from the stairwell. “What do you want?”
“We can’t have supper. If I give you some money, will you get us a hot dog or something?”
“Why can’t you?”
“Oh never mind. Will you get the things?”
“If you tell me first.”
“Oh, OK. The dog or someone knocked over all Mama’s stuff on her dressing table and she thinks it’s us – and it isn’t – but she won’t let us have any supper. So here’s a quarter. You could get a hot dog or something and we could split it.”
“You twins …”
“You’re a good kid, Joe,” Elizabeth said quickly. “And we’ll time your swimming if you go.”
Joe went. Jane watched out the window and a few minutes later Claverhouse – or Snowball – came bouncing along beside Joe as he whistled his way up the street.
“Papa’s right,” Jane said, “the dog is getting bigger and bigger. I wonder how big he’ll be when he’s finished?”
“Don’t know.” Elizabeth was under the bed searching for a piece of chocolate bar she thought she might have left there.
“Look at that boat. Oh Elizabeth, come look. It’s terrific – just like the old-fashioned sailing ships.”
“Mhm,” Elizabeth came up regretfully from under her bed where she had found no chocolate. “I guess that’s the same one I saw the other night. It’s gorgeous. I’m hungry.”
It wasn’t more than five minutes before Joe’s whistling came back down the street.
“I wonder what he’s got?” said Elizabeth hopefully. There’s much more than a hot dog or a chocolate bar in that big bag.
“I guess,” said Jane, “he had to shop for Mama.”
But when Joe appeared a few moments later, he still had the same big bag with him.
“Pat had some dough,” he explained with a grin, “and I had an extra dime, so we got some more,” and he pulled out of the bag, like a magician pulling rabbits from a high hat, potato chips, four hot dogs, two coconut cakes wrapped in cellophane and two bottles of orange soda pop.
“Yippee,” cried Jane. “Oh Joe you’re great!”
“I’ll give you a kiss,” offered Elizabeth, but Joe said no thanks and retreated hastily down the stairwell.
Stuffing themselves with hot dogs and potato chips the twins returned to the doll. Jane said maybe they ought to leave it alone for a few days, but Elizabeth was determined to go back downtown the next day with Amelia and look again for the house.
“OK, then,” said Jane, “we’ll make a list.”
“Make a list?”
“The way detectives do in detective books – it’s sort of a detectivy thing anyway, isn’t it? I mean, we have some clues and we have to find a missing thing.”
Elizabeth put down the coconut cakes, still unwrapped, and looked at her sister suspiciously, “You mean organize?” she accused. “Oh no, no lists. We’ll just go back downtown with the doll and just let her show us the way.”
“You mean like one of those people looking for well water with a stick?” Jane was incredulous.
“I suppose, sort of.”
Jane remembered again why it was she was looking for the house in the first place and said nothing. She picked up the coconut cakes and began to take off the cellophane.
It was at this moment Mama called from downstairs.
“I’ve been thinking it over,” she said when they stood before her in the kitchen. “I think perhaps I was a little harsh with you. I suppose it could have been the puppy in my dressing table. In any case I feel I should take your word for it. You may have your supper.”
For a moment neither girl said anything. Then Jane said with a gulp, “Thank you,” and together they meekly followed their mother into the dining room.
“It’s hot dogs,” said Joe gleefully passing them the platter, “and potato chips.”
Patrick said nothing but the twins could see by his eyes that he thought it was just as funny as Joe did.
“What’s wrong?” asked Mama, looking from one to the other of them.
“Nothing,” said Joe, looking hard at William and biting into his hot dog. No one else said anything.
“Aren’t you going to eat?” asked Papa in a tone that said clearly, no sulks, and the twins valiantly ate one hot dog, a small dish of coleslaw, and three potato chips each. At least that’s what it looked like. Jane fed all of hers to the dog, and Elizabeth got rid of most of hers the same way until Papa caught the dog with the end of it, accused him of having stolen it, and insisted on getting Elizabeth another one.
“That dog,” he said, giving the animal a hard look, “seems bigger and bigger to me. Patrick,” he asked, “how old is the dog?”
“Well,” said Pat, and you could see he was uncomfortable. For the first time since the dog had come into the family, Papa was giving it his full attention (what Joe called the treatment).
“I don’t know a great deal about dogs,” Papa continued, not waiting for Pat’s reply, “but I have always believed that full-grown dogs do not run about as much as this one – and another thing,” he looked suspiciously from Patrick to the dog and back again, “the only dog I’ve ever encountered with hair like that, growing right down into its eyes, was an English sheep dog.”
“Sheep dog,” gasped Mama. Over on the window seat Marble sat up. “But sheep dogs grow as big as horses!”
“Yes,” said Papa ominously, “they do. Well Patrick?” Everyone looked at Pat.
“Yes,” said Patrick, “they do.”
“Is this dog going to be a sheep dog when it’s fully grown?” Papa demanded.
“Well,” Pat said, “I guess … I guess … maybe it will be….”
“What do you mean, you guess? Is it a sheep dog now?”
“Well, yes.”
“I thought as much. Your mother is right. Do you know how big sheep dogs are when they’re full-grown?”
“Yes.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s a foolish question since you spend more of your time with dogs than you do with people. I’m sure you must be aware of the relative sizes of dogs. A horse. A horse.” Papa paused. Nobody spoke. He went on, “The last sheep dog I had any acquaintance with belonged to a farmer who had the next farm to my grandfather. He had sheep too,” added Papa meditatively. “That sheep dog used to pull the pigs around in a cart when my sister Dora put them there and when he got into the rose garden, my grandfather … oh, he was a VERY large dog….” Papa’s voice trailed off for a moment into memory.
“We do have the coach house in the back,” Patrick offered weakly when he thought it was safe to speak.
The dog, who may or may not have realized he was being discussed in such a manner that his whole future might depend on the conversation, wandered over to the window seat, put out his tongue, and licked Marble a lick that covered her entire face.
Marble – to whom such a thing had never before happened – opened her eyes in great surprise, arched her back, flattened it again, and began to wash the dog’s ears.
“Well,” said Papa, after a long pause, “I guess that settles it. If those two creatures can get along in this house without fighting – and they, heaven knows, are the only ones who can,” he looked pointedly at the twins, “then the dog stays. You may call him Horse.” Papa got up and left the dining room.
More House Hunting – And Two Roses
For the next few days Jane and Elizabeth went on fifteen different streetcar rides and walked, it seemed, miles and miles of city streets, looking for an old red brick house with a double rose pattern in its trim. They saw hundreds of red brick houses with the now familiar peak of carved wood – some crumbled and half fallen in, some with shops or laundries built into their fronts, some in good repair with their white wood painted and bright, some that looked as though they might once have been red brick but now painted yellow or gray and made fresh and handsome with flowers in their window boxes. Not o
ne of all those hundreds was the house they were looking for. Amelia’s house. Hester’s house.
The days were getting hot with cloudless skies and pavements like hot griddle pans. Jane was tired of walking, tired of looking for a house she was sure they wouldn’t find. She never said so, but oh, how she wanted to be spending those days on the sand and in the water. Elizabeth’s determination never lagged. She held the doll tightly in her hand all the time they searched and, unlike Jane, who systematically examined the houses they passed for size, shape, and roses in their peaks, Elizabeth depended entirely on the feelings she had toward them – she counted on Amelia to let her know. But after four days of steady hunting, even she was beginning to get discouraged when her only real feeling of finding something turned out to be the back of an old theater, in no way at all resembling the little brick house.
Around noon on the fifth day out, very hot, very tired, with fifteen cents in their combined pockets, the twins were ready to go home. They were walking along College Street past the Central Library, heads down, not saying anything, when suddenly they bumped into their father hurrying in the opposite direction.
Papa was on his way to have lunch and he took them with him. Settled comfortably around the table in the little restaurant, hamburgers and milkshakes in front of them, the twins told Papa something of the hunt they were on. Neither was sure how much to tell or how to tell it, but they both thought maybe Papa could help.
“You see,” Elizabeth explained, “we found this old doll.” She showed Papa the doll and he examined it carefully.
“That is old,” he said, “and I should think fairly valuable. Where on earth did you find it?”
Jane told about the Antiques, Dolls Mended shop. Papa looked surprised.
“Well,” he said, “I could be wrong. If the woman in the antique shop sold it to you for two dollars and fifty-five cents it can’t be too valuable. She must know her business. Maybe it’s a later copy of an old doll that’s been badly treated. Still, I would have sworn …” He picked up the doll again. “Hm, in any case,” he handed it back to Elizabeth with a smile, “that’s not really your problem, is it?”
Elizabeth thought hard for a minute, sucking on her milkshake.
“You see,” she said carefully, “we got interested in the doll and we wanted to know about Toronto and houses and things at the time the doll was new. You know, we sort of wanted to dress it up new (“As if it were new, or as it was when it was new,” corrected Papa.) as it was when it was new,” Elizabeth obliged, “and sort of find out something about the times – the olden times, I mean.”
“We found it interesting,” Jane added self-consciously.
“So how do we do that?” Elizabeth looked guilelessly at her father.
“Well now,” Papa leaned back in his chair and took out his pipe, “you want to know something about old Toronto. I could sit here for hours and tell you things but maybe they wouldn’t be the things you’d like to hear, and I really haven’t the time, so perhaps you’d better start on a research project. Go to the library, go to the museum, ask for the information available about your subject. Then look around the city in the spots the books suggest and you’ll find many of the old houses still standing.” The twins didn’t have the courage to tell him they had already seen all too many.
“If you run into a snag,” Papa continued, “come back to me and I’ll help you with it. In the meanwhile, look things up, make notes, and gather all your information before you start looking again.”
“But that’s organizing,” said Elizabeth, outraged.
Papa laughed. “Organizing can be a good thing, Liza,” he said. “If you want to find out things you have to organize your material – sort out what you know before you can make any sense of it.”
Jane tried not to look smug.
“Come on. I have to go up to the museum myself. I’ll take you along and you can ask about clothes and houses there,” Papa offered.
The museum was almost as frustrating as their four-and-a-half day tramp had been. There were many dresses, many brooches like the one Hester wore in the dream, fashionable, said the labels, about 120 years ago. It was harder to tell about the doll’s clothes because hers were so badly worn, but it seemed that her dress, like Hester’s, was from the period of the 1840s.
“That’s something to know, anyhow,” Jane said encouragingly as they got off the subway from the museum and stood waiting for the Queen streetcar to take them home.
Elizabeth didn’t hear Jane. Jane had disappeared. The city had disappeared. She was standing in a field of tall grass, with cows grazing around her. There were children there, too, in dresses and pants like the clothes they had just seen in the museum. The summer wind was blowing high and everyone was running, laughing. She stooped to put down her doll to run with them. She opened her mouth to say, “Wait, I’m coming,” when she was pulled abruptly away. The children were gone. The field was gone. The only thing that looked the same was the heavy iron fence. Jane was pulling her arm. The streetcar was coming.
“Come on,” she said, “What’s the matter with you?” “Nothing.” Elizabeth wanted to think a little about what she’d seen before she told.
When they got home and Jane suggested once more, as a result of what Papa had said about research, that they make a list of the things they knew, Elizabeth didn’t argue. They sat down on the beach with a pencil and paper after they had had a swim and Jane wrote:
Things we know about Amelia:
She is old, about 120-150 years old.
“We don’t know that exactly,” interjected Elizabeth. “No,” answered Jane impatiently, “but we can start with that.”
2. She lived in a red brick house with a white peak and two roses in it.
3. Hester lived there too.
“We don’t know that for sure,” said Elizabeth. “Sure we do, what makes you say that?”
“I don’t know, I just feel that way.”
Jane kept her thoughts about that to herself.
4. Amelia came in a leather box, also old.
“Where is the box?” she asked, not looking up from her writing.
“Upstairs. I’ll get it.”
While Elizabeth was gone, Jane put down her pencil and looked longingly toward the lake. She wondered just how long she was going to be able to keep up the nonsense. Instead of feeling closer to Elizabeth she was finding her sister harder and harder to understand. Oh, well, she thought. It is an old doll and maybe we will find out some interesting things. Elizabeth came bounding out of the kitchen door, racing through the garden.
“Guess what?” she shouted as she ran. “Guess what? It’s roses. The box has two roses, look!” She threw herself down on the sand beside Jane and thrust the box under her sister’s eyes. There on the long catch of the leather box were two roses, side-by-side. Jane had been right. The flower petal designs on the peak of the brick house were roses, roses just like the ones on Amelia’s box.
Jane Is Frightened
The roses were a great shock to Jane. She was silent all evening. She let Elizabeth do all the talking. Excited talking. Insane talking. Talking about magic, about visiting back in time, about signs leading the way to fantastic discoveries and about mental telepathy. Jane hated it. It frightened her. What if Elizabeth was right? She had restless dreams all night, and first thing in the morning she poked her leg out of bed and gave her sister a shove with her toe.
Elizabeth humped over in her own bed. “Whmphmarr?” she asked into her pillow.
“Wake up.”
“Why?” Elizabeth rolled over, sat up, reached down, and touched her toes. She had once heard it made girls graceful so she had been doing it every morning for three years. With toes touched twice she slumped back in her bed.
“Why should I wake up?”
“I just wanted company,” Jane grinned as Elizabeth hurled her pillow across the space between the beds and hit her in the face. (They had had their bunk beds made into single beds when the
y moved into the tower room.)
“Liza,” Jane added seriously, “I have a feeling something not nice is going to happen. You know, sort of like having a test in school or going to the dentist or something. Do you feel that way, too?”
“No, but I know what your horrible feeling is all about. Willy Wallet is coming today.”
Jane groaned, “Oh, I’d forgotten all about that. Why did you have to remind me?” She got out of bed and walked over to the window.
“You asked,” answered Elizabeth cheerfully. “Are we going to the library this morning to look at some more houses?”
Jane didn’t want to. She wasn’t sure she wanted to find out anything more but, being Jane, she couldn’t leave it unfinished either.
“Yes,” she said, with a carefully repressed sigh, “we’ll go.”
Downstairs in the garden, Papa was having his after-breakfast coffee.
“How’s it going?” he asked. “How’s the history project?”
“Not too well,” Jane answered, then said quickly, “but we’re really finding out lots of things.”
“Does the library have books of families?” Elizabeth interrupted.
“Books of families?” Papa was puzzled.
“You know, books with names of people in old Toronto families?”
“You may have to go into the Canadian or the Ontario archives for that – those are the official records – but try the library certainly. Why do you want those? Are you going to write a story or something?” Papa smiled indulgently.
“Maybe,” Elizabeth said and was looking around for a way out of the discussion when Horse came bounding around the corner of the house and jumped into Papa’s lap, spilling the last of the coffee into the grass.
Papa leapt out of his chair, glaring at the dog. “No peace in this house at all,” he shouted, “no peace in this family, ever.” He stomped off toward the kitchen.
“Come on, Horse,” said Jane, “I’ll give you a ride,” and she coaxed him into William’s wagon and began to pull him round and round the garden while he barked and waggled with joy, until Mama came out of the kitchen to see what the noise was all about and Joe came around the corner followed by Willy Wallet.