Magic or Not?

by Edward Eager

  "Open the other secret drawer," said the voice. "Read what you will find and see if it merits the description."

  The four children ran to the second desk. There was no trouble finding the secret drawer this time, for they all knew where it should be and it opened easily at the first touch. There was a paper inside with four names on it, James and Laura and Lydia and Kip, in the same faded copperplate handwriting as in the Friendship's Garland poem. James took up the paper, but before he could open it, something made them all turn again toward the stairway.

  The figure was gone.

  The four children (and Gordy) rushed to the foot of the stairs. They were in time to see a curious thing.

  In the faint glimmer of moonlight they could just make out the dim figure of the lady climbing the stair. And as she neared the top, another identical figure appeared, moving toward her. For an instant the two ghostly forms seemed to merge. Then all was blackness.

  "Mehitabel Anne forgave her," breathed Laura.

  No one ventured a foot on the stair. All five, even Gordy, knew when a thing was finished and when not to inquire further.

  Laura and Lydia and James and Kip moved back to the brightest patch of moonlight. James opened the folded paper.

  "Wasn't it smart of the magic to figure out what our heart's desire really was?" said James next afternoon, as the four children and Gordy were assembled in the frontyard of the red house. "And here all along I thought what I wanted was a tape recorder."

  "I thought I wanted a course at the Art Students League," said Lydia. "But I guess that can come later. What we did get is dandy for now."

  "The house in the woods to belong to the four of us forever, for our very own," breathed Laura as though she still couldn't believe it and had to keep repeating it to remind herself. "Who could ask for anything more?"

  "If the magic starts up again, it can be our secret witch's hut where we do our good-turn sorcery," said Lydia.

  "And if it doesn't, it'll make a dandy clubhouse," said James.

  Kip hadn't said anything. "What's the matter?"

  Lydia asked him. "Wasn't it your heart's desire, too?"

  "Oh, sure," said Kip. "I guess it'd be just about anybody's." But he seemed pensive.

  "The most wonderful thing," said Laura, "is that money that was jammed in the drawer of the other desk all these years. That money that Anne Mehitabel took away with her, all that long time ago."

  "She certainly went the long way round, returning it," said James.

  "But it worked out just in time," said Laura, gloating over the happy ending. "Now Miss Isabella's the last surviving member of the family and it'll all come to her and she'll never have to worry anymore."

  "I didn't think she'd have to, anyway," said Lydia. "I thought she'd prob'ly marry Mr. Hiram Bundy any day now and live in the lap of luxury."

  "I don't think she wants to," said Laura. "I don't think he does, either. I think they'd both rather go on the way they are, with him coming to tea and her bossing him around. I think they're set in their ways. And now they can stay set."

  "The only thing that bothers me," said James, "is about the heart's desire thing. The paper said the house in the woods belongs to us now, but how could the magic go giving things away like that? There're laws about property!"

  Kip stood up. "I know," he said. "That's it. That worried me, too. That's why I went to Town Hall this morning and looked up the deed."

  "Well?" said Laura.

  "Well," said Kip, almost unwillingly, "it used to belong to the King family, way back. That part of it's fine."

  "Sure," said Lydia. "That's prob'ly how the desk happened to be there in the first place."

  "All right," said Kip, "but it's been sold a lot of times since. And you know who owns it now? The lost heir's father!" He let this sink in.

  "You mean...?" began Laura, and stopped.

  "He could have been there that first day," said James, "inspecting his property."

  "He's prob'ly thé one who left that New York Times," said Lydia. "He prob'ly heard us come in, and everything we said."

  Kip nodded. "And you know what? I found out all about him. That wife of his is an actress."

  "She is?" said Laura, as a dread possibility occurred to all.

  "And you know what else?" went on Kip. "I biked over there this morning and looked. There's a full-length mirror at the top of those stairs!"

  "You mean it was all just somebody playing a part?" said James. "You mean it was all done with mirrors, there at the end? What would be the point?"

  "Humoring the dear little children with their magic games!" said Kip bitterly.

  "But she never even seemed to like us," wailed Laura. "She wouldn't be bothered, doing all that!"

  "Imagine learning all those lines!" said Lydia.

  "She'd have done it if he told her to," said Kip.

  "But that would mean..." said James. He stopped at the thought of all that it would mean.

  "Start figuring from the beginning," said Kip. "That's what I did. Say the heir's father was in the house somewhere and heard us. He knew we thought the first desk was magic."

  "But nobody could have known we'd find the second desk at the auction," said Laura.

  "He might have," said Kip unhappily, and yet seeming to enjoy it, too, in a way. "He might have stopped at the auction to look around, just the way we did. And then he saw the desk and realized it was like the other one, and that gave him the idea."

  "Then he'd have to have written that poem," said Laura, "and put it in the desk right there."

  "Or—no! You know what I think?" said James excitedly. "I don't think that poem was even in the desk then!" He turned on Gordy. "We didn't see it till later, at your house, and then it was sticking right out! Did the heir's father come to your house that day?"

  Gordy's face was toothily honest as he shook his head solemnly. "No, we don't even know him. Nobody came."

  Lydia was staring at Gordy now. "You," she breathed. "You were there with that desk the whole afternoon! While we waited and waited! No wonder it took so long! You could have been making up that poem then!"

  "Me?" said Gordy, his voice going up high and bleating. "Whaddaya think I am? I couldn't even rhyme two lines!"

  "Then your mother..." began Lydia. Then even she broke off. The thought of Mrs. Gordon T. Witherspoon's going to the effort of getting old yellowed paper and faded ink and making up a poem and writing it out in imitation copperplate handwriting, for the benefit of any child but her own, seemed too absurd to contemplate.

  "Why, everybody would have had to be in on it, when you come to think," said Laura. "Our parents and everybody! Otherwise, how could anyone be sure we'd stop at the auction and see the other desk?"

  "Start at the beginning again," said James. "The heir's father could have been in the house in the woods that day. Maybe he wanted to give us more of a reward, besides the watches. He knew about the magic. He could have told our parents and Mrs. Witherspoon and everybody! Maybe even the auctioneer! He could have had both desks and put the other one in the auction just so we'd see it!"

  "Don't!" wailed Laura. "I don't want to hear about it. And even if all that were true, what about Miss King's money? And Anne Mehitabel?"

  "That's if there ever was an Anne Mehitabel," said Lydia.

  "Well, yes, there was," admitted Kip, "and a Mehitabel Anne, too. I looked them up in the town records, too."

  "Well, then?" said Laura. "Nobody could have arranged all that."

  "That old, old-looking money," said Lydia.

  "There're ways of making money look old," said James. "Miss Isabella's a deserving case. Everybody's been wondering how to take care of her. If Kip could look up old Mehitabels in the town records, so could anyone else. The whole town might have clubbed together!"

  "Mr. Hiram Bundy," said Kip.

  "Probably the Chamber of Commerce," said Lydia bitterly.

  "Why," said Laura, "it'd have to have been the biggest conspiracy since
Aaron Burr!" Then her square jaw suddenly looked even squarer and she shook her head. "No," she said. "No, it's too much. And anyway, what about the good deeds all summer? And the wishes that worked out? They were magic all right. And if one part was magic, it stands to reason the whole thing must have been. And that's what I'm going to believe."

  James's face brightened. "Besides," he said, "suppose it was a conspiracy. Think of all those people who didn't even know each other. It'd take magic to make them all get together and work out a thing like that in the first place!"

  There was a pause, as the good sense of this sank in. Kip's troubled frown smoothed itself out. Laura relaxed. Lydia began to smile.

  "Well, magic or not," she said, "it's been a wonderful summer."

  "It certainly has," said Kip.

  "I didn't know I could have a good time like this," said Gordy rather shyly, as though he didn't want to push himself forward but he had to speak out.

  "Oh, nonsense," said Laura idly. "You must have had lots of good times and lots of friends, at all those different schools you've gone to."

  She was sorry afterwards she'd said it, for a peculiar expression came over Gordy's face. He looked away and dug a bare toe in the earth. Then he looked back at her. "Oh, not so many," he said.

  There was another silence.

  "I wonder if the well's still magic," said Lydia.

  "No," said Laura, "it isn't. I tried this morning. It was a good turn, too. I was brushing Deborah's hair and I wished she'd be cured of all those cowlicks. But it was snarlier than ever."

  "Oh well," said James, "maybe the pump just isn't primed enough yet. Maybe it'll decide to renew itself some other day. Right now I'm willing to take time out." He yawned and stretched out on the grass in the sun.

  Everyone else felt the same, contented and lazy and willing to lie back and rest up from the magic for a long time, maybe even till next summer.

  Then suddenly Lydia sat up indignantly.

  "I just thought," she said. "Gordy! You should have had a wish last night, too, with the rest of us! You didn't get any heart's desire at all!"

  The same peculiar expression came over Gordy's face. He looked away and dug his toe into the earth again. Then he beamed around at them all toothily (and lovingly).

  "I guess I already had it," he said.

  About the author

  Edward Eager (1911–1964) worked primarily as a playwright and lyricist. It wasn't until 1951, while searching for books to read to his young son, Fritz, that he began writing children's stories. In each of his books he carefully acknowledges his indebtedness to E. Nesbit, whom he considered the best children's writer of all time—"so that any child who likes my books and doesn't know hers may be led back to the master of us all."