Emily's Runaway Imagination (2 page)

Without thinking, Emily said politely–at
least she meant to speak politely, “No, it's Prince, Mr. Quock.” And the words were no sooner out of her mouth than she realized what a dreadful mistake she had made. Fong Quock had been trying to say Prince,
but he could not pronounce the
r
. She felt her cheeks grow hot. She would not have hurt the old man's feelings for anything in the world.

“Yes,” said Fong Quock, nodding as his wrinkled face crinkled with amusement. “Plince.”

Everyone in the post office laughed and so did Fong Quock. He threw back his head and laughed as if he thought the whole thing a huge joke. But Emily did not think it was funny, not one bit. She was so embarrassed and humiliated that she turned and fled.

Prince came padding after her. “What did you have to come tagging along for?” she asked, forgetting that she had been eager to share her feeling of adventure. From inside the post office she could hear people laughing–laughing at her.

Emily was not anxious to meet anyone
who had been in the post office, so she decided to pay a visit to Grandpa and Grandma Slater in their store until the coast was clear.

On the false front of Grandpa's store were the words
W. A. Slater, General Merchandise
. How Emily loved Grandpa's store! One side, Grandpa's side, was full of groceries–shelves of canned goods, bins of bulk foods to be weighed out on scales, a wheel of Tillamook cheese under an is-in-glass cover, a red coffee grinder, and a little chopper for cutting off plugs of chewing tobacco. Emily liked Grandma's side, the dry-goods side, even better. It was filled with bolts of dress goods, spools of ribbon, a revolving case of sewing thread, skeins of embroidery cotton. The back of the store was least interesting–just overalls and work shoes and a big drum of coal oil. One of the nicest things about the store was
that, although the Bartletts paid for everything they took, Emily was the only girl in town who was allowed to go behind the counters.

Grandpa was leaning over the counter figuring something on the back of an envelope, probably something called profit and loss. When Grandpa introduced Emily to someone he always said, “This is Emily. She's the only granddaughter I've got, but she's a humdinger.”

“Well hello, Emily,” he said, looking up from his envelope. “I'll pay you a nickel if you can sit still for five minutes.”

Emily smiled. This was an offer Grandpa made almost every time she came to the store and usually she sat on a chair for five minutes by the clock to earn the nickel. She was saving up her sitting-still nickels to buy Mama a rotary eggbeater, the kind that would beat eggs and whip cream when you turned
the handle around and around. This morning, however, she decided against earning a nickel and in favor of going upstairs to the rooms where Grandpa and Grandma lived. She would say hello to Grandma and avoid anyone who might be coming to the store from the post office.

Upstairs was the best part of all–Grandma's millinery room, where Grandma trimmed hats for the ladies of Pitchfork–and it was there that Emily found her grandmother, her mouth full of pins, trimming a white leg-horn hat with beautiful pink ribbon bows. Grandma nodded and smiled through her mouthful of pins. Dear gentle Grandma, who always smelled of violets.

Emily heard the merry ring of the cash register downstairs as Grandpa waited on his customers. To pass the time until they left she amused herself exploring the millinery room–the deep round boxes of untrimmed
hats, bolts of veiling, boxes of flowers. There were velvet violets for winter hats, garlands of daisies and poppies, bunches of hard red cherries that rattled when Emily picked them up, stiff little nosegays of forget-me-nots, even artificial wheat, although why anybody would want to trim a hat with anything so ordinary as wheat Emily could not understand. And the ostrich plumes! Each beautiful curling plume lay in its own question-mark-shaped compartment in a big box. Grandma had dozens of lovely plumes, which she said would surely come back in style. Grandma said if you kept a thing seven years, it was bound to come back in style.

At last Grandma took the pins out of her mouth. “How are you today, Emily,” she asked.

“Just fine, Grandma.” Emily stabbed a pincushion with a hatpin. “Grandma, do
you know maybe Pitchfork is going to have a library? Mama wrote a letter to the state library this morning and I mailed it.”

“Well now, wouldn't that be nice?” Grandma deftly twisted a length of ribbon into a crisp bow. “Other towns have libraries, I've heard. There's no reason why Pitchfork can't keep up with the times.”

“That is just what Mama said,” Emily told her grandmother. And then deciding that the coast must be clear by now, because the store was quiet, she added, “Good-bye, Grandma.”

Grandma smiled. “You didn't pay me a very long visit today.”

Emily did not want to tell Grandma that she was hiding from the people who had been in the post office. She said, “I'll be back soon.” Then she ran downstairs, where Grandpa was weighing out tea for a customer. “Good-bye, Grandpa,” she said.

Grandpa paused with his hand above the scales and looked at Emily with what she always thought of as his twinkly look. “Good-bye, Emily,” he said. “You and Plince come again soon.”

Emily felt herself blush once more. “Now Grandpa, you stop it,” she said, and hurried out of the store with Prince trotting after her. So someone had already told Grandpa about her mistake! Well, she might have known.

Emily soon discovered that Grandpa was not the only person who had been told. Everyone Emily met on the street said, “Good morning, Emily. Hello there, Plince”–George A. Barbee, who had the longest gray beard in Pitchfork; Mrs. Warty Thompson, who played the piano at the picture show on Saturday night; the man who ran the feed store–everybody. Emily was so embarrassed that she hurried on
without even stopping to spread the glad tidings about the important letter she had just mailed.

She decided to go home the long way around, because she could not face passing Fong Quock's house. She did not want to run into him again for a long, long time, not until everyone in Pitchfork had stopped laughing at her thoughtless mistake. She went down a side street past the garage and the warehouse full of farm machinery for sale, and turned onto Locust Street at the corner by the blacksmith shop.

Emily always took pains to speak nicely to the blacksmith since that Friday afternoon at school when her class, which always studied the poets during the last hour of the school week, read
The Village Blacksmith
by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, a poet with a long gray beard like George A. Barbee's. In the poem were the lines:

After that day any boy who passed the blacksmith shop always yelled:

This made Emily feel so sorry for Mr. Wilcox, the blacksmith, that she always spoke to him nicely, in what she hoped was an admiring voice. Mr. Wilcox always seemed glad to see her and once he made her a ring out of a horseshoe nail. This morning she found him working on a plowshare. “Good morning, Mr. Wilcox,” she said through the open door.

“Hello there, Emily,” answered Mr. Wilcox. “I see you have your dog Plince with you this fine morning.”

Even Mr. Wilcox, her good friend Mr. Wilcox, was teasing her. Emily did not know what to say so she said, “Yes…uh, well, I guess I better be going,” and hurried down the road with Prince padding after her.

When she reached the farm she found her mother hanging out the washing on the lines strung between the tank house and the woodshed. Mama pinched a clothespin over a dish towel on the line. “Well, Emily, did you and Plince have a nice walk?”

“Mama!” cried Emily. “How did
you
know?”

Mama laughed. “Mrs. Warty Thompson telephoned me about the next meeting of the Ladies' Civic Club. She told me she ran into Fong Quock on Main Street and he told her. He thought it was a huge joke.”

“I suppose everybody on the line was listening in,” said Emily crossly, because she did not like being laughed at. The Bartletts
were on a five-party telephone line, and Mama was always careful never to say on the telephone anything that she was not willing for the whole town to hear.

“I did hear the sound of some receivers being lifted while I was talking,” said Mama with a smile.

Emily heaved an exasperated sigh. “Now everybody in the whole world will have to know.”

Mama shook out a pillowcase and pinned it to the clothesline. “You know how it is in a small town,” she said. “People talk.”

They certainly did, thought Emily. They talked on Main Street, they talked in Grandpa's store, they talked on the party line. The trouble was, they did not talk about the right things. She wanted everybody to spread the glad tidings about the library and what did they talk about? Plince. She might as well start calling the dog Plince, because
from now on everyone else would.

And how was she ever going to get to be a bookworm and read
Black Beauty
like Muriel if people wouldn't talk about the library?

M
ama was so busy and so excited this morning that she burned the toast. Emily was so excited that she did not want to eat toast, especially toast that had been scraped.

“Now Emily,” said Mama, “it is wicked to waste food. Just think of the starving Armenians.”

Emily would have been delighted to give her toast to one of the starving Armenians
she had been hearing so much about lately, but since there were no starving Armenians in Pitchfork, she nibbled away at her toast. Scraped toast on the day Mama was having a party, an elegant party! The members of the Ladies' Civic Club were coming for luncheon—
luncheon
on a farm where the Bartletts always had dinner at noon.

Mama was going to steer the conversation around to the subject of a library for Pitchfork. The state library really had answered her letter and had offered to send seventy-five books at a time, but first the town must find a place to keep the books and someone to act as librarian. Mama had more ideas. If all the people of Pitchfork donated what books they owned, there might be enough books to start a permanent library.

Of course Emily was eager for the party to begin. The Bartletts, who always rose early, because Daddy had to milk the cows
at five o'clock in the morning, had been busy. Emily wanted to do everything she could to make Mama's party a success. She had gone down to the pasture to gather buttercups and Johnny-jump-ups for the table. She had dug the maraschino cherries out of their tight little jar to put in the fruit salad. She had even gone to the drugstore for the ice cream the short way, at the risk of running into Fong Quock, because she wanted to hurry back to help Mama.

Daddy had killed some hens the day before and Mama had made chicken à la king with pimiento out of a can from Grandpa's store. She had made patty shells just like the ones she used to have back East. The trouble she had with those patty shells! The first batch refused to puff up and Emily had to take them out to feed to the chickens, because even though they had plenty of butter and flour on the farm, they could not waste
food, because of the starving Armenians. Mama's angel food cake made up for the trouble with the patty shells. Even without a rotary beater to beat the egg whites it was as light as a feather. Mama said goodness only knew what she was going to do with all the left-over egg yolks.

“Pretty fancy food you're fixing,” teased Daddy. “It seems like a lot of trouble for a bunch of women to get together just to gabble.”

Mama was too busy to be teased. “I do hope this luncheon will be a success,” was all she said, and whizzed around with the carpet sweeper and a dust cloth, while Daddy got out the scythe to cut the grass in front of the house. Emily followed and raked up the grass.

When Daddy worked his way over to the fence that separated the yard from the orchard, he swung the scythe through the
grass and
whack
right into an overturned apple box that was hidden by the grass.

“That Goliath!” exclaimed Daddy. “I forgot about the apples he knocked over.”

Then Emily remembered. Last winter Daddy had picked two boxes of apples. When he had pastured Goliath the bull in the orchard, he had set the boxes of apples over the fence to get them out of the bull's way. This had not stopped Goliath, who had managed to get his head over the wire fence and knock over the boxes. He took bites out of all the apples that did not roll out of his reach, and since the Bartletts had plenty of apples, and no one wanted to eat apples that had been nuzzled by a bull, the rest of the apples had lain rotting in the tall grass along with the windfalls that had dropped from the trees.

“Say, Emily,” said Daddy, as he swung the scythe, “see if you can get rid of those
apples so I can cut the rest of the grass.”

“What shall I do with them?” asked Emily.

“Anything,” answered Daddy. “Just get rid of them.”

Emily examined the apples scattered in the grass. They were rotten now—brown and squashy rotten. She picked up an apple which had a rich cidery smell and tossed it over the fence into the orchard, where it landed with a plop and smelled even more cidery. Emily did not think Mama would like a lot of smelly rotten apples plopped over the fence when she was having an elegant party, so she decided that the thing to do was feed them to the hogs, who would probably enjoy them. Emily loved to pick an apple and bruise it by dragging it along a picket fence before she ate it. The juicy bruises were the best part of the apple. If a bruise tasted good to her, a whole rotten
apple must taste delicious to a hog. Besides, Mama said it was wicked to waste food—think of the starving Armenians.

Emily found an old dishpan, which she filled with the squashy apples and lugged around to the back of the house and across the barnyard to the hogpen. There she found she could not climb up on the fence with the dishpan in her hands, so she opened the gate to dump the apples on the ground for the hogs.

The hogs were delighted. They squealed and rooted and snuffled at the apples and gobbled them up while Emily carefully closed the gate and ran back for more. As Emily dumped the second dishpanful of apples into the hogpen, she heard Mama calling from the back porch.

“Emily! Come on, it's time to get dressed!”

Was it that late already? Emily ran back to
the house as fast as she could go. She washed hastily at the kitchen sink and ran upstairs to put on her best dress and her Mary Janes, which she discovered were almost too small for her. When she came downstairs some of the ladies were already coming up the boardwalk between the two privet hedges that led to the house.

How beautiful Mama looked in her gray silk with the white ruffle at the neck, as she swished down the hall to answer the door. And how lovely all the ladies looked in their dress-up dresses and spring hats—some of Grandma's nicest hats. There was Mrs. Archer, the banker's wife in a black straw with orange poppies. A whole dozen silk poppies had gone into the trimming of that hat. And Mrs. Twitchell, the mother of Arlene Twitchell, the prettiest girl in town, in a hat Grandma had already retrimmed twice. Emily thought it was still a beautiful
hat, but the ladies of Pitchfork said it was a shame the way Mrs. Twitchell wore the same hat year after year while Arlene had all those new clothes. Mrs. Warty Thompson
wore a toque of flowered silk, and Mrs. George Thompson a hat everyone knew she had trimmed herself. Her husband's prune crop had not brought any price at all last year.

At last there were nineteen hats lying on Great-grandmother Bartlett's four-poster bed in the downstairs bedroom. Mama's company had examined the place cards around the big dining-room table, which had enough leaves added so that twenty places could be set. Mama had not extended the table as much as this since last summer, when she had cooked dinner for the crew of men who came to help Daddy bale the hay. How elegant everyone looked and how refined the hum of conversation sounded—quite different from the sweaty overalls and loud voices of the hay balers. Mama's party was going to be a success. Emily could tell.

Emily did not want to miss a thing, but
Mama was depending on her to help serve the chicken à la king and fruit salad. “Mama, do I serve the plates from the right or the left?” Emily whispered anxiously. “I always get mixed up.”

Mama's face was flushed and she was trying not to spatter chicken à la king on her good gray silk. “From the right—no, I mean the left,” was her flustered answer.

Emily carried the plates, two by two, into the dining room and served them with great care. It would be dreadful to dump creamed chicken in someone's lap. When the last plate was served and Mama herself was seated at the head of the table, Emily climbed up on the kitchen stool to eat her own meal off the drainboard. It had taken every chair the Bartletts owned and a few borrowed ones besides to seat the members of the club.

The conversation in the dining room hushed as the ladies began to eat Mama's
delicious cooking. There were polite little murmurs of, “The best I've ever tasted!” and, “You must let me have your recipe,” when Emily became aware, as did the guests, of noises outside. And what a racket it was—squeals and grunts and the barking of dogs. Emily had never heard anything like it before.

“My land!” cried Mama. “What on earth is going on out there?”

Emily ran to the kitchen window, but she couldn't see a thing, because the woodshed was in the way. The squeals and grunts grew louder and the dogs barked furiously. And then a terrible thought occurred to Emily. Had she fastened the gate when she dumped the apples into the hogpen? Had she done what she had been told she must never, never do and left the gate open? She was sure she had closed it, but now she was not so sure she had fastened it. No matter how hard
she tried, she could not remember. Mama had called, Emily had been in a hurry to get cleaned up before company came…she had a terrible feeling…oh, dear…if she had left the gate unfastened, Daddy was going to be pretty angry. Emily only hoped that if she had left the gate unfastened so the hogs got out, Daddy would wait until the ladies had gone home before he gave her a talking-to. Or he might even spank her!

All the guests had stopped talking to listen. Mama jumped up from the table and ran out on the back porch. Emily and the nineteen ladies followed. Mama ran down the back steps and along the walk to the barnyard, with Emily and the nineteen ladies right after her. This was terrible—all the ladies leaving Mama's luncheon instead of talking about the library.

And what a sight met their eyes! All
twelve hogs were running around the orchard squealing and snorting and grunting. Plince, as the whole town now called the collie, was standing on the steps of the tank house barking hysterically, while old Bob, who knew there was work to be done, ran after the hogs, barking and snapping at their heels to persuade them to go back to their pen.

Oh, thought Emily, how dreadful! She
had
left the gate unfastened. She saw Daddy standing in the barn door, staring at the hogs.

But wait! Something was wrong, terribly wrong with the hogs that old Bob had managed to herd into the barnyard. They were not really running. They were lurching and swaying and staggering. Poor old Bob was working as hard as he could to round them up, but they no longer paid any attention to him.

“What on earth—” began Mama and seemed to have no words left.

The ladies recovered sufficiently from their surprise to begin to talk. “Did you ever…” “What under the sun…” “Never in my born days…” Then someone tittered and the rest of the ladies laughed, too. The hogs did look funny.

Emily also thought they looked funny, but she could not laugh, because she was so worried. What on earth had she done to Daddy's hogs? And in a year when he hoped to get a good price for them, too! And then before her very eyes one of the hogs keeled over and lay still.

Emily watched her father run down the ramp from the barn and try to chase a hog back into the pen. It paid no attention, but went lurching across the barnyard until it bumped into the watering trough. Then it fell over and lay still, even though old Bob
stood barking at it. There goes another one, thought Emily miserably.

“If I didn't know better,” said Mrs. Archer, “I would say those hogs are tipsy.”

“What a ridiculous idea,” said Mrs. Twitchell. None of the ladies of Pitchfork approved of strong drink.

One hog, the one named Brutus, the biggest of them all, came staggering toward Mama's company. The ladies shrieked and retreated behind the picket fence while the hog stood swaying uncertainly and looking at them with its little beady eyes. It gave one tired grunt and one by one its legs seemed to fold up until it collapsed in a heap. Another one was gone.

“Well, I never!” exclaimed the wife of the druggist.

Another hog, the Hampshire sow Daddy had bought because it won first prize at the Livestock Exposition in Portland, tried to
climb the steps of the tank house, fell, got up, and wandered off in an uncertain way that sent the ladies into a gale of giggles. Old Bob snapped at its heels, but the hog did not seem to notice. It was a happy-looking hog and it kept on going, which was encouraging to Emily.