The Project Gutenberg EBook of Mr. Wicker's Window, by Carley Dawson This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Mr. Wicker's Window Author: Carley Dawson Illustrator: Lynd Ward Release Date: May 24, 2009 [EBook #28952] Language: English Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1 *** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK MR. WICKER'S WINDOW *** Produced by Sankar Viswanathan, Greg Weeks, and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net Cover Page Cover Page Title page Transcriber's Note: Extensive research did not uncover any evidence that the U.S. copyright on this publication was renewed. MR. WICKER'S WINDOW by Carley Dawson Seal Illustrated by Lynd Ward 1952 HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY BOSTON The Riverside Press Cambridge Copyright, 1952, by CARLEY DAWSON and LYND WARD For those at Second Family House Seal C Illustration CHAPTER 1 hristopher Mason felt numb. It seemed to him that he was as good as an orphan already, for his father, a Commander in the Navy, was far away at sea, and Chris's mother was in a hospital, not expected to live. Chris scuffed along the brick pavements of Georgetown, but he did not, as he usually did, look about at its familiar houses. This friendly core of the growing city of Washington, D.C., today seemed to him almost hostile. Georgetown, where Chris lived, is the oldest part of the capital city, built by early English settlers long years before Washington itself was even planned. Grouped at the head of the navigable part of the Potomac River, above Georgetown's bluffs, the Potomac foams and dashes over wild rocks and waterfalls, and across the river, the country starts. Chris had just left his mother's sister, his Aunt Rachel. Aunt Rachel, white-faced, was preparing to go to the hospital to be with his mother and had asked him, "Don't you want to come too, Chris? For a little while?" But a cold-edged wing of fear had brushed the boy like a bat wing in the night. He had shaken his head, speechless, grabbed his sweater, and slammed the front door. Now he hesitated on a corner, suddenly dismayed, not knowing quite where to go or what to do. The whole city with its white marble buildings and templed memorials, its elm-lined avenues, seemed all at once very empty. He looked down to the Potomac, always, for Chris, just "the river," where it glinted distantly blue and silver at the end of the street. Factories along the riverbank cut off all but the farthest stretches of water as the river moved under bridge after bridge beside the banks of Maryland and Virginia. Chris made up his mind to see what might be in the Pep Boys' store, far down the hill and along traffic-filled M Street. Somehow the tawdry bustle of this street, with its many shops, appealed to the boy who carried misery inside him like a cold, heavy stone. Running, he started down the hill between the lines of old brick houses, left Rock Creek Park behind him, and turning to the right up M Street, reached the hardware glitter of The Pep Boys'. And it was there, as he stood staring in at the chromium bicycle lamps, red glass tail lights, and wire baskets, that Mike Dugan found him. CHAPTER 2 [7] [8] [9] M ike was in his class at public school, the eighth grade. Mike was all right. Chris liked him. "Hya, Chris!" "Hi, Mike!" "Whatcha doin'?" "Nothin' much. Just looking." "Say—you know sumthin'?" Mike wiggled himself across part of the Pep Boys' window to gain Chris's attention. "Old Wicker's got a sign in his window—he needs a boy. For after school, I guess. Think he'd pay, huh? Whyncha try?" Chris looked from a nickel-plated flashlight to a car jack and spark plug. "Oh—I don't know." Mike persisted. "Well, I'll tell you what. Know who needs a job bad? That's Jakey Harris. His mother's sick, and he's got that bad foot. Whyncha ask for him, huh? You sit next to him at school." All Chris heard was "—needs a job bad—mother's sick." "O.K.," he said. "Only why didn't you ask him yourself?" Mike became uneasy and fished an elastic band out of his pocket, made a flick of paper and sent it soaring out into M Street. "Well—" he admitted, "I did. Wicker's such a queer old guy. That ol' antique shop is dark an' spooky, an'—Well, I went in, and there wasn't nobody there, on'y him and me." Mike stopped, and after a pause Chris said, "So what?" Illustration "So—" Mike swallowed. "So I said I was there about the job, an' do you know what he said? He said"—he went on without urging, but with a frown of perplexity ridging his forehead—"He said, 'Turn around and look out that window, son, and tell me what you see.'" Mike stopped and looked at Chris with a comical expression. "Everybody knows what's outside his window!" he burst out. "Of all the silly things! But I turned around and looked, like he told me to, and of course there was the traffic goin' by, and trucks, and cabs, and people crossin' the street, and the freeway overhead, an'—you know." "So what did he say?" Chris asked, and for the first time that day the heavy weight he carried within him lifted and lightened a little. Mike examined the toe of his worn shoe. "Oh, he just smiled, that funny little crackly smile, and said, 'I'm sorry, young man, you won't do.'" [10] [11] Illustration For a moment both boys stared into one another's eyes, each questioning, wondering, and neither being able to supply the answer. At last, Chris broke the silence. "Queerest thing I ever heard. Gee! Whaddaya suppose?" Mike took heart, his experience believed and his bafflement shared. He spoke cheerfully. "It doesn't make sense, but old Wicker's so old he may be addled, don't you reckon? Who else would keep an antique store where nobody ever looks? All the other antique places are along Wisconsin Avenue where people go to shop." "You reckon Jakey really could use the job?" Chris asked, his courage ebbing as he pictured to himself the dark little shop with its bow window of small panes, and Mr. Wicker, so thin and wizened he seemed only bones and wrinkles. "Think he really needs it?" he pursued. But Mike was certain, or perhaps he needed a companion in this curious experiment. "You bet he does! He tol' me at noon today he wished he could find something that would help bring some money in. His mother's sick," he repeated, "an' Jakey don' look so good himself." "Well—" Chris said, half agreeing. "I'll go with ya!" Mike announced, as if that finished the argument; which, as a matter of fact, it did. Chris did not feel too happy about his mission and hung back a moment longer, looking in the Pep Boys' window at things he had already seen. He would have liked to get the job for Jakey, who needed it, but somehow the task of facing Mr. Wicker, especially now that the light was going and dusk edging into the streets, was not what Chris had intended for ending the afternoon. Although he had not been quite certain how he had meant to spend the rest of the remaining daylight, Mike's plan did not seem to fit his present mood. "Are you coming?" Mike challenged, with a hint of derision. "Yes," said Chris suddenly, "I'm coming. I'll ask for Jakey." Mike's expression changed at once to one of triumph, but Chris was only partly encouraged. The two boys walked to the corner of M Street and Wisconsin Avenue. Traffic roared up the first short block of Wisconsin from under the high steel freeway down to their left. Chris glanced down the slope of Wisconsin. Houses and shops thinned suddenly on both sides of the street. Far down at the very end, on his side, he could see the brick walls and slate roof of Mr. Wicker's house. Chris knew it well, for times without number he had pressed his nose to the square Georgian panes of Mr. Wicker's window to gaze at the strangely fascinating jumble of oddments that were displayed. Now, however, he felt in no mood to visit the curiosity shop and stood shifting his feet and looking aimlessly about. Mike, beside him, was becoming restive, and gave him a poke. "Betcha aren't goin' after all!" Chris turned on him. "Am too!" Mike looked disdainful. "Aw—you're stalling!" "Not any sucha thing. I'm going now." [12] [13] "O.K. Let's see you." Chris turned his back on Mike and started down the hill. After a step or two, not finding his friend beside him, he turned. Mike was standing on the corner. "Hi!" Chris called, indignant. "You said you were coming with me!" "Well, I was," Mike howled back, "but I just remembered. My mother told me to bring her some stuff from the Safeway. I'll run all the way and come back and meet you." "Aw shucks!" Chris kicked at a nonexistent pebble and scowled. But a chore was a chore, and was never worth discussion. "I'll meetcha in fifteen or twenty minutes," Mike shouted. "It won't take me long," and throwing out his hands to signify that there was nothing he could do about it he disappeared. Chris started off once more, passing the bleak little Victorian church perched on the hill above Mr. Wicker's house. An empty lot cut into by Church Lane gave a look of isolation to the L-shaped brick building that served Mr. Wicker as both house and place of business. Chris paused to look below him. Even from where he stood, fifty feet above the house, the slope of the hill was sharp and the plan of the house below him could be plainly seen. It was built like an inverted L, the short wing faced towards the street and the traffic of Wisconsin Avenue. The longer wing, toward the back, had a back door that opened onto Water Street. The space between the house and Wisconsin Avenue had been made into a neat oblong flower garden, fenced off from the sidewalk by box shrubs and a white picket fence. Behind it, along the other side of the long wing, lay a meticulously arranged vegetable garden and a few apple trees. His gaze moved back to the house itself. It seemed to have been built at about the same time as the vacant storehouses opposite, for they had a similar look of design and age. The windows of Mr. Wicker's house had smaller panes of glass than were used nowadays, and like the warehouses across from it, Mr. Wicker's had many dormer windows jutting out from the slated roof. Unlike the warehouses, however, which were rickety and down-at-heel, Mr. Wicker's home was well cared for. The windows—except for the bow window of the shop to the right of the front door—had shutters painted a pleasing bluey-green, and at their sides could be seen the edges of gay curtains. The traffic freeway rose high above the roof, dwarfing the old house and casting a deepening shadow over the whole length of Water Street, shading even Mr. Wicker's back door, so close did it rise beside the house. The air was filled with mechanical sounds—the roar of cars speeding up the hill, the grind of gears, the shuddering throb of wheels along the freeway, and the clanking bang of chains and weights in the factories along the shore. Illustration The sun was dropping, and the sky behind Chris made a sinister promise for the following day. A livid yellow stained the horizon beyond the factories and gray clouds lowered and tumbled above. The air was growing chill and Chris decided to finish his job. All at once he wondered how his mother was, and everything in him pinched and tightened itself. At the foot of the hill he reached the house. As he came to the bow front the old familiar excitement that always seized Chris when he looked in Mr. Wicker's window touched him again, and he stopped to look at its well-memorized display. For as long as he had stopped to look into Mr. Wicker's window, which was as far back as he could remember, Chris had never known the objects to vary or be changed. There were three things that always caught his eye, amid the litter of dusty pieces. On the left, the coil of rope; in the center, the model of a sailing ship in a green glass bottle, and on the [14] [15] [16] T right, the wooden statue of a Negro boy in baggy trousers, Turkish jacket, and white turban. The figure was holding up a wooden bouquet, the yellow paint peeling from the carved flowers. The figure's mouth was open in an engaging toothy smile, and its right hand was on one hip, on the chipped red paint of the baggy trousers. The ship, so often contemplated by Chris that he knew every tiny thread and delicately jointed board, was a three-masted schooner, sleek of line, painted—at one time—a dazzling white. Now with dust dulling the green sides of the bottle, its sails looked loose, its sides grimed. But the name still showed at the prow, and many a time Chris, safe at home in bed, had sailed imaginary voyages in the Mirabelle. It lay there snug and captured, as if at the bottom of a tropical sea, seen through the glass sides of the bottle, and Chris never tired of looking at it. But perhaps the coil of rope, so meaningless, so meaningful, held his imagination by an even stronger hold. Why a coil of rope in an antique shop? Who would want it? People bought rope in a hardware store—there was one farther along M Street near the old deserted Lido Theatre. But here, in an antique shop? Chris shook his head as he stared. He had never seen anyone go into Mr. Wicker's shop, now he thought of it. How then, did he live, and what did he ever sell? A sudden car horn woke him from his dream. He looked up, seeing for the first time the small card hung at eye level in the window. In a beautiful script such as Chris had never seen before, but very legible, the card read: Boy Wanted. Good Pay. W. Wicker. Jakey Harris came back into Chris's thoughts. He looked over his shoulder at the darkening sky streaked luridly with citrous strokes; noticed the wheel and tackle high up at the loft door of the warehouse opposite, and put his hand on the doorknob. The last flicker of light scudded across the steel sides of the freeway to pick out the lettering above the shop window. W-LLM. WICKER, CURIOSITIES Chris opened the door and a bell jangled, very faintly, but with persistence, far away in some distant part of the house. CHAPTER 3 he last reverberations of sound hung in the air and jangled in Chris's head. Of the many times he had examined Mr. Wicker's window and pored over the rope, the ship and the Nubian boy, he had never gone into Mr. Wicker's shop. So now, alone until someone should answer the bell, he looked eagerly, if uneasily, around him. What with the one window and the lowering day outside, the long narrow shop was somber. The ceiling seemed close above Chris's head. Heavy hand-hewn beams crossed it from one side to the other. A few dusty pieces of furniture stood about, whether for sale or for use Chris could not determine, and almost lost in the black shadows at the far end were what appeared to be boxes and bales, piled one upon the other. [17] [18] [19] Illustration The growing silence, now the bell had stopped, gripped Chris. A chill made itself felt in his feet and spread rapidly over his body so that he gave a convulsive shiver. He was about to turn and go out when, at the farthest end of the gloomy shop, a small primrose oblong of light seeped for a little way along the floor and a door opened. Fascinated, Chris stared, as into this distant pallor stepped the short and remarkably spidery figure of a man. Mr. Wicker's back being toward the source of light, Chris could not see his face. The figure paused, with a fragile hand scarcely bigger than that of a child's on the doorhandle, and then came forward. The silence, Chris noticed, was still unbroken as Mr. Wicker advanced toward him, and Chris shuddered again as he stood waiting and watching, but whether it was with cold or with fear—and the room was indeed very dank and unaired—it would have been hard to say. When Mr. Wicker had come within a few feet of Chris, the final vestiges of daylight from outside reached the extraordinary man facing the boy, and for the first time Chris was able to examine the old man who was more legend than fact throughout Georgetown. William Wicker's face in itself was not forbidding. What made an icy mouse seem to run the length of Chris's spine was the impression of enormous age in the appearance of the man confronting him. The thin lips crackled the withered and multi-wrinkled cheeks in the ghost of what had once been a smile. The nose, once hawk-like and proud and denoting strength of character and purpose, was now pinched by the ever-tightening fingers of a progression of years. The double fans of minute wrinkles breaking from eye corner to temple and joining with those over the cheekbones were drawn into the horizontal lines across the domed forehead. Little tufts of white fuzz above the ears were all that remained of the antiquarian's hair, but what drew and held Chris's gaze were the old man's eyes. Mr. Wicker's eyes were not those of an old man at all. They had the vigor of a man in the prime of life, and their presence in that puckered face of age which confronted Chris was horribly disconcerting. Chris blinked and looked again. Yes, they were still there. Eyes so deeply brown they might well have been black, but clear, sparkling, and with a decided glint of humor and mischief. While the boy had been too frightened to move at the sight of Mr. Wicker's ancient cheeks, pinched nose, and hairless head, he was encouraged by the friendly eyes. Chris could not help but like those eyes, even though it was hard to believe they belonged to the man before him. As though from a great distance Mr. Wicker's voice came to his ears, and this too, Chris found difficult to credit. There, not four feet in front of him was the old shopkeeper, and yet the high thin voice might have come from anywhere else— the rafters, the room beyond the lighted door; anywhere. "Well, my boy? You wanted something?" Chris swallowed and his voice came back to him. "Yes sir," he said. "I saw your sign, and I know a boy who needs the job." He looked at Mr. Wicker as though he were unable to look elsewhere. "He's a schoolmate of mine. Jakey Harris, [20] [21] his name is, and he really needs the job. I wondered—" Mr. Wicker's eyes, laughing at him just a little, confused Chris and he began to stammer. "I—I just wondered if the place was still open." Mr. Wicker studied Chris for a moment or two before he replied. What he saw was a fresh-cheeked lad tall for thirteen, sturdy, with sincerity and good humor in his face, and something sensitive and appealing about his eyes. His chin showed obstinacy and tenacity; his nose would shape itself well as he grew older. Unruly tawny hair was blown and ruffled in every direction and his hands, even young as he was, showed ability and strength. "Hm-mm," said Mr. Wicker, and his remote smile broadened while his eyes sparkled with the warmth of a fire on a winter's night. "Hm-mm. Yes. The job is still open, young man, but while you're here, why not apply for it yourself?" Chris, somewhat less ill at ease, now he had got his message out, shifted his feet and gave a short laugh. "Oh no, thank you, sir. You see, I don't really need it, and Jakey does. It wouldn't be fair for me to take it if Jakey has a chance." He looked away, and saw that the light from the distant hidden room was jumping and flickering on the shadowed walls. He guessed there must be a lively fire in that room beyond. "Of course," Chris added anxiously, "I don't know what the job is. You don't say, on the sign, and Jakey isn't awfully well. He has a twisted foot and it makes him slow in walking. Would that interfere with Jakey's getting the job, sir?" Chris enquired. The reply was slow in coming, and Chris heard as if the words had been spoken, not before him, where the black outlined figure still stood, but as if at his very ear. Soft but clear, the words sounded. "It would not interfere, Christopher my boy. But now that you are here, you must make the test. Jakey will be cared for, never fear." Almost as in a dream, Chris felt an atmosphere drenching him as though a powerful scent filled the air. His head swam a little, and he realized that it was a long time since he had had lunch. He thought he detected a pleasant smell of herbs, like the potpourri his mother had in bowls in their house. The sharp black outline of Mr. Wicker impressed itself on his eyeballs, and in the room, now totally dark except for the light that streamed from the faraway open door, Mr. Wicker's body seemed to radiate a bright edge, like a carbon paper held up to the sun. The voice at his ear once more filled his head and his hearing. "You will make the test, my boy. Now. Just turn around, and tell me what you see out my window." Illustration Chris, in spite of the strangeness rising about him like a mist, remembered very well what lay outside the window. But even as he slowly turned, the thought pierced his mind, Why had he not seen the reflection of the headlights of the cars [22] [23] [24] W moving up around the corner of Water Street and up the hill toward the traffic signals? And why had the sound of wheels, of gears and of horns, been so completely muffled out? The room seemed overly still. Then, in that second, he turned and faced about. The wide bow window was there before him, the three objects he liked best showing frosty in the moonlight that poured in from across the water. Across the water! Where was the freeway? It was no longer there, nor were the high walls and smokestacks of factories to be seen. The warehouses were still there. They were the very same, for Chris could make out the winch and tackle he had noticed as he opened the door. But instead of factories, instead of the freeway, the river flickered silver under the moon, and the hulls and masts of countless ships broke the starry sky. Flabbergasted and breathless, Chris was unaware that he had moved closer to peer out the window in every direction. No electric signs, no lamplit streets. Going as far as the wall to his left and leaning forward, Chris looked up toward M Street. Where the People's Drugstore had stood but a half-hour before, rose the roofs of what was evidently an inn. A courtyard was sparsely lit by a flaring torch or two, showing a swinging sign hung on a post. The post was planted at the edge of what was now a broad and muddy road. Even as Chris stared, not knowing whether to believe what his eyes saw or not, there was a great sound of hoofs and of a cracking whip. A coach with its top piled high with luggage stamped to a halt beside the flagged courtyard. Ostlers ran out to hold the team of horses steaming in the cool night air, and linkboys carrying torches and orange lanterns ran out to help the travelers in. The coachman wore knee breeches and a cockaded hat; two gentlemen got down from the interior of the coach, stretching their cramped legs. Chris could catch the shine as lantern glow touched the silver buckles on their shoes. Their full-backed coats were slightly lifted, on the left, by the tips of their rapiers, and a froth of white, lace or muslin, fell from their necks onto satin waistcoats. They moved into the inn; the coach rattled off to the stable. Before the window, farm carts rumbled by, and instead of the crowded outline of Georgetown roofs, Chris could see only a few chimneys against the stars, and many lofty trees. "What do you see, boy?" asked the voice, so gentle, at his ear. Chris, frightened and dumbfounded, shook his head. "I will tell you," Mr. Wicker said. "My window has a power for those few who are to see. You are looking back into the past, my boy. The way it used to be." Then the coldness, the strangeness, the fluttering of the light was too much for Chris. Blackness descended on him as if a hood had been dropped over his head, but before he was quite gone, he heard what he thought was Mr. Wicker's voice saying kindly: "You will do." CHAPTER 4 hen Chris came to himself he woke from sleep and lay for a moment without opening his eyes. He waited with his usual sense of irritation for Aunt Rachel's step at the door, and her voice saying, "Get up, Chris! You're late again!" But the step did not come, and feeling rested and hungry, Chris opened his eyes. What was this? The high regular walls of his bedroom were not around him, nor the familiar furniture. Chris sat up, rubbing at his eyes as if this would help to clear his vision, and looked about him. He was in a narrow bed in a small sunny room. An attic room, it would seem to be, for the walls slanted down in different sharp angles from the low ceiling to the broad wood planks of the floor. Two dormer windows projected from the room beyond the roof, making two niches in the wall across from where Chris lay, and a third window in the wall above his head showed that the room, as well as being at the top of the house, was also at a corner of it. A door was just beyond the foot of the bed; a chest of drawers and a table with a blue and white porcelain wash bowl and pitcher, stood along the farther side. Wooden pegs were placed at hand level here and there, and a rag rug in bright colors lay on the floor by the bed. The walls were white and the sunlight poured in to dash itself upon the floor and splash up the walls in irresistible gaiety. There was no doubt about it, bare though it was, it was a pleasing room, snug, clean and cheerful, and somehow well suited to a thirteen-year-old boy. Chris half smiled as he looked, leaning on one elbow, and then his smile faded as he caught sight of the chair and what it held. The only chair in the room was laid with carefully folded clothes. But they were not Chris's clothes. Chris jumped out of bed and then looked down with a quick startled intake of his breath. He was wearing a white nightshirt, something he had never even seen before and barely heard of. The sleeves were long and cuffed, and the nightshirt fell in linen lines to his feet. "Golly Moses!" Chris exclaimed, completely baffled. He returned to the examination of the clothes that were obviously laid out for him. There was a fine white shirt with full sleeves and turned-back cuffs. White cotton stockings; knee breeches of a blue-gray worsted material, and matching [25] [26] [27] frock coat with silver carved buttons. Below the chair, Chris saw, was a pair of black leather shoes with polished silver buckles. "Fancy dress, huh?" Chris murmured, and then, as if he had been slapped into full awareness, came the remembrance of the evening before, of Mr. Wicker, and of the dark flickering shop. Chris sat down suddenly on the edge of the bed, his mouth, in spite of all his efforts, drawn down at the corners, and his eyes blank with confusion and misery. "Oh my golly!" Chris said, and stared at the clothes he still held in his hands. Then another idea struck him, and he jumped up to run to the nearest dormer window, the floorboards, where the sun had lain on them, warm under his bare feet. But no. No freeway, no factories. The window looked out over Water Street, skirting the edge of the Potomac banks, and there below Chris's amazed eyes rose a forest of masts and spars of ships at anchor along the shore. Water Street, below him, was swarming with activity, but not the activity that Chris had previously known. Men dressed in the same sort of clothes as those laid out for him pushed at cotton bales, rolled hogsheads along to the docks, or rowed out to ships anchored in midstream. Most of the stevedores were hatless, and Chris snickered at the sight of the short braid of hair at the napes of their necks. Many wore brilliant scarves tied around their heads, red, or mustard-yellow or green, and the sound of deep voices swearing, laughing, or rising in unfamiliar sea chanteys excited Chris and sent the blood tingling along his veins. He rushed to the high-placed window overlooking Wisconsin Avenue. No Key Bridge was to be seen in the distance, only stretches of fields and orchards, scattered with occasional houses of russet brick, and when he craned his neck there was the inn where the People's Drugstore ought to be, the sign swinging high above the road. Wisconsin Avenue! Chris had to laugh. If it could see itself! Only a wide muddy road full of ruts and puddles, along which someone's line of geese was waddling, impervious to the cursing of passing carters and riders on horseback. A little below him Chris could see the two old warehouses he remembered from the night before. But now they looked quite new, their bricks bright and their walls solid. Barrels were being lifted by the winch and tackle into the upper loft, and Chris watched the busy scene for quite some time. His rolling stomach and a simultaneous smell of food reminded him of his hunger. Dressing quickly in the strange new clothes, he opened the door and peered outside. His bedroom door was at the top of a narrow curling stair that twisted away to the left out of sight. It was steep, and Chris stood silent and intent on the top step, listening. A deep woman's voice loudly singing, "Farewell and Adieu, to you, Spanish ladies—" came rolling up the stairwell to the accompaniment of a brisk clatter of pots and pans. What rose also to Chris's nostrils was a smell of newly baked bread, frying bacon, and woodsmoke, and the combination put an end to his indecision. For a while he decided to call a truce to any attempt at solving the mystery in which he found himself, and following his nose, went softly down the stairs. Rounding the last turn of the staircase, Chris remained in its shadow while he stared with unbelieving eyes at the room and figure before him. If this is a dream, he said in himself, it's the best one I've ever had—the very best! What confronted Chris was Mr. Wicker's kitchen. This room took up almost all of the side wing of the house. Across from Chris two casement windows showed the shrubs and flowers and white picket fence of Mr. Wicker's garden, and at his left was the back door opening onto Water Street, flanked by two smaller windows. These seemed most inviting, each possessing a window seat from which one could watch the busy comings and goings of the docks, with a view of the ships beyond. But what drew Chris's eyes and made them grow round with wonder was the extraordinary figure in front of the fireplace. The vast, deeply set fireplace was in the wall that faced the back door. So deep it was, that there was even a bench on one side of it, and over the smoking logs were hung all manner of trivets, spits, and cooking irons. It was, in short, a fireplace such as Chris had never dreamed of. Yet the tall buxom woman stirring the hissing pots and singing to herself was what held Chris rooted to the last step of the attic stair. The woman stood easily six feet, broad and brawny enough to be a match for almost any man. Countless yards of sprigged cotton must have gone into the making of her dress, to say nothing of her apron. A massive fichu of freshly laundered muslin went around her neck and was tucked into her bodice; a white turban was on her head, but on top of the turban—! Chris simply could not believe his eyes as he counted rapidly. On top of this amazing woman's head was a gigantic hat supporting twenty-four roses and twelve waving black plumes! Chris's jaw dropped at the sight of the turbaned, hatted head, the flowers bobbing and swaying, the ostrich plumes blowing and curtseying with every slightest movement. [28] [29] [30] [31] Illustration As if blissfully unaware that her costume was not the usual one for cooking, the woman hummed and stirred, tasted, and hung up her ladle. But the sight was too much for Chris. Before he could stop it a shout of laughter exploded from his lips. He laughed and laughed, and the indignant expression on the woman's face when she turned, to stand glaring at him with her hands on her jutting hips, only added to Chris's laughter. At last, sobering up somewhat as he realized that his behavior was rude, to put it mildly, Chris stopped and caught his breath, shaken only now and again by a diminishing paroxysm. Seeing the spark of bad temper in the red face of the enormous woman, Chris decided to pour oil on the troubled waters. "Good morning, ma'am. I—I'm Chris Mason, from upstairs, and I'm sorry I laughed so loud. I—" he floundered and grabbed desperately at any passing idea "—I saw something comical out the window there"—he pointed wildly—"and it just set me off. I hope I didn't disturb you?" Mollified, though not entirely, the woman accepted this effort at peacemaking and her face eased a little. "Well now. So you are awake at the last, eh? And hungry, bein' a boy, I don't doubt?" She moved to the dresser and took down a mug and plate, the roses and ostrich plumes nodding in evident agreement. "So you are Chris, did you say? Christopher, that would be? And I am Mistress Rebecca Boozer, should you be wanting to know. Becky Boozer, they call me." She bustled over to a covered bowl, dipped out creamy milk with a long-handled dipper, and set bread, butter, and bacon in front of Chris at a table pulled up to one of the window seats. "Eat up now, young man," Becky Boozer advised, every red rose and feather accenting her words, "for Mr. Wicker will be wanting to see you when you have done. It's late. Past eight of the clock." She glanced out the window. "It might be just possible that Master Cilley will be passing by before long for a midmorning snack and here I am gossiping with you instead of getting on with my work." Chris ate with a will, looking around as he chewed. The spotless brick floor and the starched curtains at the windows, the shining copper pans hung beside the huge fireplace, were proof of Becky Boozer's housekeeping. "Don't you have an icebox?" Chris asked, his mouth full. "What may that be?" Becky asked sharply. "To keep the food cool," Chris answered. Becky stopped to consider this, her hands on her hips. "We have a larder on the cool side of the house, if that be what [32] [33] you mean," she told him, nodding. "Keeps the food pretty well up to April or May. Then the heat makes everything go. Oh! This heat! Prosperity, Maryland, where I come from, and on the sea coast as it is, was never like this!" A table with a wooden tub and dishes stacked nearby caught Chris's eye. Buckets of water stood beneath the table, and presently Becky Boozer took off a small pot of steaming water from a hook above the fire, poured it in the tub, and dipped cold water from one of the buckets into it. What a system! Chris thought as he watched Becky busy with her dishes, thinking of the neat white kitchen he knew at home. Aloud he said: "If you had a little wooden trough that led from that tub out through the window there, you could pull out a bung when you were ready and the water would run outdoors. It would save you carrying that great tub about, when you are in a hurry." Becky Boozer rested her soapy hands on the edge of the tub and looked at him admiringly over her shoulder. "I would never have thought it," she said, "by the look of you. Never in this world. You have brains, young lad, that's what you have. A better idea than that I never heard! Indeed, it is just what I have been a-needin' since years, and that simple I might have thought it out myself! I shall set Master Cilley to work on it when he comes. He's right handy with tools, is Ned Cilley." At this moment a short knock sounded on the back door, and an instant change came over Becky Boozer. It was impossible to imagine that anyone as ponderous as Becky could be coy, but at the sound of the knock, this is what she became. Wiping her hands hastily on one of many petticoats, she pushed and pulled at her hat (which remained immovable), straightened her fichu, and smoothing her dress, she minced her huge bulk to the door with a welcoming smile. A little man scarcely higher than Becky's barrel waist, with a rolling sea gait and twinkling blue eyes, bounced into the room and strained up on tiptoe toward Miss Boozer's blushing cheek. Chris, behind the opened door, had not yet been perceived. "Come now, Becky me love!" shouted Cilley the sailor in a good-humored roar, "How can I start the day right 'thout a kiss from my Boozer?" Becky blushed and simpered and cast down her eyes. "Get along with you, Cilley! What a way to behave," she admonished, delighted and abashed. "See—there's company here." She pushed her suitor off with an elephantine shove and gestured to Chris. Chris was feeling the contagion of laughter catching up with him again at the scene he had watched, and was glad when the sailor turned and came over to where he sat. "A visitor, eh? Well, well. Off a ship?" [34] [35]