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Magic Elizabeth: Chapter twelve

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¦ CHAPTER TWELVE

Rainy day

The story so far: Sally is beginning to enjoy staying at Aunt Sarah’s house. Her aunt has become a bit friendlier, and Sally has made a new friend. But mainly, Sally is determined to find the missing doll, Elizabeth.

Neither Aunt Sarah nor Sally spoke for some time. Finally Sally said, “I wonder if it looked like this when the other Sally lived here.”

“I imagine it did,” said Aunt Sarah. “The other Sally did her homework at this very table. At least, I suppose she did.” The candle flames wavered for a moment, lighting up Aunt Sarah’s face from beneath and giving her a rather forbidding look. Sally remembered how Aunt Sarah had looked like a witch to her at first. But she doesn’t anymore, she thought.

After a dessert of chocolate cake and pink ice cream, Sally removed the tablecloth while Aunt Sarah began washing the dishes in the kitchen. Sally noticed that pressed into the polished wood of the tabletop were what seemed to be letters. She looked closer. An S, and an A. She remembered what Aunt Sarah had said about the other Sally doing her homework here. Now she could see an L, another L, and a Y. “Sally!” she whispered. She touched the letters with the tips of her fingers, and for a moment felt very close to that other Sally. It was as if the years that had gone by did not matter at all.

By the time they had finished the dishes, Sally was feeling very tired. Her aunt remarked that it had been a long day and suggested that she go right off to bed.

She did so gratefully. When she had gotten into bed, Aunt Sarah looked down at her and said, “Well, good night, Sally,” and left the room.

My mother always kisses me good night, thought Sally. She lay there in the dark, missing her mother, and wondering about all the things that had happened that day.

She had not dared to ask again about going to the attic, and she was not at all sure that Aunt Sarah would let her. “Oh, I hope she will,” she whispered to the darkness. “I hope she will.”

The faces of the other Sally and Elizabeth in the picture above the fireplace showed in the moonlight more than the darker areas of the painting. Sally felt that the two of them were watching over her as she fell asleep.

It was a dreary morning she woke to. Rain was drumming upon the roof in a most depressing and dismal way. Sally wondered as she woke why she was feeling so unhappy. Then she remembered-Emily had been scared away. Her only real friend in this whole place was gone forever. And her throat was hurting again. She sighed deeply.

And as for Elizabeth, thought Sally, what makes me think that after all these years I can find her?

She lay there, staring gloomily up at the picture of the other Sally, who seemed to be looking sad, too, until Aunt Sarah called to her that breakfast was ready.

Down in the kitchen, Aunt Sarah was standing at the stove stirring an enormous kettle of porridge. She had one hand pressed against her back.

“Arthritis,” she said with a groan. “Always bothers me when it rains.”

“I’m sorry,” said Sally.

“Sorry!” snapped Aunt Sarah. “Sorry doesn’t set the table!” She turned back to the stove and began to stir the porridge furiously.

Sally, feeling hurt, began to take dishes from the cupboard to set the table. Even the merry ticking of the little church clock could not raise her spirits.

They sat down and ate their meal in silence. Sally decided that after breakfast, she’d call her mother.

“I’m sorry, Sally,” said her aunt.

Sally looked up in surprise.

Her aunt sighed. “It’s a dreary day,” she said, staring bleakly out the window. “And I got up feeling just miserable. I’m afraid I took it out on you.”

“That’s all right,” Sally said, looking down at the grayish remains of her porridge. “I felt awful, too, when I got up.”

“How would you like to spend a rainy morning playing in the attic?” asked Aunt Sarah.

“Oh, could I?” Sally cried.

“Run along, then.”

So off Sally went to the attic, with Shadow following.

This time Sally made a systematic search. She looked in all the trunks, and in drawers and boxes. She turned up all sorts of finery: glittering beads, feather fans, ancient dresses, and a plush rabbit lacking one pink eye. At last, she was so tired that she sat down wearily on the floor and closed her eyes. Shadow was playing his usual game of pushing things into the space between the roof and the floor. She could hear some of the smaller things-beads, perhaps-falling down through the walls of the house.

“Oh, Shadow,” she sighed, “what’s the use?” She opened her eyes and looked into the mirror in front of her. There was still a clear space on its dusty surface where she had rubbed at it the day before.

“Hello,” she said to her reflection.

The lips of the girl in the mirror moved.

Sally smoothed her skirt.

The girl in the mirror smoothed hers.

“But I’m not wearing the blue dress!” Sally said. For the girl in the mirror was! She was wearing the blue ruffled dress and the yellow bonnet, and as Sally watched, the girl reached down, picked up a pink parasol which lay closed beside her in the grass, opened it, and lifted it over her head. As she did so, Sally felt the shadow cast by the parasol spread over her. She felt the cool slender handle in her fingers. She reached out and touched the grass next to her.

NEXT WEEK: A summer garden

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