Loretta Mason Potts Read online

  “You are so right,” said the General. “That was very well put, old man.”

  Kathy fingered the ruffles on the Countess’s white lace dress. The Countess said, “You should wear white. White is so—so you.”

  “Look out,” cried Loretta, “look out for my sore foot.” But no one heard her. The General was speaking to the Countess in a low tone. She nodded.

  “When the time is right,” she answered him in the same low tone.

  Tea was brought in. Today the tea was a chocolate drink in tall glasses with whipped cream on top. The cakes were baked with butterscotch and walnut fillings. The Countess and the General exchanged a look which seemed to say; “Now—now is the time.”

  Kathy was speaking. “I always liked white.” She kicked happily at the table leg. “I had a white sweater last winter, but a boy named George Swenson chased me and I fell down and it got ripped.”

  The General turned to Colin. “Did he die on the spot or was it a flesh wound?”

  Colin sat upright in his chair. “What?” he asked.

  The General’s face was stern. “This person who insulted your sister. You challenged him, of course, gave him the choice of weapons. I was asking, did he die on the spot or did he linger?”

  Colin’s face got flaming red. His neck was hot, too. “Well, I—” he began.

  The General’s eyes were blazing. “You mean he was a bounder. He refused the challenge and has since been dropped from all of his clubs?”

  Kathy was puzzled. “He was George Swenson,” she said, “and he is Colin’s best friend. He plays at our house all of the time and he—”

  “Skip it,” Colin shouted at her. “Pipe down and shut up!”

  “Your brother is right,” the General told her, his face flushed. “The name of this cad must never again be mentioned in good society.”

  Then the Countess suddenly leaned forward across the tea-table and smiled at Kathy. “I collect china and I would adore to see your teacup.”

  At this Colin felt again that funny, funny thing he had felt the last time he was here—a frightening thing, a cold thing as though a cold breeze had blown into the room.

  “Teacup?” Kathy had a little cake halfway to her mouth. “What teacup?”

  Colin was cross. “I told you to bring it. That teeny, teeny teacup.” Then the same thing happened. He saw the Countess’s eyes get small and pin-pointy and the General’s hand go to his sword. Kathy noticed none of these things.

  “Oh, that teacup.” Kathy remembered. She put her hand to her cheek. “I forgot it.”

  The Countess’s voice was very low now and serious. “You—what?” she asked. “You did what?”

  “I forgot it.” Kathy was getting excited. “Oh no, I didn’t. Now I remember, I remember.”

  “Of course,” the Countess said. “I felt there was more to it. Do go on.”

  “I gave it to Sharon. She has it in her dollhouse.”

  The Countess and the General spoke at the same time. “Sharon—Sharon, and who is Sharon?”

  Colin and Kathy and Loretta were all about to shout, “baby sister” when the General raised his forefinger.

  “One moment, I believe I have it in here.” He leafed quickly through the notebook. Then he looked pleased. “Here it is. I’ll read what I have. ‘Sharon Louise Mason, 805 Gaylord Street, age five and a half. Occupation, nursery school girl. Characteristics: hair, long, silky; eyes, bright; disposition, unpredictable; hobbies, dolls, paint books and thumping on piano keys with soup spoon. Unmarried.”’ The General closed his notebook. “Interesting personality, that one—should go far.”

  The Countess agreed. “The hobby of thumping on the piano keys with a soup spoon shows great originality. It could start—a trend.”

  Kathy and Colin smiled. Loretta grinned. They liked to hear people speak like this about Sharon. She was the baby, the youngest, and she had always interested them, too.

  Loretta said, “Sharon can play the piano with a soup spoon better than Mrs. Potts, and Mrs. Potts took lessons.”

  Just as quickly the Countess stopped smiling because Kathy said, “That’s Sharon and she’s got that teacup. Is it yours, Countess?”

  Now Kathy should never have asked this question. Because now the icy thing in the room got bigger and bigger and colder and colder.

  “Mine?” The Countess was playing with the rose at her waist, but her voice was as sharp as the General’s sword. “Now what on earth makes you ask that?”

  Then she looked at Kathy and now Kathy could see the sharp blue pin points in her eyes. She felt afraid. Colin was watching the General’s hand. It was on the hilt of his sword. Suddenly Kathy laughed.

  “Not yours,” she cried, “I mean, maybe your little girl’s in her dollhouse.”

  The Countess slowly sat back in her chair. The General’s hand left his sword. The icy thing seemed to go out of the room.

  “I have no little girl.” The Countess sighed, then smiled at Kathy. “Except you and Loretta.”

  Loretta moaned. “My foot! Oh, my sore foot! I want to go home.”

  As they were leaving, the Countess took out her date book. “Tuesday at five, shall we say? Do come, and this time do bring Sharon and ask her if she would mind showing me her teacup. It’s a caprice of mine.”

  “A—what?” asked Colin.

  “A caprice,” the Countess answered. “That means something you want to do for no reason except that you want to do it. So do bring Sharon.”

  Kathy said, “If we bring Sharon, we’ll have to bring Jerry. They play together all of the time. He’s our little brother and he likes guns.”

  “Capital,” the General told the Countess, “I like his type.” And here the General snapped his fingers. “I don’t give that for a fellow who doesn’t have a drop of sporting blood in him.”

  They walked down the broad steps while Loretta limped behind. Colin walked with the General.

  “Gee,” said Colin, “the Countess has parties all the time.”

  “Yes,” the General said, “we are quite gay here. And this is, as you know, of course, the height of the season.”

  “Oh, sure,” Colin answered, “sure thing.”

  The next to the last thing the Countess said was, “I can’t wait to meet Sharon and Jerry. Tell them not to dress on Tuesday. There will be—just us.”

  Kathy was puzzled. “Not to dress? You mean, wear night clothes?”

  “Something simple,” The Countess said and blew a kiss after them.

  Then the very last thing she said was, “And do ask Sharon to bring the teacup.”

  The minute they disappeared, she walked quickly to the General’s side. “Well,” she asked him, “what do you think? Do they know anything? If so, how much?”

  The General did not answer at once. “Frankly,” he told her, “I am puzzled. They either know nothing at all or else they know a great deal they are not telling. I don’t believe for one minute that Loretta broke her foot.”

  “Nor I,” said the Countess. “But that was not the most suspicious thing of all. The most suspicious thing of all was when Loretta said, ‘Let’s go home.’ Always before this she has said—‘go back.”’

  The General sighed. “I noticed that, my dear. I hoped you had not.”

  She did not answer for a moment, then exclaimed, “They are all far more clever than they would have us believe. I will not feel safe until I have that teacup back in my china closet again!”

  He gave her his hand and they started up the steps.

  10. AN ERMINE JACKET

  Tonight Mother was going out to a party with friends. She would wear, she decided, her short yellow satin and her white ermine jacket. And since she had a busy day before her, she would lay both of them out now on her bed with her slippers and evening bag. She found the yellow satin dress, but she could not find her ermine jacket.

  At first she said, “It’s here! It’s got to be here.” But it did not “got to be there,” because it was not there.
Three times she took everything out of her closet; her red and black dress, her brown dress with the pink dots which Colin called her “broken-out” dress.

  Everything was there except the ermine jacket. She dialed the fur man. Perhaps she was mistaken and they had not returned it. But the man said, “You came and got it yourself, three weeks ago, ma’am. You signed the slip. I kept the slip.”

  Mother went back upstairs to go through the closet again.

  Now if she had looked out the back window and up the alleyway Mother would have seen her white ermine jacket and her white satin party slippers and her pearl earrings on their way to school.

  Kathy felt very grand in the white ermine jacket. She ran her hands happily over the soft white ermine. There were deep pockets too, lined with satin; deep enough to hold her lunch; peanut butter sandwiches and four blue plums. The coat hung down below the hem of her skirt and the sleeves came far down below her hands but she kept pushing them back up. She wished the Countess could see her now!

  But at every few steps, one of the heels of the white satin slippers would buckle under her and she would fall. By the time she came to the Swenson back yard, she had lost one of the pearl earrings and her lipstick was smeared from one of the falls. But the rouge was still bright, like poppies on her cheeks, and her eyebrows were smooth and black. They came all the way across her forehead without stopping, like one train track. The mascara on her eyelashes had blurred a bit and some of it was now running onto the rouge.

  Kathy was so busy trying to keep afoot on the spike heels that she did not see George Swenson and Whitey Boggs standing by the Swenson garage beside their bikes. But they saw her. It was easier for them. There were two of them.

  Whitey Boggs poked his sharp bony elbow into George Swenson’s stomach. “Look at that.” He was interested but he was calm.

  But George Swenson was not calm at the sight of Kathy stumbling up the alley in her mother’s coat and shoes. Maybe this was because he came from a family of one boy and five sisters. He scowled. Whenever he saw people dressed in clothes belonging to their mothers, it always seemed to George as though they were trying to make him look foolish.

  “She don’t come by here,” he muttered under his breath. And he wheeled his bicycle out into the alley and stood there holding it like a fence.

  When Kathy did see them she wished they were not there. She said nothing. She tried to push the bike out of the way. George was holding it fast and firm.

  “Take your hands off my bike,” he said.

  She pushed again, and then she had to bend over to get one ermine cuff out of the pedal of his bike.

  “I said,” George glowered, “keep your hands offa my bike.”

  Kathy was anxious to get to school and show her white coat to the girls in her class.

  “Take your bike out of my way, George Swenson. You’ll make me late to school.” Then she remembered something. “You should be dropped from all of your clubs and your name never mentioned again. That’s what people say about you.”

  George did not know what she was talking about, but this only made him more cross. “Some nerve,” he said, and held tighter to his bike. “That coat don’t fit you and neither do them shoes. You look goofy.”

  Kathy was breathing hard and pushing at the bicycle.

  “Goofy,” she was saying. “Oh you—you—cad!”

  Now there is a type of older person who always tells people, “Me, I’m not the type that quarrels. I just walk away.” Kathy believed in this, too. She believed in walking away from a quarrel—and finding a rock.

  So she took off the jacket and shoes and rolled them all together and put them under a bush on the back lawn of the house next door to the Swenson’s. Then she found a rock.

  “Look out, George,” his friend called, “she’s got a rock.”

  At the sight of her face and her burning eyes, George Swenson jumped on his bike and began to pedal quickly up the alley with Kathy running after him.

  That night they were all having dinner when there was a ring at the doorbell. Rosalie came into the living room.

  “It’s Mrs. Newby, up the street,” Rosalie told Mother. “She says she found your white ermine jacket under a bush in her back yard.”

  Mother jumped up from the table. “My best jacket?” Her voice was unbelieving. “My very best white ermine jacket under a bush in somebody’s yard?”

  “She said,” Rosalie went on, “that she saw a little girl leave it there this morning.”

  “Please ask her to come in.” Mother’s voice was choked. “And Loretta, will you please come here to me?”

  Kathy had stopped eating her mashed potatoes. She sat very still. But Mother was looking at Loretta.

  Colin, Jerry and Sharon watched Loretta push back her chair and walk slowly over to Mother. Loretta was used to being called in that tone, in school and out at the Potts farm. So she knew how to do the “Come here to me” walk. She walked slowly, her hands in her pocket, chin held down.

  She hadn’t been listening when Rosalie came into the room and told about Mrs. Newby and the coat. So she didn’t yet know what she had done.

  “Why did you do it, Loretta?”

  Loretta kept silent. Do what? she wondered. What have I done now? If she waited she would find out.

  Mother was explaining. “I want to know why, Loretta. I want to know why you took my white ermine coat and put it under a bush.”

  Every eye in the room was on her. That is every eye but Kathy’s. Kathy was looking at the china closet, wondering how soon she could run out of the room. But there stood Rosalie at the door to the kitchen and Mother at the door to the hall.

  “Loretta!” Mother took her by the shoulders and shook her. “What am I going to do with you? Oh, what am I going to do?”

  Now Mother was not asking for reasons, she was asking for advice. Loretta gave her some.

  “I’ll tell you what you can do,” she said. “You can stop shaking me and give me some more potatoes. I’m hungry.”

  Mother leaned against the wall. “Upstairs!” She pointed to the stairs. “You and I are going upstairs. Right now.”

  She took Loretta by the arm and was about to take her upstairs when Mrs. Newby stepped into the room with a paper parcel under her arm.

  “I left a roast in the oven,” she said, “to return your coat to you.”

  Mrs. Newby was a rather sweet-looking little woman who dressed in funny clothes and talked to the birds. In fact people said of her that she was “with the birds.” But there were none of them with her tonight as she stepped into the dining room. She had a gray shawl wrapped around her shoulders and there was a large old-fashioned type of watch pinned to her blouse. It was the type of watch people used to call a “turnip.” She mentioned this.

  “Excuse this old turnip.” She pointed to it. “But it is the only thing in my house which tells me anything. Mr. Newby tells me nothing.”

  Kathy slid under the table and lay there hiding.

  Mother took the bundle which Mrs. Newby handed her.

  “Thank you so much for your trouble, Mrs. Newby. I am about to have a few words with this young lady.” And Mother held fast to Loretta’s arm.

  “A few words,” said Mrs. Newby. “The fewer the better. It’s actions that count in this world. My, it’s good to sit down.”

  And she sat down at the dining room table and kicked off her shoes.

  “Now why are you hanging onto that girl there? Can’t she stand up by herself? Sit down here with me. Yes, thank you, I will have some dessert with you.”

  So there was nothing for Mother to do but dish her up some pudding and sit down with her while she ate it.

  “If I am not too forward,” she said, spooning the pudding, “why were you dragging that child upstairs for a few words in the middle of a meal?”

  Mother’s voice was firm. “She must learn a lesson. She must learn to leave other people’s things alone, and when she doesn’t she must tell the truth about it.�
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  Mrs. Newby took another mouthful of pudding. “A fine thing to learn—that. I should have learned that years ago. Well, I’ll be going.”

  She went toward the door.

  “Your shoes, Mrs. Newby.” Mother reminded her.

  “I’m always forgetting them,” Mrs. Newby smiled. “But I usually leave them on the bus. This is nothing like a bus. I must be dreamy today. Oh, I have my dreamy days and my sharp days. I was wondering just which this was. Now I know and I thank you for it.”

  She leaned down to get her shoes and as she did her eyes looked square into Kathy’s under the table. She straightened up.

  “It’s all right, of course, to keep children under the table. In my day they didn’t do it, but then times are changing.” Again she walked to the door.

  She pointed toward the table. “The coat was too big for her,” she said, “much too big for her.” And she opened the door and was halfway out before Mother realized what she had said.

  “Mrs. Newby, just a minute.” Mother asked, “What was that you said?”

  Mrs. Newby was rather an odd character.

  “I do not chew my cabbage twice,” she answered, “and never did. Good night.”

  But Mother ran to the door. “Mrs. Newby,” she begged, “wait one minute, please.”

  “Oh well, if you say please, then I’m helpless.” And Mrs. Newby stepped back into the room. “That’s a word I can’t resist.”

  Mother dragged Kathy out from under the table. “Mrs. Newby, is this the girl who put my ermine coat under your bush?”

  Mrs. Newby shook her head back and forth. “It’s not really a bush, even though we sometimes call it a bush. It’s really a small tree. So if you will change that question and ask me, is this the girl who put the ermine coat under a small tree? Then I will answer.”

  Mother patiently asked it again, as Kathy, her eyes blazing, wriggled and squirmed like a wildcat and tried to get away.

  “Is this the girl who put my ermine coat under your small tree?”

  Mrs. Newby nodded her head. “That’s the girl. I watched her do it and I wondered why she was doing it. If she wanted to make me a present of the coat, why didn’t she bring it up to the door? Good night.” She went out.