“All right, now you knows, so quits y’r gawping,” said Tilly. “Us still has to eat and do up.”
Eat? Emily shuddered as she watched Tilly pour all the ugly, untouched bread back into the basket from the plates, not to mention pouring Mrs. Meeching’s and Mrs. Plumly’s untouched soup back into the soup pot. Surely, Emily tried to tell herself, Aunt Twice had left something good for her in the kitchen, something to tempt her appetite. But when she and Tilly rolled the serving cart back into the kitchen, all Emily found staring back at her were two bare tables, a sink piled mountain-high with dirty pots and pans, and the large icebox tightly padlocked. Every bit of lettuce green, strawberry red, and jelly orange and yellow had been swept away, and not so much as a sprig of parsley remained.
All too soon, Emily found herself seated with Tilly at a kitchen table, facing a bowl of grey, watery soup and a large lump of moldy bread. She had managed one taste of each article, and that was all.
“Sorry if the food ain’t dainty ’nough for you,” said Tilly, gulping a large spoonful of soup. But then she added in a surprisingly kind tone, “You eats the bread, leastways. What everyone don’t eat today, everyone gets tomorrow!”
“Couldn’t we throw it away?” Emily asked. She remembered that, after all, there was a garbage can in the kitchen entry.
“Not me!” Tilly flicked a patch of grey-green from her bread with a practiced fingernail. “Everything ’round here got a number on it, not just the peppermints.” She narrowed her pale eyes knowingly at Emily.
Nonetheless, Emily could eat no more. She simply sat and watched in amazement as Tilly put away two bowls of the dismal soup and at least three lumps of the ancient bread.
Any kindliness Tilly might have felt at the supper table, however, met sudden death when it came to the sink. Tilly had been promised that Emily would do the soup pot, and thus Emily did the soup pot (which she had to scour and scrape from atop a wooden lettuce crate, being too small to reach the high sink), not to mention bowls and plates, tin cups and spoons, and a dozen more pots and pans, before, under Tilly’s baleful eyes, she was rescued by Aunt Twice.
It hardly seemed possible to Emily that it was only the hour of her usual bedtime when she stumbled down below to her room, her mind numbed by the mountain of dirty dishes, her hands raw from soaking and scrubbing, and one arm stinging from another pinch given her privately by Tilly as they both left the kitchen.
FOUR
A Disturbing Exphnation
Once in her cellar room, Emily collapsed onto her cot and stared at the tiny sliver high up in the wall that was to be her only window. Forever? she wondered. She was too weary to unpack her travelling bag and take out her nightdress. She was even too weary to pull off her clothes. She could not think of a bone in her body that did not ache, and she felt so empty, though not really hungry. How could she ever be hungry for the ugly food in that ugly kitchen?
Suddenly she began to shiver so hard she could not stop. She was cold and tired, but more than that, she began to remember all that had happened to her, especially where she was now, in a small dank room of stone deep in the ground, with horror overhead and horror just outside the door—the Remembrance Room with its sighing, moaning inhabitant! What kind of evil mind could invent such cruel punishment for a sad old person who had done nothing more than take a peppermint? Though still in her dress, Emily was ready to throw herself under the bedclothes and pull them up over her head to hide from the terrors of her room. Then suddenly she heard a faint knock at her door.
“Who—who is it?” she asked, frightened.
“Aunt Twice,” came the whispered reply.
Aunt Twice! Emily ran to the door and threw it open. Silent as a shadow, Aunt Twice slipped in, carefully closing the door behind her. Then, without another word, she took Emily in her arms.
“Oh, Aunt Twice!” Emily sobbed. “I thought you would never come!”
“My poor darling child!” Aunt Twice said. “What a cruel life you’ve come to! But you are being brave, and I am so proud of you. Still, you must continue to remember, much as I would wish it were not so, that this house and its owner”—Aunt Twice shuddered— “must come first. They must come before everything.”
“I will remember,” Emily promised. “But oh, Aunt Twice, who are all the old people? Why are they here?”
“They are people no one wants,” Aunt Twice replied gently. “Their families can no longer look after them, or sadly and cruelly, no longer want them. This is an old people’s home that you’ve come to, Emily.”
“Are all old people’s homes like this one? Must they all come to such a place?” Emily asked.
“No, Emily. There are pleasant, kind homes, but this is not one of them. This is an evil place—wicked and evil. It is only the uncaring who leave their old people behind here.”
“Oh, Aunt Twice!” Emily cried. “Can nothing be done about them?”
“Nothing!” said Aunt Twice with tight lips.
Emily shuddered. “It
