“Please, Mrs. Poovey, would you be so kind as to keep it for me? And my locket as well?” Emily un fastened it from around her neck. “I wouldn’t want them—want them lost.” She couldn’t help thinking of Tilly reviewing all her “pretty things” in the cellar, and “borrowing” (probably forever) her white fur tam-o’-shanter. It was a wonder that she had thus far been able to keep her locket from Tilly’s prying eyes.
“Lost? Lost indeed!” Mrs. Poovey bobbed her head indignantly. “Just as Mrs. Loops’s jewels were lost, I expect. But of course I will keep both the cameo and the locket pinned safely to my person, dear child, and keep them safely. They might find a peppermint, but they won’t tamper with a petticoat!” she added tartly. “And now you must hurry along.”
“I will,” Emily said. “But please, please do be careful!”
“You may be sure that we will, child. The walls of Sugar Hill Hall may have eyes and ears.” Mrs. Poovey’s own eyes, sharp as a bird’s in search of a worm, darted around the room. “But then, so do we!” she concluded grimly.
ELEVEN
The Remembrance Room
Emily was on her knees scrubbing the kitchen floor when a strong smell of fish announced Kipper’s arrival. He was cradling in his arms the familiar newspaper-wrapped parcel, but his normally cheerful face looked stricken.
“It’s been found out, ain’t it!” he exclaimed.
Emily barely looked up at him. “N-n-no,” she stammered in a small, fading voice.
Kipper’s clear eyes narrowed suddenly as he thumped the package of fish down in the sink. “All right, Emily, me girl, you’d best come clean with me. If it ain’t been found out, and it ain’t in the room where it was to stay—and it ain’t because I looked— then where is it? Pa’ll have my skin in strips if anything happens to you on ’count o’ that kitten.”
Emily finally gathered the courage to look Kipper in the eye. “It’s—it’s up in Mrs. Poovey’s and Mrs. Loops’s room.”
“In Mrs. Whats’s and Mrs. Who’s room?” Kipper exploded. “I thought you was acting mighty fishy, if you’ll pardon the expression. What in thunderation is it doing up there after I warned you, Emily?”
“I had a very good reason.” Emily sniffed indignantly.
“Well, it had better be!” Kipper produced as cold a look as someone with his cheerful red hair and cheeks could muster. “Perhaps you’d just best tell me ’bout it, if you don’t mind.”
“All right then,” said Emily, “if you want to know, I wasn’t going to take the kitten to show the old people, except that the very next meal after you gave it to me, I ate all my soup and every crumb of my lump of bread. So there!”
“Fish syrup!” said Kipper grimly. “ ’Twas the fish syrup done that, not the kitten.”
“It might have been partly the fish syrup, but it was mostly the kitten.” Emily threw her chin up defiantly. “I carried it upstairs hidden in my cleaning bucket, and I never met anybody, and it never mewed!”
“Well,” said Kipper, “you might have, and it might have, and what you done was stoopid, Emily!”
This lecture was followed by several minutes during which both parties sank into stony silence.
Then at last Kipper said gruffly, “All right, as long as you done it, you might as well tell me all ’bout it.”
This was all the persuasion Emily needed. She was bursting to tell Clarabelle’s story, and before she had finished, Kipper could no longer hide his grudging admiration.
“So have all the old ones seen the kitten now?” he asked.
“Not quite all,” replied Emily, “but Mrs. Poovey and Mrs. Loops intend to see that they do, every one of them. And Kipper, you can’t imagine how it is now when I go into the rooms where Clarabelle has been, everyone smiling at me and making conversation.”
“And calling you a dear child, too, no doubt!” Kipper grinned. “I suppose you deserve it, so no need to blush ’bout it.”
“Anyway,” Emily continued when she had recovered from the blush, “Clarabelle will need some more fish and some milk and some sand, and—”
“And I ain’t got a choice, I suppose, but to be the one to pervide all them necessities o’ life?” inquired Kipper.
“Oh yes, please,” said Emily quite matter-of-factly, as if the whole thing was settled and there was nothing more to be said about it.
Kipper could only stand and stare at her. It could be said that the kitten had, in fact, got his tongue!
“And there’s something I haven’t told you yet, Kipper,” Emily said. “This morning at breakfast, all the old people finished their gruel, six asked for more, and some even began on their bread lumps. There now, tell me Clarabelle hadn’t anything to do with it!”
“Dingus, Emily,” said Kipper, “if you ain’t the one!”
The morning meal, the noon meal, and the evening meal were becoming livelier and livelier events, what with gruel, fish head stew, and soup being drained down to the bottom of the bowl, bread being eaten up so rapidly that in no time at all fresh bread had to be provided, and the secret smiles and glances that were passed along with the tea bag as it travelled around the table. Once, when Mr. Popple dropped the bag into his tin cup with a splash, a few small sounds of choked mirth were actually heard! Unfortunately, however, as mealtimes grew to be sunnier and sunnier occasions, the atmosphere around the head of the table grew darker and darker and frostier and frostier, like a storm cloud building up over the North Pole.
This worried Emily, but
