Peppermints in the Parlor

much pleasanter than the last. Emily had two lemon tarts and a chocolate cream eclair, and she and Mrs. Plumly talked and talked. They talked only about Emily’s past, however, about her friend Theodora, her dear housekeeper Mrs. Leslie, and of course about Mama and Papa. They even laughed and giggled like schoolgirls together when Emily told of some of her pranks as a small girl, like the time she had hidden Mama’s silver thimble. It had seemed so naughty then! Before Emily knew it, she had finished two cups of tea, was allowing a third to be poured, and had lost all track of time.

She might have stayed there the day if the doleful grandfather clock had not warned from the dining room that it was already eleven, and she had not even begun her chores. With a start, she jumped up from her chair. And it was at that exact moment that the door flew open, and Mrs. Meeching stood there!

“So this is what happens when I’m away, Mrs. Plumly!” Her face was contorted with pale rage.

Mrs. Plumly began to tremble violently. “I—I—”

“Silence! There is nothing you can say. Nothing! After all my kindness, all my generosity—entertaining this orphan brat no sooner I am out of sight.’ Mrs. Meeching turned to Emily and fixed her with a look of icy hatred. “Get out of my sight. Go to your room and stay there until you are sent for. Then you will see how those are dealt with who take advantage of their place in Sugar Hill Hall!”

With a shaking hand, Emily picked up her bucket and fled the room. When she heard the door slam behind her, it seemed to slam right on her breast, knocking out every last breath of air. That she herself might be punished, she had no doubt, but what, what would happen to Mrs. Plumly?

It was five terrible hours before an ashen-faced Aunt Twice appeared at the door to Emily’s cellar room to inform her that they were all wanted in the parlor by Mrs. Meeching. Her heart thumping with terror, Emily scurried up the stairs behind her deadly silent aunt. But whatever Emily expected to find when she reached her destination, nothing in her wildest imagination could have matched the scene that greeted her when she finally stepped into the parlor.

Directly in front of the peppermints now stood a long, thin table pointing into the room like a sharp, accusing finger. Huddled to one side of it stood Mrs. Poovey and Mrs. Loops, Mr. Bottle and Mr. Dobbs, Mrs. Middle and Mrs. Odd, Mr. Popple and Mr. Quish, Mrs. Apple and Mrs. Quirk, Mrs. Dolly and Mrs. Biggs, Mr. Flower and Mr. Figg, and in fact every one of the old people, all staring at the table as if their frightened eyes were nailed to it. At the head of the table, her back to the peppermints, stood Mrs. Meeching, flanked on one side by Tilly, and on the other by Mrs. Plumly, who was not knitting, but looked instead as if she had turned to stone.

On the table before Mrs. Meeching, displayed as if in evidence for a criminal trial, was a large brown bottle of fish syrup Emily had left for safekeeping in Mrs. Poovey’s and Mrs. Loops’s room. Beside it, looking lost and lonely on that long table, lay Mrs. Poovey’s cameo and Emily’s locket.

But there was a great deal more. There were Mrs. Poovey’s paints and her portrait of Clarabelle, Mrs.

Loops’s pen and ink and writing paper, Mr. Dobbs’s whittling knife and his small wood figure of a kitten, Mrs. Quirk’s wool and cross-stitched picture, plus more paints, wool, thread, wood, and all the other pitiful bits and pieces resembling Clarabelle that the old people had been working on so diligently. And there, dangling by the scruff of her tiny neck from Tilly’s rough hand, was Clarabelle herself!

So everything had been discovered. The eyes and ears of Sugar Hill Hall had done their work, and the one to be blamed for it all was Mrs. Plumly. Was it possible that her other terrible secret, the one guarded so carefully by both Mrs. Plumly and Aunt Twice, had been discovered as well?

For a few moments after Aunt Twice and Emily arrived, a deathly silence hung over the parlor. Then Mrs. Meeching’s bloodless, pinched nose flared slightly, releasing one hiss of air for the benefit of all assembled, and her thin lips began to move.

“So you all thought you could get away with something, eh? Well, as you can see, you weren’t nearly so clever as you thought. My walls have eyes, you know.” As if to make certain no one missed this point, Mrs. Meeching’s own eyes narrowed to cruel slits. “I thought you had all learned that here you do as I say, and no use complaining about it to anyone else. You are all only shadows, you know. Nobody sees you or thinks about you, especially the people who have brought you here. They see you even less than anyone else, because they don’t want to see you. And not wanting to see is the most effective kind of blindness, don’t you know?”

Mrs. Meeching paused to fix each old resident of Sugar Hill Hall with a piercing stare. “So in the end, if you wish to complain, you had better complain to me.” This said with all the sincere feeling of a rattlesnake. “As to the matter of punishment, you should all be thrown into the Remembrance Room for these crimes. Because there is one among you, however, whose crimes are so much greater than all the rest, you will be pleased to know that she will pay for all of you.” At this, Mrs. Meeching suddenly drew herself up into a tight tower of rage. Her thin lips gripped her bony teeth, and her eyes became pinpoints of hatred.

“It is the person,” she spit out, “who sneaked this cat into the attics of Sugar Hill Hall