The Middle Moffat (8 page)

"What book did you take, mysterious middle Moffat?" he asked her.

Jane showed him her book. She saw for the first time it was called
The Story of Lumber.

"H-m-m-m,
The Story of Lumber...
very mystifying," he said, and he put his forefinger on the side of his nose like Hawkshaw, the detective.

Jane played her part, too; then she backed out on tiptoes, waving a reassuring good-bye to Miss Lamb, the librarian, who watched her with a truly mystified expression.

Jane read
The Story of Lumber
as rapidly as possible. It was not very interesting. But if she were going to read every book in the library, she would have to take the bad along with the good. She brought
The Story of Lumber
back the next day and took the next book. The oldest inhabitant was sitting in the same place by the window. His soft white hair shone in the sunshine.

Again Jane showed him the new book she had borrowed and saw with a trace of dismay that this one was called
The Story of Cotton.

"
The Story of Cotton...
more mystifying than ever," whispered Mr. Buckle.

Jane played Hawkshaw a trifle absentmindedly. She sat down on the granite steps outside the library and read for a while. This book also was far from interesting. Evidently she had chosen the wrong section to begin on. Where were all the books like
Heidi?
Still, if she read the bad ones first, the good ones would be like dessert.

When she brought back
The Story of Cotton
and saw that the next book was
The Story of Sugar,
she decided to try something different. She still planned to read every book in the library, but she would take the best ones first. Then, by the time she finished all the good ones, she would be such a good reader she could just tear through things like
The Story of Sugar
in a few minutes.

She chose a bound volume of
St. Nicholas
magazine. This was full of good things. As she left the library, she met Mr. Buckle coming up the granite steps. He was supporting himself by means of the brass railing.

"Hello, Mr. Buckle," said Jane. "I am going to read every book in the library," she added, feeling exuberant again now that she had something good.

Mr. Buckle nodded his head up and down, beaming. He was out of breath and he was hanging on to the brass railing.

"Is it cheating," Jane demanded, "if I don't read every word in this big book? It's not really a book. It's a lot of magazines."

"Did you say to yourself, 'I am going to read every book and every magazine'?"

"No ... every book."

"Well, then, it's not cheating."

"But maybe a whole lot of magazines together makes a book."

"It is very mystifying," agreed Mr. Buckle, "but I think once a magazine, always a magazine."

Jane ran home the long way, so she could race the trolley car to Ashbellows Place. She was a good runner and almost always beat the trolley to her corner. Running around to the backyard and climbing onto the high board fence, she peered through the apple trees. She hoped that Nancy Stokes would have come home from her piano lesson by now. But Nancy was nowhere in sight. She must have had to go somewhere with her mother.

So Jane went around front and sat down on the little square porch to read her
St. Nicholas.
The first story began, "In the middle of the night..."

In the middle of the night ... It reminded Jane of her own position in the Moffat family. It was now definitely established that she was the middle Moffat. Mama introduced her as "Jane, the middle Moffat" not only to the Gillespie girls but also to the new curate of the church, for whom she was making vestments and cassocks.

Of course, the only person to whom she had made that mistake about being the mysterious middle Moffat was Mr. Buckle. And, as it turned out, this had not proved to be such a grave error anyway. In fact, he seemed to enjoy the game of Hawkshaw, the detective, very much. And if he liked it, and he was the oldest inhabitant and the most important person in the town, it certainly had not done any harm, this calling herself the mysterious middle Moffat. It might even, by keeping him in such good spirits, help him live to be one hundred.

Jane was doing all she could about that. For instance, she sometimes followed him from a distance to see that he crossed the street safely and that no dogs jumped out at him unexpectedly and made him lose his balance. Whenever she heard of a new family moving to Cranbury, she checked up immediately to find out how old the oldest person in that family was. When she found that there was no one ninety-nine or over, she quickly told Mr. Buckle so he would know he was still the oldest inhabitant in town.

Janey tried to be nearby whenever the oldest inhabitant was shuffling past the firehouse, because the Cranbury fire alarm was the loudest in the whole state. What a blast when it went off! And it was so sudden! There was no warning at all. Jane always said politely when she joined him here, "Don't we have the loudest fire alarm here in Cranbury?" This was just to remind him to be on guard and steel himself in case it blew.

Yes, she was doing everything she could to help him reach one hundred. Just this afternoon, running home from the library, she had kicked aside a fallen branch, a broken bottle, an orange peel, so the way would be clear when Mr. Buckle came home. She even occasionally carried around an old umbrella so that he would not get caught in the rain. Of course, she could not spend her whole time this way, but she did as much as she could.

Once, she had seen Mr. Buckle go out and she had followed at a distance with the Moffats' big old umbrella. She really thought it might rain, because the sparrows were chattering in the big elm tree in front of the house. Somebody told her once this was a sure sign of rain. When she reached the Green, there he was blowing cotton to the birds. Puffs of cotton on the grass looked like dandelions gone to seed.

Just as Janey arrived, the sky actually, all of a sudden, did turn black all over. The rain came marching up the street. She reached the oldest inhabitant and opened the umbrella over his head just as the big drops started to fall on his side of the street.

"This is very mysterious," he said, "your being on hand with the umbrella." And they had walked home together in the rain.

Now, while Jane was rocking back and forth in the green rocker, and reading her
St. Nicholas
magazine, a fog began to roll in from the Sound. Jane looked up from her book. A fog! And it seemed to be growing thicker and thicker. She put her book down and watched it roll in. Soon she could hardly see the lot across the street. This was going to be a really heavy fog, perhaps as good a fog as they had in London.

She ran down the steps and up and down the Moffats' long lawn trying to separate the fog, as though it were a gauzy curtain. Then she could see what was going on in the world. As she reached the sidewalk, she slipped on some damp autumn leaves and ran into Miss Buckle, the daughter of the oldest inhabitant, who caught her in her arms.

"Goodness, Jane. What a start you gave me. I'm afraid I'm going to be late to P'fessor Fairweather's Browning Society ... Good-bye, child."

And she set Jane firmly on the walk. Jane watched the oldest inhabitant's daughter disappear in the fog. P'fessor Fairweather ... Jane liked the way she said that. She never said
Professor
Fairweather. Just P'fessor Fairweather, very fast. That was nice, the way she talked. Everything she said sounded so important.

Well! Miss Buckle was going to the Browning Society, leaving the oldest inhabitant all alone. Jane hoped he had gotten home from the library in the fog safely. Supposing some witch who was exactly one hundred was jealous of him and had snatched him down under the squash vines that grew so thickly all over one corner of the lot. That's the way it might be if this were a fairy tale and not Ashbellows Place. However, fairy tale or not, she decided to spend the afternoon with the oldest inhabitant so he would not be tempted to go out in the fog.

Once the oldest inhabitant had said to her:

"Come in and see my chicken-bone furniture someday."