The shop was dark but headlights flashed by out on Wisconsin Avenue,
glaring over the meager display of objects in Mr. Wicker's window.
There seemed even fewer objects than before, Chris thought, for the
carved figure of the Nubian boy was gone, and so was the coil of dusty
rope. The ship in the glass bottle was still there, however.
Mr. Wicker went forward in the darkness and leaning over, took up the
bottle with care from where it had lain for so many years, dusted and
polished only by the loving eyes of a boy who had often pressed his
nose against the Georgian panes.
"You are to have this," Mr. Wicker said, putting the bottle with its
delicate contents in both Chris's hands. "Both Ned and I would like to
know that it is yours."
He turned to put his hand on the doorknob. Chris found his voice.
"What about the job, sir?" he broke out. "Can Jakey Harris apply for
it?"
Mr. Wicker smiled, and it was strange, in that dim room inconsistently
lit by the lights of passing cars, Mr. Wicker looked exactly like a
venerable, wizened old man, when Chris knew perfectly well he was not.
It's peculiar, he thought, the tricks your eyes play on you. Guess I'm
tired.
"Jakey Harris for the job?" Mr. Wicker remarked, "Why no--there is no
job to fill. You filled it, Christopher!"
[Illustration]
And all at once, without any good-bye, Chris found himself outside on
the top step. The din of cars and honking horns rushed at him like a
gape-mouthed monster; the drumming whine and roar from the freeway
shook the ground, and up ahead the lights of the People's Drugstore
looked garish but friendly. Across the way as he turned to go home,
Chris glanced at the two tumbledown storehouses opposite, the winch
and tackle broken, and panes of glass missing from the windows.
As he reached the corner of Wisconsin and M Street, Mike rushed
breathlessly up.
"Hey! Here I am! Not much later than I said I'd be, either! What you
got?" he asked, falling into step beside Chris and looking down at the
bottle.
"Mr. Wicker gave it to me," Chris replied in a colorless voice.
"What for?"
"I dunno. Guess he didn't need it."
A silence fell, and then Mike said as they passed the strong light of
a shop window, returning down bustling M Street toward 28th: "Say--you
been running--or sitting by a fire? You look almost sunburnt. And
look--"
They stopped dead while Mike put a grubby forefinger on a mark on
Chris's jaw. "I never noticed that before. It shows up white an'
plain. Must have been a pretty deep cut ya had there!"
For the first time in what felt like hours, Chris smiled, and the
smile became a grin.
"It sure was!" he said reminiscently.
"Oh--an' by the way," Mike said much farther along as he left Chris to
go on to his own house, "your Aunt Rachel called my ma and told her
your mother was so much better she could come home soon. Seems that
your father's on his way back too." He walked off and then turned to
call from a quarter-block away, "Bet you'll be glad to have your own
folks at home?"
Chris's grin deepened but he did not reply, nor even wave, for fear of
dropping the bottle.
N Street, then Dumbarton Avenue, dropped behind him, and he came to
Happy's Grocery with the bookshop on the opposite corner. He stood
looking at his lighted windows, the lighted windows of his house,
remembering a time when he and Amos had seen only a wooded ridge and a
burnt-out campfire.
Something stirred in his mind, and after finding the front door
unlatched, he eased himself in and up the stairs as quietly as he
could. He did not want to face his Aunt Rachel for a few minutes
longer.
In his own room he shut the door and carefully lifted the _Mirabelle_
in its bottle to the place of honor on top of his chest of drawers.
Then he stood looking at his reflection in the small mirror hung askew
near the window.
He looked the same--well, not quite. The tiny scar was there, to prove
it was not a dream, and he quickly undid his shirt, and pulling it
off, got up on a chair to peer over his shoulder to see how his back
looked in the square of glass.
A whiplash like a long clean briar tear lay across his shoulders, and
as he looked, he almost felt again the searing cut.
Chris grinned, buttoning up his shirt. Then it had been no dream, no
childish imagining.
A voice soared up the stairs. "Chris! Chris darling? Are you home?"
Aunt Rachel had news for him of his mother's imminent return.
Chris opened his bedroom door, pulling out from his pocket the first
thing his fingers hit on, and as he went downstairs whistling,
"Farewell and Adieu, to you Spanish Ladies," he tossed and caught, and
tossed and caught again, an old silver button burnt black in a fire.
* * * * *
$3.25
_Mr. Wicker's Window_
_by_
Carley Dawson
When twelve-year-old Chris entered Mr. Wicker's shop to inquire about
a job for his friend, something about old Mr. Wicker forced him to
take the job himself. Chris found himself the pupil of Mr. Wicker, not
the old man he first saw, but a powerful man in his forties--a
magician. Chris learned how to turn himself into a fish, a bird, a
fly, and with a magic rope he learned to make a boat or even an
elephant.
Chris had been chosen to sail to China on a mysterious mission. Long
before he sailed, Chris met the enemies who would try and stop
him--evil Claggett Chew, the dandy Osterbridge Hawsey, the treacherous
old beggar Simon Gosler. With a Nubian boy Chris brought to life with
magic, he set out on his hazardous voyage.
Carley Dawson writes beautifully, combining fact and fantasy with
skill. Her characters are lifelike and vivid, and the plot of this,
her first book, is fantastically exciting and exceptionally
outstanding. With power and imagination Lynd Ward has illustrated the
book with over eighty drawings in two colors.
_Illustrated by_
Lynd Ward
* * * * *
Johnny Tremain
_By Esther Forbes_
Illustrated by
_Lynd Ward_
"If Jonathan Lyte Tremain never lived in the flesh, he lives vividly
with the men of his time in this book. So we dare to put him among the
people of importance.
"He is a boy, an apprentice to a silver-smith in Boston, when we meet
him just before the American Revolution. Casting the handle of a sugar
basin for John Hancock, he seriously burns his right hand. He is
crippled, the work that he loves must be given up--forever. Johnny
goes through some hard and bitter times before he finds his work in
the struggle that is to free the Colonies from British rule. The
solution comes through the young printer, who likes Johnny and
befriends him. Rab, too, is a 'person of importance.'...
"This story of Johnny Tremain is almost uncanny in its 'aliveness.'
Esther Forbes's power to create, and to recreate, a face, a voice, a
scene takes us as living spectators to the Boston Tea Party, to the
Battles of Lexington and of North Creek. It takes us, with Johnny, to
the secret meetings of the Sons of Liberty, to the secret training of
the Minute Men...."
_Saturday Review of Literature_
$3.00
* * * * *