This is a retelling of a traditional folktale, sometimes called Button Soup and sometimes Stone Soup. The basic story is the same, but sometimes, it uses a stone and sometimes a button. All of the characters in this particular version of the story are represented by Disney characters.
Scrooge McDuck’s niece, Daisy, is coming to visit him. The Sheriff welcomes her when her stagecoach comes into town, but seeing how tired and hungry she is, he warns her that she’s not going to find much comfort at her uncle’s house because Scrooge is stingy. However, Daisy says that she is sure she can handle Uncle Scrooge.
When she gets to Scrooge’s house, he’s not happy to see what he has unexpected company and tries to deny that he has any food to share. Daisy knows that Scrooge isn’t really that poor, so she takes out a big pot and begins making soup. Scrooge asks her what she’s planning to cook without food, and Daisy claims that she can make a whole pot of soup with just one button.
Scrooge is curious to see what Daisy’s button soup is like, so when she asks him for a little salt and pepper, he gives it to her. Then, she says that she once made the soup with an old soup bone, and Scrooge gives her a soup bone, too.
Each time that Daisy suggests another ingredient, Scrooge rushes to get it for her, eager to see what Daisy will do with the soup, which smells better and better as they go. (The pictures also show just how much food Scrooge is hiding. In reality, most of that would spoil before he could use it all, since he’s only feeding himself.)
When the soup is ready, Daisy points out that there is more than they’ll ever eat, so they should invite some other people to share it. Scrooge wants to save the soup in jars instead, but Daisy points out that it’s easy to make more because they did it with just one button.
They end up inviting the whole town to share the soup, and Scrooge is pleased that he has such a clever niece.
This book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive along with other versions of the story.
This story is fascinating and magical, partly because of other the stories that it reminds me of and partly because, at various points in the story, I was pretty sure that I knew what kind of book it was going to be, but I was never more than partly correct.
When young Cory Winterslow arrives at the airport in California, she expects to be met by her Uncle Dirk. Uncle Dirk has sent her letters before and a picture of himself, but they’ve never actually met in person. Cory is supposed to be spending Easter vacation with her relatives, the Van Heusens, a wealthy family living on an estate called Tarnhelm. Her mother, Stephanie, sent a telegram to the Van Heusens to tell them when Cory would arrive on the plane from New York, where they’ve been living, but no one shows up to meet Cory at the airport. This seems almost like the beginning of a gothic novel, with a young heroine on her way to meet people she’s never met who turn out to not really be expecting her and aren’t what they appear to be, but that’s not really the case here.
Fortunately, a sympathetic older woman who was also on the plane, Mrs. Smallwood, talks to Cory, who explains the situation. Mrs. Smallwood knows the Van Heusens, and she calls both the house at Tarnhelm and Uncle Dirk’s office. Apparently, Uncle Dirk never mentioned to his secretary that he needed to meet anyone that day, and he’s away on business until late. Nobody is home at Tarnhelm, but Mrs. Smallwood is optimistic that it’s all just an oversight. She says that she’ll give Cory a ride to the house. Cory is hesitant to accept a ride from a stranger because she and Mrs. Smallwood have only just met, but it’s raining and she doesn’t know what else to do, so she goes with her. This part seems a bit worrying, but you don’t have to worry because it’s not a kidnapping story.
On the way to Tarnhelm, Mrs. Smallwood points out local sights, and Cory asks her a bit about her relatives. Cory’s mother has always been reluctant to talk about her relatives in California. Mrs. Smallwood describes Uncle Dirk as a young man who never smiles. She says that his mother, Cory’s grandmother, as a high society woman who sometimes acknowledges acquaintances in public and sometimes doesn’t, depending on her mood, something that often offends Mrs. Smallwood, as one of those acquaintances. They also pick up a boy called Peter Hawthorne, who was out walking in the rain and needed a ride. He introduces himself to Cory as the president of the Explorers Club. His description of Cory’s Uncle Dirk doesn’t sound very favorable, either. However, he mentions that the sign for the mansion at Tarnhelm has a unicorn on it, just like the unicorn on the pendant that Cory wears, which she thinks of as her “amulet”, and Cory takes that as a hopeful sign.
Unfortunately, the Smallwoods’ car runs out of gas. Since it’s not raining anymore, Peter offers to walk Cory the rest of the way to Tarnhelm. Then, it starts to rain again, so they take shelter in a cave that Peter knows. While they wait out the storm, Peter asks Cory more about herself. Cory explains that she usually refers to her mother as “Stephanie” because she’s actually adopted. She later reveals that she doesn’t know anything about her birth parents because Stephanie doesn’t like to talk about them, saying that it makes her sad. Stephanie is an actress, and they’ve had to move around sometimes. Because she’s had to switch schools several times, Cory hasn’t made many friends her own age. Cory doesn’t always go with Stephanie when she travels for work, often staying at home with housekeepers (which she calls “lady-helps”) so she can continue going to school. Stephanie isn’t married, so Cory doesn’t have a father to take care of her. The reason why she has come to stay with her relatives during this school break is that Stephanie needs to travel again for her work and couldn’t manage to find new help to stay with Cory. This is the first mention that Cory’s “mother” isn’t really her mother and these relatives that she’s going to visit aren’t blood relatives. This is central to the plot of the book, but there’s a twist coming, and it’s not the twist that I expected. I had theories about the identities of Cory’s biological parents at this point that turned out to be completely wrong.
When the rain lets up a bit, Peter takes Cory the rest of the way to the house, although they leave her luggage in the cave because it’s too hard to carry it over the muddy ground. When they arrive at the house, the housekeeper, Fergie, welcomes Cory. She says that everyone has been in a tizzy about her because Stephanie actually sent multiple telegrams with different sets of instructions for picking up Cory, so nobody knew when she was really arriving. (This is the first indication that Stephanie is unreliable.) Fergie and her husband, Andrew Ferguson, both work for the Van Heusens, and they make Cory feel welcome at Tarnhelm, fussing over her and giving her and Peter a hot dinner. However, they tell Cory not to mention the cave to her grandmother because she wouldn’t understand, and she might be unhappy about Cory showing up at the house wet and muddy. Peter promises to bring Cory’s luggage up to the house later. If this were a gothic novel style of story, the servants would be strict, unhappy, uncaring, or putting on a facade of caring while being just plain sinister, but the Fergusons are exactly as caring and friendly as they seem to be. This isn’t that kind of book.
The Fergusons are Scottish and a bit superstitious. At dinner, they notice that Cory is left-handed, “cawry-fisted”, as they call it. Peter is intrigued that “cawry” sounds like “Cory”, and the Fergusons say that there’s a superstition that left-handed people are enchanted or bewitched. However, the Fergusons don’t think it’s a bad thing that Cory is left-handed and possibly bewitched; it’s just more of an interesting idea to them. This story isn’t as supernatural as I originally expected.
The Fergusons tell Cory that her grandmother and uncle are good, kind people, but they aren’t used to children and are fussy about some things. Uncle Dirk is known to be moody, and Cory’s grandmother likes things quiet and orderly. Cory starts to think that she might be happier with just the Fergusons, although she is still curious about her relatives. She hopes that they will like her, and maybe if they like her enough, they’ll let her stay longer so she can go to Peter’s school and join his Explorers Club because she badly wants friends. Issues about how to make friends add an element of teen drama to the story, but there’s more going on here than that.
The house is beautiful and charming, and Fergie gives Cory Stephanie’s old room, which Cory loves. It has beautiful, old-fashioned furniture and its own fireplace! She also shows Cory a collection of carved wooden masks hanging on the walls of the hallways that her Uncle Dirk made. Uncle Dirk is an architect, but he’s also been a wood carver. In Stephanie’s room, there is even a mask of Stephanie’s face, which Cory recognizes. During the night, she half wakes up and is aware of her grandmother and Uncle Dirk in her room, whispering about her, saying that she looks rather plain and something about somebody “getting used to” something. They don’t deny this conversion later when Cory asks them about it, and there is less sinister significance to it than it seems at first.
The next morning, Cory meets her grandmother and Uncle Dirk at breakfast. They greet her politely, but her grandmother says that she wants to have a word with Peter about how he should have taken her to his house until the rain stopped, not made her walk through the mud to Tarnhelm, ruining her shoes. Cory asks her not to say anything to Peter because she really wants to join the Explorers, and they wouldn’t let her in if they thought that she was afraid of a little mud. However, her grandmother reminds her that she’s only there for a short visit, and she doesn’t want her getting hurt or doing anything dangerous. Uncle Dirk is more sympathetic and offers to teach her to swim.
Mrs. Van Heusen brings up the subject of Stephanie, and during the conversion, she lets slip that Stephanie has never legally adopted Cory. Now, we’re getting to a major plot point of the story! Stephanie is consumed by her acting work and not good with paperwork, and Mrs. Van Heusen thinks it’s about time that she took care of the issue of Cory’s legal adoption. The news comes as a shock to Cory, who thinks that, not being legally adopted, she doesn’t really belong to the family at Tarnhelm. Both her grandmother and Uncle Dirk hurriedly reassure her that she is family to them and belongs at Tarnhelm and that the official paperwork doesn’t really make a difference to them. There is no danger in the story of Cory being rejected by this family, and they don’t have any objection to her visit or Stephanie’s guardianship of her. However, this is another of the early indications that Stephanie is not as attentive as she should be as Cory’s guardian and that there are aspects of Cory’s life and well-being that are being neglected. Cory is starting to develop a new awareness of these issues.
Cory asks her grandmother and Uncle Dirk about her birth parents because Stephanie has never explained who they were or what happened to them. Her grandmother says that it’s only right that she knows and that Stephanie really should have told her before. Uncle Dirk explains to Cory that her parents’ names were Lawrence and Coralie Winterslow and that they were friends of Stephanie’s when they were young, before they were even married. They all liked to go skiing together. Cory’s parents lived in England for awhile after they were married, and Cory was actually born in London. Then, her parents were killed in a skiing accident in Switzerland. Stephanie had been with them on that skiing trip, and before Cory’s mother died from her injuries, she asked Stephanie to take three-year-old Cory because she had no living relatives on her father’s side and she didn’t want to leave her child with her own relatives, for some reason. Cory is glad to know the story of her parents but sad at the same time and worried about not being legally adopted. Fergie suggests to her that she write to Stephanie about it and see what she says. (At first, I was expecting that there would be more intrigue about Cory’s parents’ deaths, but there’s nothing suspicious about their cause of death. The story that Uncle Dirk tells Cory is exactly what happened. The Winterslows were also definitely Cory’s biological parents. I thought that there might be some intrigue about that, but her birth parents were who Uncle Dirk says they were.)
Later, Cory also asks Uncle Dirk about the unicorn on the sign at Tarnhelm and about her own silver unicorn pendant. Uncle Dirk tells her that he has a fascination for British history and heraldry, which is why he carved the unicorn as the symbol of Tarnhelm. He also says that the pendant used to belong to Cory’s mother and that her father had a matching unicorn tie pin, although he doesn’t know what happened to it after his death. Cory wishes that she’d thought to ask Stephanie about it in her letter.
All of this explanation about Cory’s parents’ history sounds pretty straight-forward, although sad. However, the story doesn’t end there. Everyone has a history, and there are things about her Uncle Dirk that Cory doesn’t know yet as well as the reasons why Stephanie has never completed Cory’s adoption papers.
Cory becomes sick and feverish, spending a few days in bed. During this time, she has strange dreams, but not all of them are actually dreams. She remembers dreaming about a room with a chess set that has carved unicorns instead of horses as the knight pieces. Later, when Uncle Dirk plays chess with her, with a normal chess set, she mentions this dream, and both Uncle Dirk and her grandmother act strangely about it. Eventually, Cory comes to realize that her “dream” wasn’t just a dream, that she actually did get out of bed and wander around while she was feverish, but it takes some time before the full meaning of the chess set becomes clear to her.
Various people comment to Cory about Uncle Dirk’s moods and personality, hinting at past problems he’s had. Cory’s grandmother makes a comment to Cory about Uncle Dirk harming himself more than anyone else, except perhaps for one person, hinting at relationship troubles in Uncle Dirk’s past that contribute to his dark moods. Nosy Mrs. Smallwood also refers to the strange behavior of the Van Heusen family, often rude and unfriendly. While Mrs. Smallwood is a busy-body with issues of her own, she is correct in noticing the casual harm that various members of the Van Heusen family have done to people around them. It’s never intentional and they rarely notice the consequences of what they do, but that’s part of the problem. The Van Heusens are often selfish, thoughtless, and out-of-touch with other people’s feelings and the effects of their actions on others. Even Uncle Dirk acknowledges that members of the family are often hard on each other even when they care about one another.
However, the Van Heusens aren’t all bad, and some of them have changed somewhat over time. Mr. Smallwood, who is a more optimistic and level-headed person than his wife, tells Cory that his wife likes to live in the past, and while Uncle Dirk was a rather thoughtless young man who wouldn’t have made a good husband, he’s grown up since then. He says that Uncle Dirk has become friendlier and more thoughtful toward others, in spite of his occasional dark moods. But, since Uncle Dirk has never been married, what did Mr. Smallwood mean about him not making a good husband?
On the grounds of the Van Heusens’ estate, Cory spots what looks like the foundations of a house that was started to be built but never completed. Peter says that he and the other Explorers sometimes play around these foundations. Cory wonders who was planning to build a house there and why they never finished it. Uncle Dirk gets angry when he catches Cory and Peter snooping around the tower at Tarnhelm, where he keeps some of his old wood-carving things and where Peter finds some mysterious poetry.
Peter later takes Cory to visit Laurel Woodford, a young woman Cory met on the beach earlier, who helped Cory find her necklace when she lost it. Laurel is a weaver. Laurel lives by herself, but she says that she isn’t lonely because she has plenty of things to do that keep her busy. However, there is a kind of sadness about Laurel, and she has secrets of her own. She knows the Van Heusen family herself, and it wasn’t a happy experience for her.
Slowly, without Cory really doing any intentional investigating, the pieces of the past start coming together – Uncle Dirk, a marriage that didn’t take place, a house that wasn’t completed … and two identical unicorn pendants.
The story is haunting and magical, but not because of an real spells or magic. The only ghosts are the ghosts of the past. The book reminds me of a couple of other books that I’ve read, but explaining which ones involves some spoilers. I don’t mind giving spoilers for this story because I haven’t found a copy of this book that’s available to read online, and it’s something of a collector’s item now, with copies typically costing at least $20 and frequently more, although it’s sometimes possible to find one for less.
My Thoughts and A Few Spoilers
One of the interesting things about this book is that it reminds me of other books that I’ve read and liked. Some children’s books are mentioned in the course of the story because Cory likes to read, like The Five Little Peppers and How They Grewand The Story of the Amulet, but these aren’t the books that the story reminds me of.
Throughout the book, the Fergusons use various Scottish words and phrases, sometimes singing old songs or quoting from poems. Mrs. Van Heusen says that she particularly likes the Fergusons because her family was also from Scotland, and they remind her of her youth, which is a comfort to her. The Scottish element and the young orphan learning to make friends and become close to a new family remind me of Mystery on the Isle of Skye, although that book was actually set in Scotland. The books also have a similar feel in the way they approach the element of mystery in the story and the element of “magic” and “spells” that aren’t really magic spells. Both books have an enchanting quality to them, but it’s because of the atmosphere of the stories, not because there’s any actual magic.
During the course of the story, Cory learns more about what it takes to make friends. Peter realizes that Cory isn’t particularly good at making friends and confronts her about the reasons why. It’s partly because Cory has had to change school multiple times, but Peter has also noticed that Cory always waits for other people to approach her with offers of friendship and invitations to join in. If they don’t, she just feels hurt and left out instead of voicing her desire to join in. Even when she gets an invitation, her impulse is to reject it if she thinks it was only offered out of pity. Peter finds it annoying that Cory seems to need people to practically beg her to be their friend and join in activities. It reminds Cory of advice that Stephanie has tried to offer her before that she should just join in and not worry or assume that people don’t want her around. Even Fergie told her that if she wants to make friends, she’ll have to drop her pride, meaning that she’ll have to learn to make the first move and approach other people instead of waiting for them to come to her. This criticism is partly true, but Cory’s experience of life is that many of the things she wants also depend on the decisions of other people, and Peter comes to rethink some of what he said when some of his friends are less than accepting of Cory. It isn’t nice to be invited into a place where you aren’t really made to feel welcome and accepted. This is also a fitting description of Cory’s life with Stephanie, being largely raised by her hired help.
When Cory finally receives Stephanie’s reply to her letter, Stephanie’s selfishness and detachment from Cory’s life become increasingly apparent. Cory shares the letter with her grandmother and Fergie and outright asks her grandmother if she can stay in California. Her grandmother asks her if she won’t miss Stephanie because Stephanie is the only mother she’s known since she was little, but Cory says she won’t because Stephanie is gone so much and busy with her acting, leaving her with hired help. Fergie, while being hired help herself, is more maternal and says that situation is unacceptable, but Cory’s grandmother says that she’s not sure that she’s up to raising another child, that she’s old and wants her peace and quiet now. Even while Cory’s grandmother knows that her daughter is self-centered, she has a kind of self-centeredness of her own. When her grandmother gets dramatic about the worry Cory puts her through when she’s running around the caves with her friends, Cory realizes that Stephanie has been imitating her during her dramatic acts.
Cory begins to get the answers about her past and Uncle Dirk’s when Peter shares some treasure with her that he and other members of the Explorers have found and are hiding in a cave on the Van Heusens’ property. This treasure is part of the reason why some of the other Explorers have been less than welcoming to Cory, not wanting to share it and their secret hiding place with her. They’re worried that she’ll give their secrets away to the Van Heusens, and then, they’ll lose their treasure and their secret hiding place. However, among their treasures is a carved wooden box that Peter found, and it looks like Uncle Dirk’s carving work. Cory points out that the carved wooden box probably belongs to Uncle Dirk, and since it was on the Van Heusen land, he probably hid it in the cave himself. Peter, as the finder of the box, lets Cory have it to return to Uncle Dirk.
In the box, Cory finds four colorful feathers, four pretty seashells, a poem about an angry quarrel signed with the initials “L.W.”, a carved wooden bracelet, a woman’s scarf, and a small silver pendant that is identical to the one that Cory wears. However, the back of this particular unicorn has a rough spot where it used to be mounted on something else, and Cory realizes that this is the one from the tie pin that Uncle Dirk told her about, turned into a necklace. From these pieces, Cory begins to realize that the contents of the box are Laurel’s – her initials on the poem and a necklace made for her that Cory thinks must have come from her father. If that’s true, Cory thinks Laurel must be some kind of relation to her.
Cory also explores the room off the tower in Tarnhelm that contains the amazing chess set with the unicorn knights, and now that she’s no longer sick, she sees that the room also holds other furniture that Uncle Dirk made. Uncle Dirk was the person who started to have the house built, and he was making furniture to go in the house, but for some reason, he stopped and stored the furniture away because there was no new house to put it in. There are also carved masks of Laurel in the room.
Early in the morning, Cory decides to go see Laurel about what she’s found, knowing that if she waits, she’ll miss her because she’s about to leave on a trip. When Cory shows her the box that she’s found and asks her about the unicorn pendant and whether or not they’re related, Laurel tells her that they’re not related but that the unicorn did come from her father’s tie pin. Like my earlier theories, Cory’s theories about Laurel are partly right and partly wrong. After Cory’s parents died, Stephanie sorted through their belongings. She gave the little unicorn necklace to Cory, and she gave Cory’s father’s tie pin to her brother, Dirk. After Dirk got the unicorn tie pin, he had it made into a necklace for Laurel.
Laurel explains that, about seven years earlier, she and Dirk got engaged while they were still in college. However, Dirk was very spoiled by his mother after his sister left home and went to New York to do her acting. He was a very talented wood-carver and looked at himself as an artist who would never have to earn a living because his mother was very wealthy, and she encouraged him in his art. Dirk wanted to drop out of college and just spend his time doing wood carving, without caring much whether he ever made any money at it. Laurel argued with him about it because she didn’t like the idea of living on Mrs. Van Heusen’s money, and she broke off the engagement. Looking back on it, Laurel regrets doing that. She finished college and could have worked to support herself and Dirk independently, just as she’s been supporting herself these last several years, ironically with an art of her own, and with Dirk’s talent at carving, he might have ended up making money at his art anyway, doing something he really loved to do.
It was all about pride. Laurel was too proud to rely on Mrs. Van Heusen, who was happy to support her son’s art, and Dirk was both proud and spoiled and wanted everything his own way on his say-so without working things out with Laurel. Dirk was being a little selfish, but Laurel comes to realize that she was a bit selfish too because she refused to acknowledge how important Dirk’s art was to him and wanted him to be something else. At one point, Laurel wanted to make up with Dirk and talk things out, but he ignored her and refused to talk to her. She got so mad that she left the box of treasures in the cave where she and Dirk used to play as children and threw the engagement ring in the ocean. Since that time, she and Dirk haven’t been able to talk to each other, even though they both wanted to. Dirk gave up the woodcarving that he loved because it was a painful reminder of the reason why he and Laurel broke up. Instead, he went back to college and became an architect so he would have a profession of his own. However, he is given to dark moods because he misses both Laurel and his woodcarving and doesn’t know what to do about it.
The situation gets straightened out when Dirk, realizing that Cory is missing from the house and that fog is coming in, goes to Laurel’s house to make sure that Cory is safe with her. The three of them talk things over, and Dirk asks Cory to give him some time to talk to Laurel alone. Dirk and Laurel make up, and Laurel agrees to marry Dirk as they planned, on the condition that they both adopt Cory because she’s come to love Cory as a niece. Cory is overjoyed to hear the news, and Dirk plans to begin construction on the house that they’d started years before.
The story of the lovers parted by a prideful quarrel and the unicorns that bind them together reminded me of The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge.
There is a scene when Stephanie shows up to claim Cory and take her back to New York, but the family talk it out with her. Stephanie admits that she took Cory partly because that was her promise to her old friend and partly out of guilt because the skiing trip where Cory’s parents were killed had been her idea. Mrs. Van Heusen tells her not to blame herself because she couldn’t have known what was going to happen and Cory’s parents chose to come on the trip with her. Stephanie further admits that she didn’t legally adopt Cory because she was aware that her lifestyle wasn’t particularly suited to bringing up a child, although she’s done her best, and because she knew that Cory did have other relatives. She doesn’t quite admit that she was hoping that one of these other relatives might take her someday, but she gives that impression. Cory’s relatives on her mother’s side haven’t tried to claim her because her grandmother on that side of the family was too old to look after her, and her aunt already had a large family and not much money. Stephanie loves Cory, even though she doesn’t really know how to raise a child and has found it difficult to care for her, and she feels betrayed at first when Cory says that she’d rather stay with Dirk and Laurel. However, Stephanie later apologizes to Cory for making a scene about it because it really would be better for everyone if Cory stayed in California, where she would have a stable life and Stephanie wouldn’t have to worry about her. Stephanie returns to New York on her own, and Cory tells Peter that she’s going to stay in California. Peter and the other Explorers welcome her into their club. Now that Cory knows that she’s going to be staying, everyone feels more like she truly belongs.
The Wicked, Wicked Ladies in the Haunted House by Mary Chase, 1968.
Nine-year-old Maureen Swanson has a bad reputation in her neighborhood, mostly deserved. The other kids don’t like her because she tells lies and picks fights with them. Maureen is fascinated by an old, abandoned house in her neighborhood where the wealthy Messerman family used to live. Sometimes she likes to pretend that she lives there herself.
One day, while trying to avoid
punishment for her latest antics, she finds her way inside the Messerman
estate. There, she meets a little man
who turns out to be a leprechaun. He
tells her that she should leave immediately and not come back, but instead, she
ends up exploring inside the house. To
her amazement, she finds paintings of the seven Messerman sisters, who
disappeared from the house long ago, and the ladies in the paintings move when
she turns her back on them.
When Maureen tries to tell others about it, no one believes it. When she leaves the house, Maureen takes with her a strange bracelet that she finds on the ground, the same one that she had seen on one of the ladies in the paintings, a gold chain with pigeon feathers. Later that evening, the same lady from the painting shows up at Maureen’s house, asking for her bracelet back. The rumors Maureen has heard about the Messerman house being haunted are more true than she knows, and the wicked Messerman girls will stop at nothing to get what they want.
Years ago, the leprechaun came to the Messerman house along with a maid who was from Ireland. Mrs. Messerman was a very kind woman, and Nora, the maid, was his friend, so he decided to stay. However, the Messerman girls were always selfish and wicked. One day, the eldest of the girls stole the leprechaun’s magic bag of tricks and turned herself and her sisters into birds so that they could always go where they wanted and do what they wanted without anyone stopping them. Mr. and Mrs. Messerman were broken-hearted when their girls disappeared. Years later, after their parents were dead, they finally returned. They were not sad at all, but continued their selfish and wicked ways. Because of the magic, they never age and can turn into birds whenever they like.
Maureen is afraid to admit that she has the bracelet because she knows that her parents will punish her for trespassing on the Messerman property. The next day, the women trick her into entering the estate again, only this time, Maureen enters the estate as it was in the past, when the girls were young. Mr. and Mrs. Messerman are very kind to Maureen and offer to look after her until they can find where she lives. Mrs. Messerman seems to know that her daughters are mean but doesn’t seem to know what to do about it. She asks Maureen to help them if she ever has the chance. It’s a touching moment for Maureen, who suddenly realizes that no one has ever asked her for help before.
Maureen, frightened by the girls, finally gives back the bracelet, and they all fly off again, leaving her alone in the past. How is Maureen going to get home?
This book also goes by the title The Wicked Pigeon Ladies in the Garden. It is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive.
My Reaction and Spoilers
This is partly a story about personal transformation. Maureen has definitely been the resident mean girl, but she gains a new perspective on her own life and behavior when confronted with the frightening wickedness of the Messerman girls.
The leprechaun tells Maureen that the only way to get out of the pretend past created by the Messerman girls is to think about what is going on in the real world. When Maureen thinks of her mother, she hears her mother calling her and returns to her own time. The leprechaun catches the birds in a net and almost drowns them in a pond, but Maureen stops him, telling him that Mrs. Messerman had asked her to help them. The leprechaun releases the birds and tells Maureen that they will continue to be, literally, flighty birdbrains, but that their mother’s love will always be with them. Maureen, having seen how cold and cruel the sisters were, never appreciating their mother’s love, learns to appreciate her own family more and to behave better. At the end of the story, she acknowledges that she heard her mother calling her and that call, the product of her own mother’s love and concern for her, was what helped her to return home. Maureen ends up better off than the wicked and flighty Messermans because she not only has a home where people care for her but she has learned to appreciate that home and those people and will now treat them better.
One of the things that I appreciated most about this book was the unusual way the leprechaun was used in the story. The story starts out seeming like it will be about ghosts in a haunted house, but that’s not quite what’s happening. Also, when leprechauns appear in stories, they usually have a pot of gold or play tricks on people, but the leprechaun’s role in this story isn’t quite the same.
Mystery Behind Dark Windows by Mary C. Jane, 1962.
Recent years have brought misfortune to the formerly wealthy Pride family. First, Tony and Ellie’s father was killed while on a business trip on behalf of the family’s mill. Then, the workers in the mill went on strike, and the children’s grandfather died. Their Aunt Rachel blames the strikers for putting stress on her father while he was still grieving for his son, thereby causing his death. Because of that and because she doesn’t believe that she can handle the running of the mill herself, she has closed down the mill, putting all of the workers out of a job.
The townspeople of Darkwater Falls struggle to get by without the mill and are angry with the remaining members of the Pride family for the lay-offs, but Aunt Rachel thinks that their suffering is earned and so does nothing to help. If Aunt Rachel would be willing to sell the mill to someone who would put it back into good use and employ people, the community’s problems would be solved, but Aunt Rachel can’t bring herself to do that, in spite of the offers she’s received and the urging of the family lawyer, Mr. Ralph Joslin. She has high hopes that Tony might revive the mill one day when he’s grown up, and in the meantime, she wants to punish the strikers with unemployment and underemployment. However, Aunt Rachel, absorbed in her personal pride and bad feelings, is ignoring some serious issues. The taxes on the disused mill are costing the family dearly, the equipment is rusting, and Tony isn’t even sure that he wants to go into the family business. Tony and Ellie are unhappy with their family’s situation, their aunt’s bitterness, and the way many of the townspeople now look at them, but they’re not sure what to do about it.
Then, one night, Ellie goes out to look for her aunt’s missing cat and hears someone in the old, supposedly empty mill. When she tries to tell Tony, he doesn’t take her seriously, but Ellie knows what she heard. Ellie later goes back to the mill to take another look at the place, and she sees Jeff, a boy from Tony’s high school, hanging around. Later, she confides what she’s heard and seen in Hank, an old friend who lives on the other side of the river, and Violet, another girl from her class whose family has suffered since the closure of the mill. The two of them start helping Ellie to investigate.
Some people in town have become concerned about children in the area getting into trouble, and they think that maybe some of the local youths have formed a gang. Ellie worries about Tony, who has started sneaking out of the house at night to hang out with friends. Is he now part of a gang? Are he and his friends the ones who were sneaking around the old mill? Or could it be some of the disgruntled townsfolk, bitter about the mill remaining empty and not providing much-needed jobs?
While the kids have a look inside the mill, they discover that someone has been using the place as a hideout. A fire at the mill reveals a number of secrets and sheds light on a town and a family caught in a cycle of bitter feelings and revenge. Aunt Rachel is stunned when some of the townspeople accuse her of setting the fire herself in order to get insurance money for the mill. The fire was clearly arson, and since Aunt Rachel has gone out of her way to make life difficult for people in town, many of them would be ready to believe just about anything of her. It’s up to the young people to put the pieces together and reveal the true arsonist before the mill, the town, and the Pride family are completely destroyed.
Many of Aunt Rachel’s decisions are guided by a mixture of grief and anger, but she is also stubborn and prideful. The Pride family was aptly named. Although they have suffered misfortune, their privileged position as the (former) main employer of the community has given Aunt Rachel the sense that she and others in her family could do no wrong. Aunt Rachel is absorbed in herself, her own feelings (which she places above others), and the past to the point where she feels justified in deliberately causing harm to her community and the people in it, failing to see the consequences of her actions, even the effects that her attitude has on the orphaned young niece and nephew in her charge. Ellie feels like they don’t have a real family because her aunt’s bitter feelings prevent her and her brother from getting close to their aunt. Her aunt’s actions have also made it difficult for her and Tony to get along well with other members of the community, further isolating them from comfort in their own grief.
In a way, the fire brings Aunt Rachel back to reality, forcing her to see the consequences of her actions (and inaction). It comes as something of a shock to her that, while she felt fully justified in her bad feelings for the town, they are also fully justified in feeling badly about her. Somehow, it never occurred to her how someone, doing the things she’s been doing and saying the things she’s been saying, would look to the people she deliberately set out to hurt. For most of the story, the only feelings that were real to Aunt Rachel were her own. Even when she thought about how people hated her, she didn’t think that what they thought would matter until she began to see how it was affecting Ellie and Tony as well as the other children in town. Ellie can see that many things would have been resolved sooner if both her aunt and her brother could open up and discuss things honestly, both within the family and with other people. Although neither of them set the fire, their secretiveness and self-absorption at first create the impression that they did. Ellie’s eventual outburst at her aunt and the real guilty person force both of them to acknowledge the reality of their actions and motives.
I was somewhat fascinated by the motives of the arsonist, who understands the effects that Aunt Rachel’s bitterness and revenge have been having on the young people in town, even her own nephew, better than she does. This person was wrong in the path he tried to take to fix the situation, but he does correctly see that unemployed men not only lack the money they need to properly take care of their families but may also set a bad example for boys and young men, either through the habits and attitudes that they let themselves fall into or by becoming too absorbed in their difficulties to see what’s happening to their own children. I also agree with his assertion that those responsible for putting people out of their jobs bear some responsibility for the results of their actions, something which resonates in today’s economy, where many people are still unemployed or underemployed. The Pride family’s previous high standing in the community was directly because of their ability to employ people and improve the lives of others. When they began making life hard for others and refused to use their ability to help people, they lost that standing. Aunt Rachel was just the last to realize it, which was part of the reason why she was surprised to discover just how badly the town thought of her. She didn’t have a good reputation because she had done nothing to earn one, no matter what her family used to do. She was no longer using their powers for good, so she turned herself into a villain. However, it’s important to point out that the arsonist isn’t really in the right himself because, as Ellie points out, the spirit behind his actions isn’t much different from her aunt’s.
Ellie is correct in pointing out that both her aunt and the arsonist were wrong, not just because of what they did, but because of the feelings and motives behind it. In their own way, each of them set out to deliberately hurt others because they had each been hurt. Which of them was hurt first or hurt worse ultimately doesn’t matter. Their mutual desire for vengeance against each other not only hurt the people around them but kept each of them from doing what they needed to do in order to heal their own wounds. That is also a message that resonates today, in these times of political division, with two large parts of society trying to one-up each other and even actively harm one another, largely because they can’t stand the idea of someone wanting something or believing something that they don’t. Whatever the circumstances, when people focus on winning on their own terms, no matter what the cost, everyone loses in the end.
Toward the end of the story, as Aunt Rachel and the arsonist begin making grudging apologies to one another and reluctant steps to fix things, Ellie decides that grudging and reluctant aren’t good enough and finally gets up the nerve to tell them what she really thinks, what they most need to hear:
“Just selling the mill won’t make things better . . . It’s the way [they] feel about it that’s wrong. That’s what made them act the way they did in the first place. They just wanted to get even with people, and hurt people, because they’d been hurt themselves. And they feel the same way still. You can see they do.”
How much can people help what they feel? It partly depends on what people choose to do about their feelings. Actions guide feelings, and feelings guide actions. Aunt Rachel and the arsonist indulged their bad feelings, nursing them, amplifying them, and making them their first priorities, the guiding force of their actions. As long as they keep doing that, Ellie knows that the problems aren’t really over, and everyone will remain trapped in this bad cycle. Ellie’s honest outburst finally breaks through to both of them, showing them what they really look like to others and making them reconsider their feelings and priorities.
One of my favorite characters in this story was Mr. Joslin, the lawyer. Although he looks a little suspicious himself for a time, he is actually a good man, who looks after the family’s interests and genuinely cares about them as well as about the town. He is the one who convinces Tony to be honest with his aunt about the friends he hangs out with and helps persuade Aunt Rachel to see things from others’ point of view. He loves Aunt Rachel, in spite of her faults, and is honest with her about those faults, telling her what she needs to hear. Of all the characters, with the exception of Ellie, he seems to have the most insight into other people’s feelings and situations. He supports what Ellie says, quoting Lord Bacon, “A man who studieth revenge keeps his own wounds green, which otherwise would heal and do well.”
At first, Sarah Prescott enjoyed her family’s new house. The house wasn’t really new. Other members of Sarah’s family had lived there before, but it was the first place where Sarah hadn’t had to share a room with her younger brother. Then, Sarah’s Great-Aunt Margaret came to live with them, and everything changed, in more ways than one.
Aunt Margaret is the one who actually owns the house where Sarah and her family are living. She’s is elderly and sick and has been living in a nursing home. The rent that Sarah’s parents pay her pays for her care at the nursing home. However, Aunt Margaret has been doing a little better, and she would like to come and live with the family. Having her move in with the family would not only be good for her but for them because Sarah’s father has been in and out of work, and Aunt Margaret wouldn’t charge them rent or at least not much if they all lived together and they helped to take care of her. However, it would mean some sacrifice on Sarah’s part.
Aunt Margaret had once slept in the beautiful room that Sarah has been using, and Sarah must give it up for her now that she will be living with them. It’s difficult for her to deal with, but Sarah is also restricted on when she can have friends over because Aunt Margaret needs her rest, and the family’s lack of money means that Sarah won’t be able to go to the concert that everyone at school as been talking about. These family problems and teen angst could be bad enough, but from the moment that Aunt Margaret moves in, strange and frightening things start happening that only Sarah and her aunt ever witness.
Whenever Sarah and Aunt Margaret are alone in the house, rooms get cold, and Sarah hears weird things like footsteps walking around when no one should be there and a girl’s voice singing that particularly unnerves her aunt. Sometimes, Aunt Margaret’s things are moved around or broken, and there is something mysterious about an old painting that has been in the house for years. Over time, Sarah begins to notice that the painting darkens, and sometimes she can see a man in the painting who wasn’t there before. The presence of the painting also upsets Aunt Margaret, although she refuses to say why. Although Aunt Margaret at first suspects that Sarah is the cause of some of the weird things that are happening, Aunt Margaret is the actual cause, and she is afraid to admit the dark secret from her past that has come back to haunt her.
A long time ago, when she was young, Aunt Margaret had a best friend called Anne, whose father painted the mysterious painting. Anne had a very unhappy home life, and when the opportunity arose for Margaret’s family to adopt her, Margaret wasn’t sure if she wanted to share her home with her friend, although she cared for her a great deal. Because of her hesitation, her parents decided not to adopt Anne. In her old age, she admits that she was a spoiled girl. Unfortunately, her friend went to live with other relatives and ended up dying in a fire, so Margaret never had a chance to make things right with her. Although Anne’s death was a freak accident, Margaret felt guilty because Anne would have lived if her family had adopted her. Anne’s father also blamed Margaret and her family for not doing more for his daughter, although it was his drunkenness and violence that ruined his home life and led him to give up his daughter in the first place. Before he died, he threatened revenge against the family in some way. Now, his vengeful spirit has found a way to use the old painting to reach Margaret once again, and unless Sarah can find a way to stop him, he will make sure that Margaret joins Anne in death . . . and possibly Sarah, too. However, there is also Anne’s spirit to consider. In life, Anne was the only person who ever stood up to her father. Would she be willing to do it one more time for Margaret’s sake?
Part of the story is about being willing to sacrifice for the ones you love. Years ago, Margaret hesitated to give up some of her pampered life for her best friend, and she regretted it forever after. Sarah also comes to see how her earlier worries about giving up her room and about sleepovers and concerts were petty when compared to helping a relative who loves her. She also sees how it’s important to do the right thing when there’s time because sometimes there is no opportunity to do it later.
In a way, I felt like the problem was solved rather easily, but there were some pretty scary incidents in the story and a failed attempt to get rid of the painting that brought some suspense.
The book is currently available online through Internet Archive.
Mystery Behind Dark Windows by Mary C. Jane, 1962.
Then, one night, Ellie goes out to look for her aunt’s missing cat and hears someone in the old, supposedly empty mill. When she tries to tell Tony, he doesn’t take her seriously, but Ellie knows what she heard. Ellie later goes back to the mill to take another look at the place, and she sees Jeff, a boy from Tony’s high school, hanging around. Later, she confides what she’s heard and seen in Hank, an old friend who lives on the other side of the river, and Violet, another girl from her class whose family has suffered since the closure of the mill. The two of them start helping Ellie to investigate.
A Ghost in the House by Betty Ren Wright, 1991.
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