“Joan! Your mother’s got a telegram from your Aunt Effie to come and keep house for her while she’s at a hospital having her appendix taken out. She’s going next week, and that means we can’t keep Tommy, for she says you can’t manage the house and Tim and Tommy both.”
It did look hopeless until Joan remembered about Mrs. McNulty and the Historical Building. Amy fell right in with the plan of taking Tommy to see the old lady. She always welcomed any kind of adventure, and her imagination, fed by the romantic books she read, pounced immediately upon the idea that Mrs. McNulty would take a great fancy to the little boy.
“Maybe she’ll give him a fortune,” she mused. “Probably she’ll get him a nurse with a long veil like you see in the New York papers.”
As soon as Tommy woke up from his nap, they got him ready. They scrubbed his cheeks till they shone like candy apples and brushed his yellow hair, matted from his nap, till it looked like taffy. “Good enough to eat!” thought Joan. No one could resist him.
His diminutive overalls were brushed spic and span and a missing button replaced—with green thread since that was all they could find in a hurry. His worn sandals were polished so thoroughly that some of the shine was brushed on to his pink toes showing through the cut-work.
Mrs. McNulty lived on the North Side, just across the bridge over the glorified creek that divided the main part of Plainfield from the residential section. Amy had borrowed a rickety, cast-off baby cart for Tommy some days ago, and it came in handy now, for it would be too far for his short legs to trudge.
Down Market Street they went, proudly pushing their charge, past the Soldiers’ Monument, without which no Ohio town is complete.
Just before they came to the bridge, they passed a big, yellow brick building with a huge sign across it. “DEPARTMENT of CORRECTION, City of Plainfield,” it read.
“I always hate to pass the jail.” Amy quickened her step.
“You needn’t worry. There’s no robbers or thugs in there, now,” comforted Joan. “Don’t you read the Journal? Cookie had a peachy story about its being empty. It seems our fair city is getting so well-behaved that the few city arrests that are made don’t fill up this jail at all, so they’re taken to the county one. This place isn’t needed, so it’s empty.”