Chapter One
The Last Day of School
JANE MURRAY walked slowly down the wide corridor. It was the last day of school. Her desk was empty. For the first time since last September her locker stood neat and bare. Gone were the old gym socks, the forgotten rainhat that had been wedged under an old theme cover, the candy bar wrappers, and the umbrella with the split seam.
Patsy and Dor had reached the street ahead of her and were screaming at the top of their lungs.
“Janie, oh, Janie! Hurry! We’re going to have an ice-cream cone.”
Janie shook her head regretfully. “Run along with the others, my funny friends. I must go home and put a fresh dressing on Butchie’s paw.”
They were off like race horses. “Perhaps I should have gone,” she thought. The back of her neck was just a little damp under the light brown curly mop. A cone or a swim. Oh boy! I could do with a swim right now, and with her head full of summer dreams she started off down the maple-shaded street.
Springhill was a lovely old town in southern Wisconsin. The houses were set well back from the street. They were large and old-fashioned, with screened porches. Some of them had turrets running up to the third floor level. Janie had read of a famous architect who disapproved of such decorations. “Inverted rutabagas,” he called them, but Janie didn’t care. The turret on the Murray house was enchanted land. From its circular windows they could see all over town, and down the valley to the river. Once they found a gray squirrel’s nest up there, and on rainy days there was the parallel bar for doing stunts.
“Inverted rutabaga, my eye,” said Janie.