In a pink 1959 Plymouth Fury, came Miss Hattie looking really steamed up. She wore pink and had a mean personality underneath her innocent exterior. She hopped off her car at the gate of the house. Sophie was there jumping around.
"Hello, Sophie," Miss Hattie started in her sweet voice. "I want to see your mommy right away about Jamie."
"What Jamie do?" Sophie said.
"What has he done?!" Miss Hatte said indignantly before resuming her faux sweetness. "I'm limpin' from the bite on my right leg."
"He bite you?" Sophie asked, not understanding the situation.
"No!" cried Miss Hattie. "The dog!"
"Jamie bite Abby?" said Sophie.
Miss Hattie did not realize that the gate door came behind her and pushed her sturdy body into the house. Mrs. Bennett came to the door.
"Afternoon, Miss Hattie," she said cheerfully. "I just made a fresh batch of snicker doodles if you would like to sit awhile."
"Actually," said Miss Hattie as she sat down in the living room. "I am soooooo shaken by the malicious attack of your son's vicious little Greyhound, I may never eat again!"
"Surely you don't mean that." Mrs. Bennett retorted.
Just then, Jamie came into the room carrying Abby.
"That dog is a MENACE to this entire community!" Miss Hattie gasped as soon as she saw the medium sized dog.
"That's not true!" Jamie argued, holding his pet like an oversized stuffed animal.
"That is true!" growled Miss Hattie. "And I am taking her to the police and I will make sure she is executed!"
"You can't! You mustn't!" cried Jamie. "Mom, Abby didn't know what she was doing wrong! I'm the one that ought to be punished, I let her go in her house! You can send me to bed without supper."
"You hear how sorry my son is!" Mrs. Bennett told Miss Hattie. "How about if he keeps her tied up, she's really gentle…with gentle folk that is."
"I've heard that," Miss Hattie replied pathetically, she then handed Mrs. Bennett a small piece of paper. "That will be for the sheriff to decide. I have his order right there allowing me to take the dog unless you like to go against the law."
Sophie came in and saw the note. "What's it say, Mommy?"
"You gotta hand her over, Jamie," Mrs. Bennett said sadly.
"No!" screamed Jamie before charging at Miss Hattie, "I won't! You go away or I'll bite you myself you wicked old witch! Mom, don't let her take Abby, please stop her!"
"I have an order right here!" Miss Hattie shouted over Jamie's ranting, "I don't care of you suburban people! Put him in the basket and make sure that thing is latched! Thank you, that's more like it,"
Despite Jamie's pleas, Mrs. Bennett sadly put Abby in Miss Hattie's basket, "I've got her at last and there is nothing you can do about it!" the dominative woman cheered before the mother stood up to her. Jamie could do nothing but sob and run up to his room.
"Elmira Hattie, just because you own half the country doesn't mean you have the power to run the rest of us! For 23 years I have been dying to tell you what I thought of you! And now…" she gasped before realizing what she was going to say, it was not going to sound very friendly. "Well, being a good Christian woman, I can't say it."
"I don't take kindly to that sort of talk," Miss Hattie scoffed; she looked to see that Jamie's friends were standing outside, watching the event unfold.
"Anyway," Miss Hattie continued. "In case you kiddies haven't noticed there is a storm coming and I don't plan on getting wet, so could you please excuse me?" She shoved the kids aside and walked over to her car, carrying Abby.
"Goodbye, Miss Hattie," the kids waved in unison as she drove away before…"Blech!"
"Let's get that car done," Monty reminded the other kids, and they soon left.
Mrs. Bennett carried Sophie up to her room, "Come on Sophie, the skies are getting darker every minute." And indeed they were.
A few minutes later, Sophie came into Jamie's bedroom; he was spilling tears into the sleeve of his green shirt over his 'lost' dog.
"Cheer up Jamie," she said.
"I don't feel like talking Sophie," her brother sobbed. "Not to anybody."
"Not even Abby?" Sophie asked.
"You know she's gone," Jamie said. "That Miss Hattie took her away."
Before things could get even more heartbreaking, Sophie heard barking; she looked out of the window and saw Abby in front of the house.
"Abby!" they both cried. Jamie ran down the stairs to the front door and hugged her.
"Abby! You came back!" Then Jamie realized something. "They will be coming back for you, we got to go away! We've got to run away!"
And so they did. They didn't know where they were going or what they would find.
Jamie and Abby had not been traveling long when they came upon a brightly colored wagon. On the side was painted a sign. It said:
PROFESSOR DROSSELMEYER
ACCLAIMED BY THE CROWNED HEADS OF EUROPE
LET HIM READ YOUR
PAST PRESENT, AND FUTURE
IN HIS CRYSTAL
A man with brown hair, a beard and dressed a red velvet suit with a tail-coat stepped out of the wagon; it would have to be none other than Professor Drosselmeyer.
"Well, well," he said as soon as he saw Jamie and Abby. "Houseguests, eh? And who might you be?"
Jamie started to answer but Professor Drosselmeyer cut him off.
"No, no, no! Don't tell me! You're traveling in disguise… You're going on a visit…you're running away!"
"How did you guess?" said Jamie, amazed.
"Ha, ha! Professor Drosselmeyer never guesses," he said. "He knows! Now why are you running away?"
Jamie started to answer, but the professor interrupted, again.
"No, don't tell me!" he said. "They don't understand you at home, they don't appreciate you. You want to see other lands, big cities, big mountains, big oceans."
Jamie stared wide-eyed at the professor. He seemed to know everything about him.
"It's just like you could read what was inside of me!" he said.
Abby grabbed a wiener that the professor was eating, but Jamie grabbed it out of her jaws.
"Abby, that's not polite!" he reprimanded. "We haven't been asked yet."
"He's perfectly welcome," Professor Drosselmeyer chuckled. "There's one dog to another. Now where were we?"
"Please, professor," Jamie asked. "Why can't we go with you and see all the Crowned Heads of Europe?"
"You know any?" the professor asked before he realized what Jamie was referring to. "Oh, you mean the sign. I never do anything without consulting my crystal first."
He brought Jamie and Abby into his wagon, it was full of a fortune teller's trinkets. "Just make yourself comfortable," said Professor Drosselmeyer, lighting the two candles and putting on a turban. "This is the same genuine, magic, authentic crystal used by the priests of Isis and Osiris in the days of the Pharaohs of Egypt in which Cleopatra first saw the approach of Julius Caesar and Mark Anthony and so on and so forth."
He put the crystal ball in Jamie's hands. "You better close your eyes for a moment to be in tune with the infinite," the professor instructed. Jamie closed his eyes and could feel the weightless crystal in his own palms as Professor Drosselmeyer looked into his pockets.
"We can't do these things without reaching out into the infinite," he said as he looked at a picture of Jamie and his mom in their Sunday best.
"Now, you can open them," he said to Jamie who opened his eyes at the precise moment. "And let us gaze into the crystal."
He looked in, but Jamie could see nothing. "What's this I see? A house with a picket fence."
"That's our house!" cried Jamie.
Drosselmeyer continued. "There's a very pretty woman with specs, her face is careworn."
"That's my mom," Jamie identified.
"Yes, her name is Emily," the professor said.
"What's she doing?" Jamie asked.
"She's crying," the professor said. "Someone has hurt her, someone has just about broken her heart."
Jamie knew who he was referring to. "Me?"
"Well it's someone she loves very much," the professor added.
"What is she doing now?" asked Jamie.
"She's going into a little bedroom."
"Has it poppies on the wallpaper?"
"I said poppies on the wallpaper!" the professor gasped. "Why she's putting her hand on her heart! She's dropping down on the bed!"
"Oh-!" Jamie began to say before Professor Drosselmeyer even gave him the bad news.
"I am afraid that's all, the crystal's gone dark."
Jamie stood up to leave. "You don't suppose she could be sick do you? I've got to get home right away!"
"What's this?" the professor question. "I thought you were going along with me."
Jamie just scooped up Abby in his arms. "No, I have to get to Mom right away! Goodbye Professor Drosselmeyer, and thanks a lot!"
"Goodbye!" the professor called back. "Safe journey!"
As soon as Jamie and Abby were out of sight, the boy said to his dog, "Come on, Abby! Oh, what'll I do? If we go home, they'll send you to the sheriff. And if we don't, Mom may - well, she may die! I know what I'll do, I'll give you to Pippa! She'll watch out for you!"
Soon enough, Professer Drosselmeyer came running out of his wagon. "Better get undercover," he said to his horse. "Better get under cover, Sylvester, there's a storm blowing up, a whopper, to speak in the vernacular of the peasantry. Poor little kid, I hope he gets home all right."
A sort of storm like a "whopper" promised nothing but trouble.
