"Thanks, but I've already dined," Muffy replied. "Bailey prepared a fabulous Beef Wellington."
As they exchanged pleasantries, Dolly came slowly down the stairway, wearing a green dress with a knee-length plaited skirt, stockings, red buckle shoes, and a pink hair ribbon. Muffy walked over to her and examined her from head to toe. "It's a little loose around the waist," she commented, "but it'll have to do for now. If your parents don't come to get you, I'll take you shopping after school tomorrow."
"My parents have been dead for three hundred years," Dolly pointed out.
"Whatever." Muffy turned toward the door. "Nice meeting you, Dolly."
"You may want to take this with you." Dolly innocently held up Muffy's cell phone.
Muffy gasped. "What...how...why, you little trickster! Give me that!" Swiping the phone from Dolly's hand, she made haste for the door, scowling.
As Muffy exited, Dolly joined Prunella, Rubella, and Alan at the dinner table, where Mrs. Prufrock was starting to arrange the place settings. The smell of a pan pizza with mushrooms, olives, and artichokes wafted from the oven.
"Hey, Dolly, Prunella told me you can do magic tricks," Rubella said to Dolly as her mother placed a bowl full of breadsticks in the center of the table. "I'd like to see one."
"Oh boy," Alan muttered.
"Very well," said Dolly with a hint of impatience. "I will show you some magic tricks, as you so vulgarly call them."
"Oh, goody!" Prunella tapped her hands together excitedly.
Dolly gestured at the ceramic plate sitting before her. "Watch the plate carefully," she said as she began to wave her hands. "Lift not your eyes from the plate." Alan instead followed Dolly's hand movements, believing that she was trying to distract his gaze from some clever artifice she would attempt.
Then she waved her right arm over the plate, and it was no longer there.
Prunella blinked unbelievingly. Alan wondered what he had missed--it seemed to him that the plate had simply dissolved with no noise or movement when Dolly's arm passed over it. After a few seconds of astonishment, Prunella and Rubella began to applaud and cheer.
Alan, however, was still unconvinced. "Okay, where did you put it?" he asked petulantly.
"I put it nowhere," Dolly claimed. "It no longer exists. It is a non-plate."
"That's impossible," said Alan as Mrs. Prufrock laid a salad bowl on the table to his left. "It has to be somewhere. An object can't just disappear."
"Why not, Alan?" Prunella asked him. "Things disappear all the time. Haven't you ever lost a sock in the laundry?"
"That doesn't mean the sock no longer exists," Alan replied. "Sooner or later it turns up, or gets thrown away, or buried, or burned, or eaten up by moths. But it still exists somewhere, in some form. According to the law of conservation of matter, the amount of matter in the universe doesn't change. You can move or rearrange matter, but you can't create it or destroy it."
Dolly thoughtlessly waved her right arm again, causing the plate to reappear in its original location. "Oh thou who art so wise in the ways of science," she said tauntingly to Alan, "wouldst thou kindly pass me the container of garlic powder?"
The bottle of powdered garlic sat next to the salt and pepper; Alan grabbed it and handed it to Dolly, looking a little uncertain. "The women in my family have a gift for sensing the magical qualities of substances," Dolly boasted as she twisted the lid off the container. "Garlic, in particular, has many magical uses."
"Like warding off vampires," Prunella piped in.
"Vampires are legend." Dolly shook a small amount of garlic into her left palm. "But I'll show you a small example of what garlic can do."
Then, without warning, she blew into her palm, scattering the garlic powder into Alan's face. The boy suddenly felt overpowered by drowsiness. As the girls watched, his eyelids slammed shut and his head sank until his face rested on top of his dinner plate. "A foolproof cure for insomnia," proclaimed Dolly as Alan snored obliviously.
Prunella lifted her hand to tap on Alan's shoulder, but stopped when Dolly cleared her throat. "Before you wake him," she requested, "would you kindly go into the bathroom and retrieve the handheld mirror?"
Alan slumbered on as Prunella rose from her chair and made a quick trip to the bathroom. Returning with an ornately decorated hand mirror, she passed it to Dolly, wondering what amazing feat of legerdemain would follow.
"Glass has a number of magical properties," said Dolly, waving her fingers over the mirror. She handed it back to Prunella as the girl was shaking and arousing the startled Alan. "Now hold the mirror in front of you, as if to let me look into it."
"Huh? What?" mumbled the half-awake Alan.
As she held the mirror according to Dolly's instructions, Prunella noticed with alarm that Dolly was sprinkling another dash of garlic powder into her palm. "Who are you gonna put to sleep this time?" she inquired anxiously.
Without answering, Dolly blew the powdered garlic in Prunella's direction. Prunella winced as the powder flew into her hair and face, but to her surprise, she didn't feel at all sleepy.
This time it was Dolly herself who was overwhelmed by slumber. Her head fell lower and lower until the tip of her rat nose made contact with her plate. Then her head flopped to one side, and she began to snore blissfully.
Prunella laid down the mirror, reached across the table, and rubbed Dolly's temple. The girl quickly snapped into alertness, lifted her head, and went on as if nothing had happened. "I enchanted the glass to deflect the sleeping spell," she explained. Picking up the mirror and waving her hand over it again, she added, "Now it's enchanted again. You can deflect one spell per enchantment."
She gave the mirror back to Prunella, who stood up and went back into the bathroom to return it. "I think I can explain that one," Alan said to Dolly. "You put me to sleep with some kind of hypnotism. Then you faked falling asleep yourself."
"I'd like to see you make something else disappear," Rubella urged Dolly eagerly.
"I'd like to see you makethis disappear," said Mrs. Prufrock, who was removing the luscious-smelling pan pizza from the oven.
----
"He's a high school friend of Dave's," Mrs. Read related to Maria Harris, who was enjoying a cup of coffee with her in the Read kitchen. "A very tall fellow. From the sound of it he could have had a basketball career, but chose to run the family witch museum instead. He seems very intelligent and cultured. He has a way with kids, too. Ever since his visit, D.W. has been a perfect little angel."
"Hmm." Mrs. Harris' tail swung slowly from side to side as she took a sip of coffee. "Sounds like an interesting guy. I think I'd like to meet him."
"He's coming back tomorrow," Mrs. Read informed her.
In the living room, D.W. and Nadine were enjoying the peaceful evening in their own way. D.W. sat on the couch reading a children's book entitled "What to Expect in Your First Year of Elementary School", while Nadine frolicked about the room and Pal snoozed in a corner.
"I'm Mini Moo!" exclaimed Nadine as she performed one ballet leap after another. "I may be little, but I can do everything Mary Moo Cow can do!"
D.W. lowered her book. "Be careful, Nadine," she warned. "You might break something."
"Dance with me, D.W.," urged the pirouetting Nadine.
"Sorry, but I'm busy," D.W. responded. "At the end of summer I'll start going to Arthur's school, and I want to be prepared for homework and bullies and stuff like that."
"Worry, worry, worry-wart," Nadine mocked her.
"You should be worried too," said D.W. earnestly. "They don't hand out milk and cookies in grade school, you know."
Nadine gasped. A look of terror spread over her face, and she tripped over her petticoat in the middle of a grand jete. Falling forward, she struck a lamp stand and caused it to tip. Pal awoke and perked up his ears as the blue porcelain lamp slid off the stand, plunged to the floor, and broke into several thousand pieces just inches from the frightened dog. Pal yelped and ran into the kitchen, where the mothers of the two girls had heard the smashing noise and were rising to investigate.
D.W. set down her book, leaped from the couch, and came to the side of her horrified friend. "Oh, this is awful!" Nadine lamented. "If my mom finds out I did this, she won't let me visit you anymore!"
"I don't think so," D.W. reassured her. "My mom will just buy a new..."
She and Nadine looked up and saw, to their consternation, Mrs. Read and Mrs. Harris towering over them, looking quite angry. "Explain this," Mrs. Read ordered, pushing aside some of the lamp fragments with her slippered foot.
Nadine thought faster than she ever had in her short life. "It was, uh, Pal," she lied. "He was running around, and he knocked the lamp over. I tried to stop him."
"Is this true, D.W.?" Mrs. Read asked her daughter.
D.W. stuck her hands behind her back and assumed an arrogant tone. "I cannot tell a lie. Nadine did it."
Nadine's jaw dropped. She tried to defend herself, but only small whimpering sounds would come from her mouth.
Mrs. Harris put out her hand. "Come on, Nadine, we're going home," she said sternly.
"B-b-but..." Nadine stammered. She then turned to D.W., her expresssion filled with hurt and anger. "How could you do this to me? I thought you were my friend!"
"Honesty is the best policy," D.W. replied coldly. "Trust me, Nadine, this hurts me more than it hurts you."
Mrs. Harris grabbed Nadine by the arm and began to drag her away. "I hate you, Dora Winifred Read!" the girl cried out. "You're not my friend anymore!" Then the front door closed, and her protests were silenced.
As Mrs. Read sadly picked through the rubble of what had once been a quality porcelain lamp, she turned to D.W. and smiled slightly. "I'm proud of you for telling the truth. But now you've lost a friend."
D.W. climbed onto the couch and picked up her grade school preparatory book. "I still have other friends," she pointed out. "Like Emily, and Vicita, and James, and the Tibbles, and Arthur."
----
Later that evening, Mrs. Prufrock tucked Prunella and Dolly into Prunella's bed. For her first night in the future, Dolly was wearing a pair of yellow, footless pajamas that Muffy had loaned her.
"I'm sorry to make you two share a bed," said Mrs. Prufrock, "but I wouldn't want either of you to ruin your back by sleeping on the couch."
"It's okay, Mom," said Prunella.
"Perfectly all right, Mrs. Prufrock," Dolly added.
"Now go right to sleep," said Mrs. Prufrock as she reached for the light switch. "I don't want to hear any talking."
The light went off, the door closed, and Prunella and Dolly found themselves alone in the dark.
"I think I'll enjoy living in the twenty-first century," said Dolly quietly. "So many things have changed. Boxes with moving pictures...carriages without horses...ships that sail through the sky...the little round candles that one lights with a switch."
"Just wait till you go to school tomorrow," Prunella responded. "Then you'll see all kinds of cool stuff."
"This bed is so soft," Dolly commented. "My old bed was lumpy all the time."
"It's okay," said Prunella glibly.
Dolly fell silent for a few seconds, then sighed. "I miss my mother dreadfully."
Prunella didn't answer, not knowing of anything helpful to say.
"I knew this might happen," Dolly continued. "I knew I might travel so far into the future that I would never see her, or aunt Charity, again. But we all knew that she would likely be hanged soon anyway."
"I'm a descendant of your aunt Charity," said Prunella, "if that counts for anything."
Dolly sighed again, a happier sigh. Several moments passed in silence and darkness.
"Alan is such a smart boy," Dolly spoke up. "And friendly, too. Tell me, does he have a lady love?"
But by that time, Prunella was snoring.
TBC
