"I bought you a new lamp to replace the one Nadine broke," she stated as she carted the box through the kitchen.
"Oh, that's very thoughtful of you, Maria," Mrs. Read replied with a smile.
D.W. followed the two women into the living room, curious as to the appearance of the new lamp. "Is it a unicorn lamp?" she inquired.
"No," said Mrs. Harris, who was resting the box on the floor next to the stand of the old lamp. She straightened up and rubbed her lower back with her hands, while Pal carefully followed her wagging tail with his eyes.
"Is it a mermaid lamp?" asked D.W.
"Wrong again," answered Mrs. Harris as she tore open the top flaps of the box. Reaching inside, she exerted herself and pulled out an object that made D.W. gasp in horror...
The lamp was made of porcelain, but had the appearance and shape of Nadine. After Mrs. Harris had placed the Nadine lamp on the stand, she took the power cord, which came out of the end of Nadine's tail, and plugged it into the wall. She then pressed Nadine's nose three times, causing the lamp girl's head to glow bright, brighter, and finally brightest.
"NOOOOO!" shrieked D.W., bolting upright in her bed. Driven by terror, she threw aside the covers, leaped to the floor, and hurried out of her bedroom. Bounding down the stairway two steps at a time, she reached the living room and found to her relief that the lamp stand was still empty.
The bleary-eyed Mrs. Read, wearing hair curlers and a bathrobe, walked into the room behind D.W., clutching a mug of coffee. "What's wrong, dear?"
Then D.W. remembered the events of the previous evening...all of them...
"Mom, I've done a terrible thing!" she cried. "Nadine broke the lamp and I told the truth but I should have blamed it on Pal and now Nadine's in trouble and she's not my friend anymore and it's all my fault!"
Mrs. Read crouched down, placing her coffee mug on the empty stand. "Telling the truth isn't a terrible thing," she reassured her daughter. "It's a very good thing. You should always tell the truth."
"Not when it gets my best friend in trouble!" D.W. retorted.
Mrs. Read grinned condescendingly. "What happened to the little girl who couldn't tell a lie?"
"I don't know, Mom." D.W. reflected on her actions of the previous night, and could make no sense of them. "It's like an alien took over my body and made me do good things."
The pajama-clad Arthur made his way down the stairs, putting his glasses over his beady eyes. "What's all the racket?" he wanted to know.
"Oh, Arthur," said D.W. earnestly, "I take back what I said last night about you being such a nice big brother."
"What did I do wrong this time?" Arthur wondered as he shuffled past the two.
"Mom, what'll I do?" asked the anxious D.W. "I have to go to kindergarten with Nadine, and she'll be mad at me because her mom punished her for breaking your lamp. I bet her tush is all red and swollen from spanking."
"I'm sure she's forgotten about it by now, dear," said Mrs. Read comfortingly.
----
Nadine was coloring within the lines of a crayon drawing she had made, and Emily was watching over her shoulder with interest, when D.W. walked up to the two girls in the kindergarten playroom. "What are you drawing, Nadine?" she asked nervously.
"Oh, hi, D.W." Nadine looked up briefly while Emily snickered. "I'm drawing a picture of you. Wanna see it?"
When D.W. saw the drawing she felt a churning uneasiness in her stomach. "What is it?" she asked.
"Tell her, Emily," said Nadine.
Emily pointed to the figure in the center of the drawing, a crudely drawn cage in which a little girl with aardvark ears stood, clutching the bars and yelling, HELB! HELB! "That's you," she told D.W. The cage was being lowered by a crane, which was operated by a girl who wore a petticoat and had a line sticking out of her back like a tail. "That's Nadine," Emily explained. Below the cage was drawn a wavy surface with what appeared to be tentacles rising from it. D.W. had no trouble guessing what it was, but Emily said it anyway: "That's a tank full of octopusses."
"Eww! Octopusses!" D.W. grimaced in fear and backed away.
"My mom says I can't go to your house again for a whole month," said Nadine bitterly. "But I don't care, 'cause you're not my friend anymore. Emily is my best friend now."
Emily put her arm around Nadine's shoulders and squeezed tightly. "We're staring a new club," she announced. "It's called the D.W. is a Tattletale Club."
"I'm not a tattletale!" D.W. bellowed, clenching her fists.
"Oh, sure, Donkey Warts," Nadine rejoined.
"Disaster Warning," Emily chuckled.
"Duck Waddle," Nadine giggled.
"Dumb Weirdo," Emily added. D.W.'s scowl grew ever darker as the girls taunted her.
"Dim Wit," laughed Nadine.
"Dog Breath," chortled Emily.
"Hey!" Nadine became serious. "Breath doesn't start with W."
And D.W. spent the rest of the day playing with her neighbor, Vicita Molina.
----
"Good heavens, this school is enormous!" The astonished Dolly turned her head in every direction as she and Prunella walked through the center court of Lakewood Elementary. "My school was very small, and had only one room."
"Three hundred and fifty kids go to this school," Prunella told her.
"So many," Dolly marveled. She was wearing yet another one of Muffy's dresses, this one lavender in color, and her long brown hair was tied back with a pink bow.
Shortly Van and Beat approached the two girls, discussing their team science project. "I sent an email to one of the Oxford professors," Beat was saying. "He sent me a link to a website with... Oh, hello, Prunella."
"Beat, Van, this is my new friend, Dolly Proctor," Prunella introduced the girl. "Dolly, these are friends of mine, Beatrice Simon and Van Cooper."
Dolly lifted up the hem of her skirt and bent her knees slightly.
The gesture took Beat off guard. "You curtsied," she observed. "How quaint."
"You speak like an English girl," Dolly pointed out.
"That's because I am an English girl," replied Beat.
"And you..." Dolly gazed at Van's wheelchair in amazement. "A crippled boy in a chair that moves by itself. Is your chair powered by an engine, like the horseless carriages?"
"Horseless..." Van became confused.
"She means cars," Prunella clarified.
"Oh." Van did his best to answer Dolly's puzzling question. "Uh, yeah, it's motorized. It's an okay way to get around, but someday I'm gonna have a robot body like Bionic Bunny."
"Robot? Bionic?" said Dolly in bemusement.
"Van and I have been working on a report about robots," Beat explained. "Robots are what we call machines that can do the work of humans. Some professors at Oxford have invented a robot that can iron clothes. Bionic means that you take a part of your body that doesn't work, and replace it with a machine."
"And Bionic Bunny is a cartoon about a guy who gets hurt in an accident, and they put him back together with robot parts," Van added.
"What's a cartoon?" asked Dolly innocently.
While Van and Beat gave each other stupefied looks, their teacher, Mr. Wald, wandered up to the group. "Good morning, kids," he said with a warm smile.
"Oh, hi, Mr. Wald," Prunella responded. "This is my friend Dolly Proctor. She's staying with us for a while. She's nine years old, so I think she should go to your class, or maybe Miss Ratburn's."
"I'll take it up with the principal," Mr. Wald offered. "Where are you from, Dolly?"
"The village of Davenport, in the colony of New Hampshire," said Dolly proudly.
Mr. Wald scratched his horse-sized chin thoughtfully. "Come with me, Dolly," he requested.
Moments later he led the girl into Mr. Ratburn's office, where the new principal was typing a document on the computer. "We have a new student, Nigel," he announced. "Dolly Proctor. Friend of Prunella Prufrock's. Says she's from the 'colony' of New Hampshire."
Ratburn swiveled in his chair and looked at Dolly with interest. "She looks a lot like Prunella did when she was in my class," he remarked.
"What is that device, sir?" asked Dolly, pointing at the computer.
"You mean the computer?" was Ratburn's reply.
"Computer," Dolly repeated. "It looks like a box with words in it. Is that what you read in place of books in your century?"
Taken aback by Dolly's naivety and strange accent, Mr. Ratburn took several seconds to form a response. "Who are your parents?" he finally asked.
"My mother's name was Hannah Proctor," Dolly answered. "My father's name was Will Carpenter, but he left us. They both died three hundred years ago."
Mr. Wald and Mr. Ratburn exchanged befuddled looks. Then Ratburn glanced at the wall clock and said, "It's almost time for class. I'll call Prunella's parents and try to find out more about Dolly. In the meantime, you can teach her about the wonders of our modern age."
"Television!" exclaimed Dolly, rubbing her hands in expectant glee. "Airplanes! Robots!"
A few minutes later, Dolly stood before Mr. Wald's fourth-grade students with a placid smile on her ratlike face. The teacher had written the name DOLORES PROCTOR on the blackboard before taking a seat behind his desk.
Dolly curtsied again. "My name is Dolores Maria Proctor," she said with aplomb. "You may call me Dolly. I was born in the year of our Lord sixteen hundred and fifty-nine."
Arthur, Francine, Binky, Muffy, George, Fern, Van, Beat, and Mavis all burst into laughter. Adil remained silent, having no idea what a "year of our Lord" was.
Mr. Wald waved his hand to silence the class. Dolly, undeterred, went on with her introduction. "I come from the village of Davenport in the colony of New Hampshire. I appeared in your marvelous century yesterday, and have stayed with my good friend Prunella ever since."
"Oh, I get it," Binky interrupted. "Prunella has a little sister she's been hiding from us."
"Do you have magic powers, too?" Arthur asked her.
"Of course, thou silly goose," Dolly replied sharply. "All the women in my family were witches, and they were hanged for it."
Rather than laugh or mock, the students simply stared blankly at Dolly.
Adil shuddered--he had heard stories of witches in his native Turkey. Did such creatures really exist in America?
Beat, for her part, became annoyed that someone had co-opted her catchphrase.
Once Dolly had seated herself at a desk, Mr. Wald stood up. "Let us recite the Pledge of Allegiance," he said formally.
All the kids except for Dolly rose to their feet, and shortly Dolly followed suit. Placing their hands over their hearts, they chanted, "I pledge allegiance to the Flag of the United States of America..."
When Dolly heard the opening line of the pledge, she suddenly flew into a panic and grabbed Beat, who stood by the desk to the right, by the shoulders. "No, Beatrice!" she cried urgently. "'Tis treason against the British Crown! Thou shalt be hanged!"
All the kids lowered their hands and gawked at the terrified Dolly.
Beat wrapped her hands around Dolly's wrists and slowly lowered them. "In case you haven't heard," she said with a hint of contempt, "Great Britain and the American States are no longer at war. They are, in fact, allies."
"A-allies?" stammered Dolly in surprise.
"Allies," Beat replied. "Which is what you and I will not be, if you persist in this colonial charade."
As Beat released her wrists, Dolly sank slowly and sheepishly into her desk chair. Mr. Wald reached down and picked up a stick of chalk. "We'll dispense with the pledge today," he announced.
TBC
