Harriet the Spy (21 page)

Cook pulled out one of the other chairs that matched the pine table and sat down. Harriet could tell Cook wanted a cigarette. Harriet knew that sometimes she went out into the back courtyard and smoked.

“I might consider letting you smoke in the kitchen when they’re gone,” Harriet said slyly. “The Feigenbaums never would. They’d give you pamphlets about lung cancer.” She stacked three cucumber slices on top of one another and speared them with her fork.

Cook sighed. “I already said I was staying. Your parents talked me into it. They’re paying me my full salary. We’re still arguing about weekends, though.”

Weekends
. Hearing the word gave Harriet an odd sensation in her stomach. Cook always left on Friday night after dinner and usually didn’t return until Sunday night. Harriet ordinarily spent her weekends spying, reading, and spending time with her best friends, Simon Rocque, aka Sport, and Janie Gibbs, who both lived nearby. She supposed she would still do that. But if Cook left on Friday night, the house would be empty. Harriet didn’t really like the idea of coming home to an empty house. Of
sleeping
in an empty house.

“I’m not sure it’s legal, actually, to leave an eleven-year-old alone for a whole weekend,” Harriet said. “For three months of weekends.
Twamah
of weekends. Of course, I’m quite competent. More competent than the
usual
eleven-year-old. But the Department of Child Welfare may look on it somewhat differently, and I suspect—”

“Yammer yammer yammer,” said Cook, and she got up and went to the stove to stir things again.

“And I hope you don’t think I’m going with you to Brooklyn on weekends,” Harriet went on. “I like your house just fine, Cook, and I like your sister, and I enjoy going to your church. But I do not like your son one bit. He’s very sarcastic, and I think he has a personality disorder. And anyway, I have things to do on weekends. I’m behind in my spying.”

“Yammer,” Cook said. “What makes you think I want you in my house in Brooklyn every weekend? I have things to do, too, and they don’t include you, Harriet Welsch.”

Harriet picked up her empty plate and took it to the sink. “So you’ll just go off and leave me here alone?” she asked. “I’m nonplussed by that.” Nonplussed, Harriet said again to herself, liking the sound of it, and deciding to try to use it more often.

“Who said you’ll be alone?”

“But if you go to Brooklyn—”

“You mean they didn’t tell you?”

“Tell me
what
?” Harriet remembered suddenly that she had stomped out of the living room while her parents were still talking about the plans they had made. Maybe she should have stayed and listened.

“Miss Golly’s coming back.” Cook rinsed Harriet’s plate and loaded it into the dishwasher. “That uppity old thing.” She began to gather silverware to set the table for Harriet’s parents’ dinner.

“
Ole Golly
? She’s coming back?”

“Didn’t I just say that? You deaf?”

Harriet threw her arms around the cook. “Oh!” she cried. “Cooky, Cooky, Cooky, I love you so much! No wonder you were my very first word! No wonder I said ‘Gimme cookie’!” In exhilaration she kissed Cook on her astonished mouth.

Upstairs, the clock in the front hall bonged suddenly. Seven bongs. With a scowl Cook pried Harriet loose and lifted her apron to wipe the kiss away. “Quit that nonsense,” she said. “Now go tell your parents that their dinner will be on the table in five minutes, and that the reason it’s late is because you wouldn’t eat and you blubbered and yammered, so they better not blame me.” Briskly she carried place mats and silver to the table in the adjoining dining room.

Harriet sped up the stairs. Ole Golly’s coming back! Ole Golly’s coming back! she sang to herself as she emerged on the first floor. The living room was empty. “I’m nonplussed!” she sang aloud as she sped up the next flight and started on the third, toward her bedroom. “Nonplussed!”

Then she remembered her parents and turned back. They were in the library on the second floor. Her father was still reading the newspaper he had begun in the living room, and her mother was laying out a game of solitaire on the small mahogany table between the front windows.

“Your dinner is just about to be served!” Harriet sang in a soprano voice, pretending to be a singer on the stage of the Metropolitan Opera. Then she curtseyed and blew kisses to her parents, who were both staring at her in a nonplussed way, and continued up the final flight of stairs to her room, where she flung herself onto her bed and lay smiling at the ceiling, overwhelmed with happiness.

******

Published by Yearling, an imprint of Random House Children’s Books a division of Random House, Inc., New York
 

Copyright © 1964 by Louise Fitzhugh, copyright renewed © 1992 by Lois Anne Morehead Excerpt from
Harriet Spies Again
copyright © 2002 by Lois Anne Morehead
 

The lyrics on page 80 are taken from the song “Yes, Sir, That’s My Baby” by Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson. Copyright © 1925 by Bourne, Inc., New York, NY. Copyright renewed. Used by permission.
 

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without the written permission of the publisher, except where permitted by law. For information address Delacorte Press.
 

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