Nancy and Plum

O
NCE THERE WAS
a young girl named Betty who enjoyed making up stories to tell her sister Mary at bedtime. The stories were about two other sisters, Plum and Nancy. Unlike Betty and Mary, who had a big, happy, safe family, Plum and Nancy were orphans who had wild adventures, like escaping from their terrible orphanage, being kidnapped by bank robbers, and stowing away on a boat to China.

The bedtime tales about the orphan sisters went on for years, but Betty couldn’t help growing up, and when she did, she got married, moved away from home, and, sometime later, became an author. Her first book,
The Egg and I
, was for adults, and was so well written and funny that it made her famous. Much encouraged, Betty went on to write more books
for adults, and also some for children—all about Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle, who knew everything there is to know about being young, was as wise as she was happy and as magical as she was commonsensical, and always had delicious snacks on hand for visitors.

Through all of this writing, Betty never forgot those old bedtime stories about orphans, and eventually she put a version of them into a book called
Nancy and Plum
. The kidnapping bank robbers and the boat to China are gone, but the sisters still live in a terrible orphanage. It’s run by Mrs. Monday, who is “as warm and motherly as a pair of pliers,” or, in other words, not at all like the wondrous Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle. Mrs. Monday’s horrid little niece, Marybelle, lives there, too, spying and tattling and threatening the unwary with recitations of Longfellow. Then there are the other orphans, a sad and lonely lot, who look to Nancy and Plum for comfort and leadership. And who wouldn’t? The sisters are charmingly self-sufficient. They can roast potatoes in woodstoves and make a doll out of burlap sacks. They can scrub floors, cut lawns, trim hedges, and weed gardens. When they’re locked up without food, they climb out a window and run to the barn for fresh milk. When they can’t mail letters the normal way, they use a chicken for a carrier pigeon. And when Mrs. Monday and Marybelle become too evil to bear, Nancy and Plum escape from the orphanage with the help of everyone from an old horse named Jerry to a friendly librarian named Miss Waverly to a kindly farmer named Campbell.

Though I never heard the original stories, I don’t regret
losing the bank robbers, et cetera, because for me,
Nancy and Plum
is perfect just as it is. I’m guessing Betty’s sister Mary, who did hear the originals, thought the same. But I do wonder if Mary ever complained that Betty, who was the younger sister of the two, gave all the best lines to Plum, the fictional younger sister. While the swashbuckling Plum gets to say things like “I wish I had some firecrackers, I’d take out all the powder and blast my way out,” Nancy, the timid one, is stuck saying “How can Plum be so brave?” I choose to imagine that if Mary did complain, Betty told her to write her own books. Which Mary did, but those details are for a different introduction.

In this tale I’m telling of sisters, there is yet one more set to consider. Before Betty wrote any of her books, she had two daughters. And these daughters must have been just as important to
Nancy and Plum
as Mary and Betty were, or even Nancy and Plum, because Betty said so right there on the dedication page. Read it for yourself. It says: “For Anne and Joan.”

Three pairs of sisters, woven together through time and stories—this is
Nancy and Plum
. Enjoy.

Jeanne Birdsall
Author of
The Penderwicks

I
T WAS
C
HRISTMAS
E
VE
. Big snowflakes fluttered slowly through the air like white feathers and made all of Heavenly Valley smooth and white and quiet and beautiful. Tall fir trees stood up to their knees in the snow and their outstretched hands were heaped with it. Trees that were bare of leaves wore soft white fur on their scrawny, reaching arms and all the stumps and low bushes had been turned into fat white cupcakes. Mrs. Monday’s big brick Boarding Home for Children wore drifts on its window sills, thick frosting on its steep slate roofs, big white tam o’shanters on its cold chimneys and by the light of the lanterns on either side of the big iron gates you could see that each of the gateposts wore a round snow hat. Even the sharp spikes of the high iron fence had been blunted by the snow.

However, in spite of its snowy decorations, in spite of the beauty of its setting, and even in spite of its being Christmas Eve, Mrs. Monday’s was a forbidding-looking establishment. The fences were high and strong, the house was like a brick fortress and the windows, with the exception of one small one high up and almost hidden by the bare branches of a large maple tree, were like dark staring eyes. No holly wreath graced the heavy front door, no Christmas-tree lights twinkled through the windows and beckoned in the passer-by, no fragrant boughs nor pine cones were heaped on the mantel of the large cold fireplace, for Mrs. Monday, her niece Marybelle Whistle and all but two of her eighteen boarders had gone to the city to spend Christmas. Nancy and Plum Remson (Plum’s real name was Pamela but she had named herself Plum when she was too little to say Pamela), the two boarders who remained, were left behind because they had no mother and father. No other place to go on Christmas Eve.

You see, six years before, when Nancy and Plum were four and two years old, their mother and father had been killed in a train wreck and the children turned over to their only living relative, one Uncle John, an old bachelor who lived in a club in the city, didn’t know anything about children, didn’t want to know anything about children and did not like children. When the telegram from the Remsons’ lawyer came notifying Uncle John of the tragic accident and the fact that he had just inherited two little girls, he was frantic.

“Dreadful!” he said, fanning himself with his newspaper.
“Gallivanting around the country getting killed. Dreadful and careless! Two little children! Heavens! What will I do with them? I’ll have to move from this nice leather chair in this nice comfortable club and will probably wind up washing dishes and making doll clothes. Dreadful! Heavens!” Beads of sweat sprang out on his forehead like dew and he fanned himself some more. It was while he was folding his newspaper to make a bigger and better fan that he noticed the advertisement. It read:

With trembling hands, Uncle John tore out the advertisement and wrote a letter to Mrs. Monday. He received an immediate answer and three days later he was on his way to inspect this delightful boarding home so chock-full of good food and tender loving care for little children.

It was springtime in Heavenly Valley and the fields were golden with dandelions, the slopes were foaming with cherry blossoms, the sky was lazily rolling big white clouds around and meadowlarks trilled in the thickets. Uncle John was entranced. “Had forgotten the country was so beautiful!” he said
to his chauffeur. “Certainly the place for children. Beautiful, beautiful!”