"You talked about your magic other places yesterday--"
"You must mean the Sandwich Club ..."
"To which I pointedly was not invited."
"Why, lady, we thought that was your regular day with your grandma."
"I can always have another Grandma day, if people'd only ask me places."
"All there was to it at the Sandwich Club was me sitting there with a ham and pickle sandwich, and I 'said right out loud, "At last I'm going to get my witch's diploma. Been studying for years!"
"That's what come back to me over the phone!"
"Ain't modern inventions wonderful!" said Mrs. Goodwater.
"Considering you been president of the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge since the Civil War, it seems, I'll put it to you bang on the nose, have you used witchcraft all these years to spell the ladies and win the ayes-have-it?"
"Do you doubt it for a moment, lady?" said Mrs. Goodwater.
"Election's tomorrow again, and all I want to know is, you runnin' for another term--and ain't you ashamed?"
"Yes to the first question and no to the second. Lady, look here, I bought those books for my boy cousin, Raoul. He's just ten and goes around looking in hats for rabbits. I told him there's about as much chance finding rabbits in hats as brains in heads of certain people I could name, but look he does and so I got these gifts for him.
"Wouldn't believe you on a stack of Bibles."
"God's truth, anyway. I love to fun about the witch thing. The ladies all yodeled when I explained about my dark powers. Wish you'd been there."
"I'll be there tomorrow to fight you with a cross of gold and all the powers of good I can organize behind me," said Elmira. "Right now, tell me how much other magic junk you got in your house."
Mrs. Goodwater pointed to a side table inside the door.
"I been buyin' all kinds of magic herbs. Smell funny and make Raoul happy. That little sack of stuff, that's called Thisis rue, and this is Sabisse root and that there's Ebon herbs; here's black sulphur, and this they claim is bone dust."
"Bone dust" Elmira skipped back and kicked Tom's ankle. Tom yelped.
"And here's wormwood and fern leaves so you can freeze shotguns and fly like a bat in your dreams, it says in Chapter X of the little book here. I think it's fine for growing boys' heads to think about things like this. Now, from the look on your face you don't believe Raoul exists. Well, I'll give you his Springfield address."
"Yes," said Elmira, "and the day I write him you'll take the Springfield bus and go to General Delivery and get my letter and write back to me in a boy's hand. I know you!"
"Mrs. Brown, speak up--you want to be president of the Honeysuckle Ladies Lodge, right? You run every year now for ten years. You nominate yourself. And always wind up gettin' one vote. Yours. Elmira, if the ladies wanted you they'd landslide you in. But from where I stand looking up the mountain, ain't so much as one pebble come rattlin' down save yours. Tell you what, I'll nominate and vote for you myself come noon tomorrow, how's that?"
"Damned for sure, then," said Elmira. "Last year I got a deathly cold right at election time; couldn't get out and campaign back-fence-to-back-fence. Year before that, broke my leg. Mighty strange." She squinted darkly at the lady behind the screen. "That's not all. Last month I cut my finger six times, bruised my knee ten times, fell off my back porch twice, you hear--twice! I broke a window, dropped four dishes, one vase worth a dollar forty-nine at Bixby's, and I'm billin' you for every dropped dish from now on in my ho
use and environs!"
"I'll be poor by Christmas," said Mrs. Goodwater. She opened the screen door and came out suddenly and let the door slam. "Elmira Brown, how old are you?"
"You probably got it written in one of your black books. Thirty-five!"
"Well, when I think of thirty-five years of your life ..." Mrs. Goodwater pursed her lips and blinked her eyes, counting. "That's about twelve thousand seven hundred and seventy-five days, or counting three of them per day, twelve thousand-odd commotions, twelve thousand much-ados and twelve thousand calamaties. It's a full rich life you lead, Elmira Brown. Shake hands!"
"Get away!" Elmira fended her off.
"Why, lady, you're only the second most clumsy woman in Green Town, Illinois. You can't sit down without playing the chair like an accordion. You can't stand up but what you kick the cat. You can't trot across an open meadow without falling into a well. Your life has been one long decline, Elmira Alice Brown, so why not admit it?"
"It wasn't clumsiness that caused my calamities, but you being within a mile of me at those times when I dropped a pot of beans or juiced my finger in the electric socket at home."
"Lady, in a town this size, everybody's within a mile of someone at one time or other in the day."