“That would be most kind of you,” said Ole Golly and sat down.
Harriet opened her notebook:
I WONDER WHAT THAT WAS ALL ABOUT. MAYBE OLE GOLLY KNOWS SOMETHING ABOUT COOK THAT COOK DOESN’T WANT HER TO KNOW. CHECK ON THIS.
“What do you have in school this year, Harriet?” asked Ole Golly.
“English, History, Geography, French, Math, ugh, Science, ugh, and the Performing Arts, ugh, ugh, ugh.” Harriet rattled these off in a very bored way.
“What history?”
“Greeks and Romans, ugh, ugh, ugh.”
“They’re fascinating.”
“What?”
“They are. Just wait, you’ll see. Talk about spies. Those gods spied on everybody all the time.”
“Yeah?”
“‘Yes,’ Harriet, not ‘yeah’.”
“Well, I wish I’d never heard of them.”
“Ah, there’s a thought from Aesop for you: ‘We would often be sorry if our wishes were gratified.’” Ole Golly gave a little moo of satisfaction after she had delivered herself of this.
“I think I’ll go now,” Harriet said.
“Yes,” said the cook, “go out and play.”
Harriet stood up. “I do not go out to PLAY, I go out to WORK!” and in as dignified a way as possible she walked from the room and up the steps from the kitchen. Then she began to run, and running furiously, she went past the first floor with the living room and dining room, the second floor with her parents’ bedroom and the library, and on up to the third floor to her little room and bath.
Harriet loved her room. It was small and cosy, and the bathroom was a little one with a tiny window which looked out over the park across the street. Her room had a bigger window. She looked around, pleased as always by the order, the efficiency of it. She always picked up everything immediately, not because anyone nagged at her – no one ever had – but because it was her room and she liked to have it just so. Harriet was just so about a lot of things. Her room stood around her pleasantly, waiting for her. Her own small bed next to the window, her bookcase filled with her books, her toy box, which had been filled with toys but which now held her notebooks because it could be locked, her desk and chair at which she did her homework – all seemed to look back at her with affection. Harriet put her books down on the desk and hurriedly began to change into her spy clothes.
Her spy clothes consisted first of all of an ancient pair of blue jeans, so old that her mother had forbidden her to wear them, but which Harriet loved because she had fixed up the belt with hooks to carry her spy tools. Her tools were a flashlight, in case she were ever out at night, which she never was, a leather pouch for her notebook, another leather case for extra pens, a water canteen, and a boy scout knife which had, among other features, a screwdriver and a knife and fork which collapsed. She had never had occasion to eat anywhere, but someday it might come in handy.
She attached everything to the belt, and it all worked fine except that she rattled a little. Next she put on an old dark-blue sweatshirt with a hood which she wore at the beach house in the summer so that it still smelled of salt air in a comforting way. Then she put on an old pair of blue sneakers with holes over each of her little toes. Her mother had actually gone so far as to throw these out, but Harriet had rescued them from the garbage when the cook wasn’t looking.
She finished by donning a pair of black-rimmed spectacles with no glass in them. She had found these once in her father’s desk and now sometimes wore them even to school, because she thought they made her look smarter.
She stood back and looked at herself in the full-length mirror which hung on her bathroom door. She was very pleased. Then she ran quickly down the steps and out, banging the front door behind her.
SHE WAS PARTICULARLY excited as she ran along, because today she was adding a new spying place to her route. She had discovered a way into a private house around the corner. Private houses were much more difficult to get into than apartment buildings, and this was the first one Harriet had managed. It belonged to a Mrs Agatha K. Plumber who was a very strange, rather theatrical lady who had once married a man of considerable means. She was now divorced, lived alone, and apparently talked on the telephone all day. Harriet had found this much out from first listening to several conversations between Mrs Plumber’s maid and an overly friendly garbage man. Harriet had pretended to play ball while the garbage was being picked up.
Just yesterday she had discovered that by timing it exactly she had just enough time to jump in the dumbwaiter and slide the door closed before the maid completed one of her frequent trips up and down the stairs. The dumbwaiter was no longer used but fortunately had not been boarded up. Since there was a small crack in the door, Harriet could see and hear perfectly.
She approached the house, looked through the kitchen windows, and saw the maid preparing a tray. She knew then that the next step would be to take the tray to the second floor. Not a moment to lose. The maid went into the pantry. Harriet stepped through the kitchen door and in one jump was in the dumbwaiter. She barely got the door slid down again before the maid was back in the room. The maid was humming “Miss Am-er-i-ker, look at her, Miss Amer-i-ker,” in a tuneless sort of way.
Then the tray was ready. The maid picked it up and left the room. Simultaneously Harriet started pulling on the ropes that hoisted the dumbwaiter. Terrified, she heard a lot of creaking. This would never do. Maybe she could bring some oil.
She arrived at the second floor. Her heart was beating so fast she was almost unable to breathe. She looked through the crack. The first thing she saw was a huge four-poster bed in the middle of which Mrs Plumber sat, propped against immense pillows, telephone in hand, surrounded by magazines, books, candy boxes, and a litter of pink baby pillows.
“Well,” Mrs Plumber was saying decisively into the telephone, “I have discovered the secret of life.”
Wow, thought Harriet.
“My dear, it’s very simple, you just take to your bed. You just refuse to leave it for anything or anybody.”
Some secret, thought Harriet; that’s the dumbest thing I ever heard of. Harriet hated bed anyway. In and out was her motto, and the less time there the better.
“Oh, yes, darling, I know. I know you can’t run away from life, I agree with you. I loathe people that do that. But you see, I’m not. While I’m lying here I’m actually working because, you see, and this is the divine part, I’m deciding on a profession!”
You must be a hundred and two, thought Harriet; you better get going.
The maid came in with the tray. “Put it down there,” said Mrs Plumber rather crossly, then went back to the phone.
Harriet wrote in her notebook:
IT’S JUST WHAT OLE GOLLY SAYS. RICH PEOPLE ARE BORING. SHE SAYS WHEN PEOPLE DON’T DO ANYTHING THEY DON’T THINK ANYTHING, AND WHEN THEY DON’T THINK ANYTHING THERE’S NOTHING TO THINK ABOUT THEM. IF I HAD A DUMBWAITER I WOULD LOOK IN IT ALL THE TIME TO SEE IF ANYBODY WAS IN IT.
As though she were reading Harriet’s mind, Mrs Plumber said to the maid, “Did you hear a creak just now in that old dumbwaiter?”
“No,