Half Magic Read Online Free

with many compartments for shoes, though Jane seldom remembered to put hers away in it.
    She dropped the magic thing into one of the compartments in the shoebag. No one would disturb it there.
    Then she got into bed.
    Her last thought was that she must wake up early in the morning, by dawn at
least
, and call the others.
    They must hold a Conference, and decide just how they were going to use this wonderful gift that had descended upon them out of the blue.
    It was going to be an Enchanted Summer!
    And Jane fell asleep.

3. What Happened to Mark

    Of course it didn't work out that way at all.
    In the morning Jane was so tired from her midnight vigil that she slept right through breakfast. Their mother (who was tired, too) thought Jane needed the rest, and told Miss Bick not to call her.
    Miss Bick looked disapproving as usual, but did as she was told. The children's mother went off to work, and Katharine and Martha (under protest) washed and dried the breakfast dishes without the usual charming companionship of their elder sister. Katharine was the washer and Martha the drier.
    "I'd like to know what's going on around here," Katharine complained, over the cereal bowls. "Lights on at all hours and Mother and Jane holding secret midnight conspiracies in the living room. I heard them! And now Mother letting Jane stay in bed half the morning—I don't know what this house is coming to!"
    "It's that magic. It's mysterious. I don't like it," Martha said.
    Katharine had reached the awful pans that needed scouring now, and Martha went away and left her with them, as is the traitorous habit of all dish-driers.
    She went into Jane's room. Drawn shades and a huddled form in the bed greeted her.
    "Wake up," she said to the form, in a halfhearted way.
    "Go away," said Jane, from under a sheet and blanket.
    Martha felt depressed.
    Carrie the cat had followed her into the room. Carrie's full name was Carrie Chapman Cat. Katharine had named her after a famous lady whose name she had seen in the newspaper. Carrie was a fat, not very interesting cat, kept mainly for mousing purposes, and the children ordinarily paid very little attention to her, or she to them.
    But this morning everything was so gloomy and strange that Martha felt the need of comfort. She sat down on the floor, leaned her head back against the open door of Jane's closet, took Carrie in her lap, and stroked her.
    There was a silence, except for the heavy breathing of Jane.
    Martha felt a wish for companionship.
    "Oh dear, if you could only talk," she said to Carrie.
    "Purrxx," said Carrie the cat. "Wah oo merglitz. Fitzahhh!"
    "What?" said Martha, startled.
    "Wah oo merglitz," said Carrie. "Widl. Wifi uzz.
    "Oh!" said Martha. "Oh!"
    She got up, dropping Carrie rather heavily to the floor, and backed away, white with horror.
    "Foo!" said Carrie resentfully. "Idgwit! At urt!"
    Mark appeared in the doorway.
    "Are my roller skates in here?" he demanded. "Jane borrowed them last week when her strap broke."
    Martha ran to him and clutched him.
    "It's that magic!
I've
got it now!" she cried. "I wished Carrie could talk, and now listen to her!"
    Carrie chose this moment to put on an offended silence.
    "Bushwah," Mark said gruffly. He had found his roller skates in Jane's shoebag and was putting them on. "That old cat. She always was crazy, anyway!"
    "Azy ooselfitz!" said Carrie suddenly.
    Mark looked surprised. Then he shook his head in disbelief.
    "That's not talking," he said. "Probably just having a fit or something."
    "But I wished she could talk, and then it began. Like Jane yesterday!"
    "Just a coincidence," said Mark. "Yesterday, too. I don't believe in that old magic. Just Jane being smart. Just a lot of crazy girls."
    He banged away through the house and out the front door, on his skates. Miss Bick could be heard, following in his wake and lamenting the fate of the floor polish.
    Martha gave up. There was no sense in appealing to Mark in this mood. Sometimes he got tired of