The Witch Family Read Free

and up, and up, and away.
    "Good-bye," called Amy from the window. "Don't lose it!" she said.
    What a morning! Old Witch banished. Malachi gone. And a bird with a note in his bill. Exhausted, Amy lay down on the big bed. Clarissa put on the record, "How Much Is That Doggie in the Window?" She sat in Amy's little red rocker and listened, and rocked, and nodded.

2. Little Witch Girl
    One day, Old Witch was rocking in her wicker rocker on the creaky front porch of the witch house. She was not happy, and she was brooding. She did not like it up here on this bare, bleak glass hill. When she stepped off the porch, she slipped. Her feet went out from under her, for the glass was like ice. She looked like a very bad ice skater, and Old Tom laughed at the silly sight she made trying to regain her balance. No one else would have laughed, for Old Witch, banished or not, might angrily have cast a spell. However, Old Tom would not have minded being cast in a spell. Though he was a witch cat, Tom was as curious about everything, including awful spells, as an ordinary cat.
    "Tluck, tluck, thick," muttered Old Witch. "How dismal it is up here! All this sunshine glinting on the glass. No brambles, no briers! No wilderness to put a foot in! No swamps!" Old Witch pulled her peaked hat down over her eyes and sulked. She pined for the company of another witch, even though all other witches were of less importance than she.
    "Oh, to glory be! It's terrible," she said to Old Tom. "Where is the rhyme and reason," she asked, "of being good all the time, as
her
instructed when
her
banquished me (she said "banished" the way Amy did), all by myself and with none to clap?"
    "Nobby," Old Tom reminded her in a rusty, rasping voice. (Nobby was the real name of this famous old witch.) "
I'm
here," he said.
    "I was referring to witches, not cats, however talented," Old Witch replied.
    "Once I was a witch," thought Old Tom, cleaning a paw. "I am a graduated witch." But Old Tom did not remind Old Witch of the fact that witches turn into cats when they go into retirement. And pretending to doze, Tom turned his eyes to the other end of the porch where something, a bumblebee in hiding, sometimes engaged his attention.
    Old Witch thought no more about Old Tom. Cats sometimes watch a speck of dust, or even nothing, for hours. "How dull!" thought Old Witch. But dull as life was on this awful glass hill, Old Witch had to bear it. She had to be good, not good in the way witches enjoy being good—that is in casting wicked spells and eating up little rabbits whenever they have the chance—but good in the way that real regular people are good—that is in
not
casting spells and
not
eating up little rabbits every minute. Though she drooled terribly for a taste of rabbit, her favorite food—rabbits and their painted eggs—she was good. She ate her herb soup daily, and she made no attempt to escape from this place of "banquishment." Otherwise, Amy said, she would not be able to have a hurly-burly even on Halloween!
    For this difficult goodness, Old Witch received a reward. As she sat unhappily rocking, she got a second letter. The same beautiful red cardinal bird who had brought her the first letter brought this one too, tightly folded up in a wad in his bill. It, too, was from Amy, the banisher, on Garden Lane.
    "Quite a pen pal, she are," said Old Witch, half sarcastically, half fondly. She read the letter out loud with an audience of—she thought—just Tom. So far she had not suspected the presence of the bumblebee.
"Dear mean old wicked Old Witch,
    When you wake up in the morning, sing an abracadabra (you know the one that goes, Abracadabra, ABC...), close your eyes, and then open them again, and you
might
have company.
    I love you and you love me,
Amy.
    P.S. You never answered about Malachi, the bumblebee. Did you take him? I don't mean
steal.
I mean
take,
by
mistake,
the day you flew away. He disappeared that day. Please shake out your shawl