Way Down Deep Read Free Page B

line.”
    Occasionally, during their evening chats, Miss Arbutus talked about what she had dreamed the previous night. Her dreams were lucid and lively.
    â€œLast night I went to England. I saw Big Ben and Buckingham Palace, where the young princesses reside. I saw Stonehenge and the wild moors where the night wind goes moaning through the gorse, just like Mr. Thomas Hardy said in his books. I saw the White Cliffs of Dover, which our servicemen loved so much during the war. There was a song about it. I saw it all, and talked to the people. I love the way they talk.”
    â€œI should like to go to England,” Ruby said.
    â€œWell, if we ever find old Archibald Ward’s treasure, we will go to England, and all over Europe.”
    They smiled at each other in the looking glass.
    â€œBut we will come home, won’t we?” Ruby said. “We’ll always come back to Way Down?”
    â€œOf course we will. I got homesick even in my dream. So I turned my face toward America, and crossed the briny Atlantic Ocean with my bare feet running like a riverboat paddle across the waves. Sometimes I scampered across the backs of whales. A school of dolphins tried to keep up with me, but they could not. I saw them leaping in the moonlight. When I woke up, the bottom ruffle of my nightgown was wet, and little bitty strings of seaweed were clinging to it.”
    Once Ruby asked Miss Arbutus, “Did you have such vivid dreams when you were small like me?”
    And Miss Arbutus responded, “Oh, yes. When I wasabout ten I had a dog called Stinky. I named him that because he loved to roll in smelly stuff, and he got a bath more often than I did. Anyway, when he was clean, he slept at the foot of my bed.
    â€œOne night when I was suffering from a high fever, I had a nightmare. I dreamed that Stinky and I were climbing around the edge of a volcano when I suddenly slipped and fell. I fell and fell for the longest time, and I knew that I would land in a pool of fiery lava! I could feel the heat rising to meet me. Then I heard Stinky. I looked up and saw him peeping down at me over the rim of the volcano, and barking his silly head off. He was urging me to wake up! Wake up! Wake up!
    â€œAnd I actually did come to myself in my own bed, drenched with sweat. My fever had broken. Stinky was there sleeping at my feet, twitching and whimpering. I knew he was still in the dream, so I shook him awake. He was so tickled to see me alive, he jumped all over me and licked my face.”
    When they grew weary, Ruby would go to her cozy room, which Miss Arbutus had decorated for her in ruffled yellow and white, with purple pansies embroidered on her curtains and pillow shams.
    Before turning out the light, Ruby always stood before the window and gazed at the hills against the night sky. Though she could not remember her parents, she thought of them, and wished them health and happiness.
    â€œAnd don’t forget me,” she always added. “Woo-bee is right here waiting for you.”
    Then Ruby climbed into bed. The pansy curtains fluttered in the mountain breeze as her eyes closed. Sometimes she woke up in the wee hours of the morning to find a lady in her room, sitting very still in an armchair by the window. At such times a hazy memory floated to the surface of Ruby’s mind—a memory of being held and rocked beside a window, through which she could see snow falling.
    If Ruby sat up in bed, or said anything, the woman disappeared into the shadows. So she learned that if she was to keep this lady, who was
surely
her mother, then she must not move or speak. She would drift off to sleep again, and the morning daylight revealed nobody in the chair.

5
    I N HER SUMMER SHORTS AND SANDALS , R UBY WAS PULLING the Radio Flyer down Ward Street on her way to the bank on a bright Monday before noon. Having passed the seventh grade, she was soon to celebrate another birthday—which was believed to be her