Nancy and Plum Read Online Free PDF Page A

Pink silk underwear, pink silk petticoat, pink silk dress, pink velvet coat and hat trimmed in fur. Even pink shoes and stockings. Oh, my, but I love black hair and the color pink.”
    Plum laughed and said, “That’s just because you have red hair. I’m going to name my doll Annie after Annie Oakley and I’m going to teach her how to shoot flies at a hundred yards and to lasso a mouse from a full gallop.”
    Nancy said, “Listen, I hear someone calling.”
    Plum went to the window and stuck her head out. In a minute she turned to Nancy and said, “It’s Old Tom. He wants us.”
    “What shall we do about the box?” Nancy asked.
    Plum said, “Let’s carry it down and hide it under our bed and then we’ll confront Mrs. Monday with it.”
    So they put the box under their bed and then went down to see what Old Tom wanted. He only wanted to tell them that he was going to MacGregors’ for Christmas dinner and that Mrs. Monday was coming home on the four o’clock train. Nancy and Plum thanked him and waved good-bye and then went into the kitchen to see if they could find anything for breakfast. As they suspected, everything but the prunes and oatmeal had been locked up tight but when Nancy openedthe back door to get some kindling off the back porch she was surprised to find a little pan of fresh brown eggs, a can of new milk, a pat of butter and a note scrawled on a piece of wrapping paper, “Merry Christmas—Old Tom.”
    Nancy and Plum built a roaring fire in the kitchen stove, fried the eggs in butter, made toast out of some stale bread they found in the breadbox and had the best breakfast they had tasted in years. When they finished they washed their dishes and put them away, put the rest of the eggs on to hard boil for lunch and banked the fire with coal. Then they went into the washroom and got two large tin basins, put on their coats, caps, mittens and galoshes and went out to try sliding on the woodshed roof.
    Plum was the first one down. She sat in the basin, held her arms and legs out stiff and Nancy gave her a shove. Around and around she whirled, like a pinwheel, as she slid down the roof. Just at the bottom the pan hit a nail and stopped dead and Plum was dumped headfirst into the snowdrift.
    Nancy had to climb down the ladder and jerk Plum out by her ankles but then they both climbed right back up and Nancy took a turn. She started farther over to avoid the nail and though she turned around a few times she was able to jump out at the bottom and land feet first in the snowdrift. Then Plum came down and landed right side up and then Nancy, and pretty soon they had a slick hard track and went so fast they could stay right in their basins and land with a spank on the snow.
    My, it was fun and pretty soon it was lunch time and theywere very hungry and so they ran into the kitchen and ate their hard-boiled eggs and drank some milk and dried their mittens and then out they went again and slid and made angels in the snow until the sun started going down behind the barn and they were hungry again.
    This time they went in the barn and ate their apples and winter pears and played with Prancer, Dancer and Vixen and St. Nick until they heard the whistle of the four o’clock train and knew it was almost time for Mrs. Monday and the children. Slowly, reluctantly they said good-bye to their kittens and closed the barn door, put away the tin basins, hung up their wet coats and mittens and went up to their room to wait for Mrs. Monday.
    Pretty soon the front door slammed and up the stairs and down the long cold corridor trooped the returning boarders. Nancy and Plum ran to greet them and to see what they had gotten for Christmas, which in most cases wasn’t much because children sent to board with Mrs. Monday were not the children of parents or relatives who cared about them.
    The worst presents were Tommy Wolton’s checkerboard but no checkers; David Hilton’s two new suits of long underwear; Mary Burton’s