What the Witch Left Read Online Free PDF Page A

most raggedy bird you eversaw,” said Mr. Perkins. “Mrs. Brown told me to pull out all the broken feathers, and they’d grow in healthy. It seemed like a terrible thing to do, but it was either that or getting rid of the bird.”
    Maggie Brown was smiling. Nora looked at her. “Is that why you were going to pull out Chatty’s feathers?” she asked.
    “Yes,” said Maggie. “One of my customers gave her to me because she was so scraggly. I’ve tried every other way I could think of to make those feathers grow, but nothing else worked.”
    Nora was quiet. She knew that she had been wrong in thinking Maggie was cruel. Now she felt guilty for stealing the fudge.
    Mr. Perkins took them to the back gate of the bear’s cage, behind the stone cave. The bear came to the gate, and Mr. Perkins gave him a carrot. “Mrs. Rothstein gave the bear to the zoo,” Mr. Perkins toldthe children. “She had him when he was a cub.”
    Mr. Perkins took them to see his favorite animals. He told them stories of things that had happened in the zoo. And he even took them to his office to show them photographs he had taken of the animals. Nora and Tad had never had such a good time at the zoo.
    Maggie Brown seemed to be having just as much fun as Tad and Nora. After they said good-bye to Mr. Perkins, she bought them each a balloon on a string. Then they got back on the bus to go home.

Almost every afternoon after school Tad and Nora went to see Maggie Brown. Sometimes she gave them fudge, but never more than one piece. Nora always made sure Tad ate his. She was afraid of what might happen if he collected three or four pieces. She always ate hers too because it was so delicious and because it seemed the safest thing to do.
    Maggie’s closets were full of shoes and hats. She no longer wore most of them, and she let Nora play with them. “You can take them home if you like,” the witch told Nora.
    There was a big box of old beads and earrings without mates on the floor of one of the closets. “You can have any of thatstuff you want,” said Maggie. At first Nora thought the jewelry might be enchanted, but it never made her disappear or learn how to fly. It was just fun to dress up in.
    Tad spent his time making and fixing things. He painted all the doorknobs with glow-in-the-dark paint. And he made a false bottom in the kitchen drawer in case Maggie needed to hide something.
    Maggie’s kitchen table wobbled. When Tad tried to even up the legs, he made it two inches shorter. Maggie didn’t mind.
    Meanwhile Maggie’s family was getting bigger. There was a baby sparrow that had fallen out of his nest. Maggie put him in a shoe box lined with cotton. Tad was afraid Henry would get him, so he made a little cage for the sparrow.
    Maggie found a litter of kittens someone had left in the vacant lot around the corner. She brought them home, and Tad helped make a bed for them. Maggie put a hot water bottle in it to keep the kittens warm. They snuggled against it as if it were their mother. Tad and Nora helped Maggie feed the kittens with an eye-dropper. “As soon as they’re big enough,” she said, “I’ll give them to Gimbel’s pet shop. I used to work there.”

    Four pairs of pigeons came to be fed every morning, and the squirrel brought his mate with him to the kitchen window.
    Wherever Nora went in Maggie’s apartment, the lizard went with her. Nora didn’t think he was ugly now. She liked his sad brown eyes. And she even liked the way the lizard’s forked tongue would suddenly flash out of his mouth. It usually meant that he was excited about something—or glad to see her.

One afternoon Tad went with Maggie Brown to the hardware store around the corner. He helped Maggie choose a new set of hinges for her kitchen cabinet. When they came out of the store, Tad noticed a little black cat sitting in front of the new delicatessen next door.
    “That’s Whiskers,” said Tad. “Doesn’t he belong to Mr. Samuels who used to have the