Double Spell by Janet Lunn Page A

success. It was at that point she saw Jane outside, leaning against the stone wall of the house. She put down the window spray and made up her mind. She marched out of the house.
    “Why don’t you go for a swim?” she asked Jane. “Maybe you’ll feel better.” Jane looked at her from frightened eyes.
    “Come on, go get your suit, I’ll finish the weeding.” Jane told Elizabeth about Hester. “Never mind,” said Elizabeth. “I’ll take a chance. You go on.”
    Relieved to have moral support, Jane agreed. Elizabeth watched her go into the house and waved her away a few minutes later when she came back out again on her way to the lake. As soon as she was out of sight, Elizabeth dropped the trowel and, disregarding the heat, raced into the house and up to the tower bedroom. She grabbed the paper with Mr. Hedley’s address and phone number fromthe pocket of the dress she had worn the day before. She dashed back downstairs and phoned the number, praying with every turn of the black dial that he would answer her call. He did. Would he be in that afternoon, Elizabeth asked, and could she bring the doll to him? He would and would be delighted.
    Quickly telling Mama where she was going, Elizabeth ran back up the stairs, changed her clothes, and took the doll from its hiding place.
    “There,” she said, smoothing down its tattered clothes, “we’ll know now, we’ll find out for you, you’ll see.” She put Amelia in her box and left the house, feeling only a twinge of guilt at playing this trick on her sister.
    “She’ll be all right, though,” Elizabeth told herself. “After all, the whole family’s there. And we have to find out, we just have to.”

Hester
    E lizabeth hadn’t been gone ten minutes when Papa emerged from his study, came into the back garden, and flopped down on the grass. Mama followed him minutes later with two glasses of iced coffee.
    “It’s too hot to breathe. This is a devil’s day, a real devil’s day. I move we all go to the show,” Papa said between sipping his coffee and mopping his forehead.
    “What’s playing?” asked Mama. But Papa said he didn’t care as long as the movie theater had air-conditioning.
    They found Joe lying on his bed listening to the radio, eagerly keeping track of the weather reports.
    “Boy,” he said, “it hasn’t been this hot in July since 1838. Wow!”
    Pat was in the coach house and William was retrieved from the basement, where he had made an underground car park.
    “Where are the twins?” asked Papa, and Mama, thinking they had both gone to see Mr. Hedley, told him so.
    “Very well, leave them a note saying we prefer the cool of – what is it we’re going to see?”
    “Captain Belmish Returns,”
said Joe gleefully. Papa gulped, “Captain Belmish returns to the heat of Number Five Sabiston Court. Tell them if they care to come and meet us at the restaurant across the street from the theater – it is air-conditioned, isn’t it Patrick?”
    Joe, who always knew these things, said it was and had neat french fries besides. Mama wrote the note, put it on the kitchen table, and they left.
    And so, when Jane came up from her swim not in the least soothed, she found silence. Marble had sought relief from the heat under the kitchen window. Horse was in his favorite spot under the lilac bush. No leaf stirred on the cherry tree and the heat hung heavy over everything.
    Inside, the house was empty and still. She found the note on the kitchen table and went upstairs to change. In the mood she was in, the silence upstairs seemed ominous. No breeze disturbed the curtains at her window. Only the floor creaked as she walked across it. The feeling of being watched she had had that day in the attic came back now. Quickly, nervously, she put on her red shorts and top. Barefooted, she went back downstairs and out of the house. She couldn’t stay in it. It terrified her. She hated Elizabeth for going off to the movies and leaving her like this. When she