Beezus and Ramona - Beverly Cleary [29]
Aunt Beatrice smiled. “Dorothy,” she said to Mother, “do you remember the time I—” She began to laugh so hard she couldn’t finish the sentence.
“You took my doll with the beautiful yellow curls and dyed her hair with black shoe dye,” finished Mother, and the two grown-up sisters went into gales of laughter. “I didn’t love you a bit that time,” admitted Mother. “I was mad at you for days.”
“And you were always so bossy, because you were older,” said Aunt Beatrice. “I’m sure I didn’t love you at all when you were supposed to take me to school and made me walk about six feet behind you, because you didn’t want people to know you had to look after me.”
“Mother!” exclaimed Beezus in shocked delight.
“Did I do that?” laughed Mother. “I had forgotten all about it.”
“What else did Mother do?” Beezus asked eagerly.
“She was terribly fussy,” said Aunt Beatrice.
“We had to share a room and she used to get mad because I was untidy. Once she threw all my paper dolls into the wastebasket, because I had left them on her side of the dresser. That was another time we didn’t love each other.”
Fascinated, Beezus hoped this interesting conversation would continue. Imagine Mother and Aunt Beatrice quarreling!
“Oh, but the worst thing of all!” said Mother. “Remember—”
“I’ll never forget!” exclaimed Aunt Beatrice, as if she knew what Mother was talking about. “Wasn’t I awful?”
“Perfectly terrible,” agreed Mother, wiping her eyes because she was laughing so hard.
“What happened?” begged Beezus, who could not wait to find out what dreadful thing Aunt Beatrice had done when she was a girl. “Mother, tell what happened.”
“It all began when the girls began to take autograph albums to school,” began Mother and then went off into another fit of laughter. “Oh, Beatrice, you tell it.”
“Of course I wanted an autograph album too,” continued Aunt Beatrice. Beezus nodded, because she, too, had an autograph album. “Well, your mother, who was always very sensible, saved her allowance and bought a beautiful album with a red cover stamped in gold. How I envied her!”
“As soon as your Aunt Beatrice got her allowance she always ran right over to the school store and spent it,” added Mother.
“Yes, and on the most awful junk,” agreed Aunt Beatrice. “Licorice whips, and pencils that were square instead of round, and I don’t know what all.”
“Yes, but what about the autograph album?” Beezus asked.
“Well, when I—oh, I’m almost ashamed to tell it,” said Aunt Beatrice.
“Oh, go on,” urged Mother. “It’s priceless.”
“Well, when I saw your mother with that brand-new autograph album that she bought, because she was so sensible, I was annoyed, because I wanted one too and I hadn’t saved my allowance. And then she asked me if I’d like to sign my name in it.”
“It was my night to set the table,” added Mother. “I never should have left her alone with it.”
“But what happened?” Beezus could hardly wait to find out.
“I sat down at the desk and picked up a pen, planning to write on the last page, ‘By hook or by crook I’ll be the last in your book,’” said Aunt Beatrice.
“Oh, did people write that in those days, too?” Beezus was surprised, because she had thought this was something very new to write in an autograph album.
“But I didn’t write it,” continued Aunt Beatrice. “I just sat there wishing I had an autograph album, and then I took the pen and wrote my name on every single page in the book!”
“Aunt Beatrice! You didn’t! Not in Mother’s brand-new autograph album!” Beezus was horrified and delighted at the same time. What a terrible thing to do!
“She certainly did,” said Mother, “and not just plain Beatrice Haswell, either. She wrote Beatrice Ann Haswell, Miss Bea Haswell, B. A. Haswell, Esquire, and everything she could think of. When she couldn’t think of any more ways to write her name she started all over again.”
“Oh, Aunt Beatrice, how perfectly awful,” exclaimed Beezus, with a touch of admiration in her voice.
“Yes, wasn’t it?” agreed Aunt Beatrice.