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Ivy and Bean looked at each other. “HELLLLLP!” they howled.

“Okay, okay. I’m getting the ladder,” grumbled Nancy. “Hang on.” She padded away and came back a minute later. “Sheesh. This thing is heavy.”

“Quiiiick,” moaned Bean. “We’re dying.” She wanted Nancy to be leaping up the ladder.

Something crashed into something else below them. “Ouch!” said Nancy. Then she said a bad word.

Ivy and Bean giggled.

Clump, clump. Nancy climbed up the ladder. Whack! The door in front of them popped open—and then Nancy poked her head into the crawl space. “Wow,” said Nancy, looking around. “I’ve never been up here. Is there anything good in here?”

Bean nudged Ivy. “Nothing,” she said. “Not a ding-dang thing.”

“You wouldn’t like it,” said Ivy.

Nancy’s eyes scanned the darkness and then zipped back to Bean and Ivy. “You’re not allowed to go in the crawl space, Bean, and you know it.”

Uh-oh, thought Bean. She had hoped Nancy would be so glad to see them that she would forget about that. She tried to look sad. “I was scared,” she said in a quavery voice.

“That’s your own fault, bozo,” said Nancy firmly. “Get down from there.”

Nancy climbed down the ladder into the closet. Ivy edged out of the hole and followed her. Bean rolled over onto her stomach, pulled the door toward her, and set it in its frame as she backed down the rungs of the ladder.

Then Nancy noticed the sheets and towels. “What’s all this black stuff on the towels? Bean, did all this stuff fall out of the crawl space?”

“I don’t see any black stuff,” said Bean, stalling.

“Bean, look! It’s everywhere,”snapped Nancy.

Yikes, thought Bean. There was an awful lot of dirt. More than she remembered.

“Maybe it was like that before,” suggested Ivy.

“It was not like this before!” Nancy said. She turned to Ivy. “I don’t even know what you’re doing here, Ivy!” She whirled around to glare at Bean. “You are going to be in a world of trouble when Mom gets home.”

A world of trouble. Bean opened her mouth, but nothing came out.

Then Ivy said in a quiet voice, “My babysitters play with me.”

That’s it! thought Bean. Maybe she hadn’t been exactly good, but that was because Nancy had been a bad babysitter. “Leona always knows where I am,” she remarked, “because she’s always with me.”

Nancy stopped glaring and started looking guilty.

“Leona doesn’t sit in the bathroom putting on makeup all afternoon,” Bean pointed out. “She earns her money, drawing horses for me.”

Nancy made a throat-clearing sound. She brushed some dirt from a towel, and then she gave Bean her big, peppy smile. “You know what?” she said. “I bet I could just vacuum all this dirt off the sheets and towels. I bet it would come right off.”

Bean smiled back at her. “I’ll go get the vacuum if you want.”

“Okay. You go get the vacuum while I put the ladder away.”

ONE IS SILVER AND THE OTHER’S GOLD

Ivy and Bean were playing in the living room when Nancy finally finished vacuuming. They were playing doll babysitters. Bean’s doll was the kid. She had crawled out on the roof and was dancing on the chimney. Ivy’s doll was the babysitter. She was having a fit.

“Come down before you fall,” wailed Ivy’s doll.

“Maybe I will, and maybe I won’t,” said Bean’s doll. Suddenly there was an earthquake. The house was a tall stack of books. Bean’s doll fell quite a ways.

“Oh no! My legs are broken!” shouted Bean’s doll.

“Luckily, I’m a doctor!” Ivy’s doll jumped up.

“Let’s put Band-Aids on them.”

“Too late! The volcano next door is erupting!”

“Here comes the lava! It lifts the house up, and carries it for miles!” Ivy picked up the attic book and threw it across the room. “The babysitter is buried in rubble!”

Nancy walked into the living room looking crabby. “What a mess! You two can just pick up all those books yourselves. I’m tired of cleaning up after you!”

“But we’re playing!” said Bean.

“Well, stop playing and pick up those books,” snapped Nancy. “I want this place looking perfect when Mom and Dad come home.” She glanced at the clock. “Which is going to be