Guess What?
At last Molly saw her friends. Linda was walking quickly. She bent into the wind. Her hands were shoved deep in her pockets. She stopped from time to time to wait for Susan, who was much slower. Susan had one foot on the curb and one foot in the gutter, where she was carefully cracking the thin ice over winter’s last puddles.
“Hurry up!” Molly called. Linda poked Susan and they both ran to Molly.
“Guess what! Guess what!” shouted Molly as they came near.
“What?” Linda and Susan puffed together.
“An English girl is coming to stay with us!” said Molly happily.
“Oooh!” breathed Susan.
“What do you mean?” asked Linda.
“A girl,” said Molly, “from London. Her parents want her to come to America, where it’s safe. She’s supposed to stay with her aunt here in Jefferson until the war’s over. But her aunt has pneumonia or something and can’t take her, so my mom said she could stay with us.”
“Until the war’s over?” asked Linda.
“No, just until her aunt gets better,” said Molly. “But Mom said she’d be with us a couple of weeks at least, and that means she’ll be here for my birthday.”
“Oh, Molly,” sighed Susan. “You’re so lucky! A real English girl for your birthday!”
“I don’t get it,” said Linda. “Why is she coming now? It’s 1944, and England has been in the war a long time.”
“Well,” Molly thought out loud, “maybe her house was just bombed by the Nazis.”
“And she’s probably raggy and starving like the children in Life magazine pictures,” added Susan.
Linda shook her head. “Not everybody in England is ragged and starving, Susan,” she said. “For all you know, she’s as rich as a princess.”
“A princess!” said Susan joyfully.
“I bet she even looks like one of the English princesses, Margaret Rose or Elizabeth!” said Molly. “I bet she has dark curly hair and blue eyes. She’s going to share my room and come to school with me. She’s exactly our age.”
“Does she know your dad in England?” asked Linda.
“No, I don’t think so,” answered Molly. Molly’s dad was a doctor who was in England helping sick and wounded soldiers.
“When does she come?” asked Susan.
“Today!”
“Today!” shrieked Susan and Linda. “What time?”
“Mom said before dinner,” Molly answered.
“Well, I’m not going to stand out here all day waiting for her,” said Linda. She was holding her coat collar up around her ears. “I’m cold. Let’s go inside.”
“Maybe when the English girl is here, Mrs. Gilford will give us little tea sandwiches every afternoon, like they have in England,” said Susan dreamily.
“Maybe,” said Molly. “Oh, it’s going to be so much fun!”
“Will you two come on?” said Linda. She led the way to the house.
The three girls raced inside, through the bright kitchen, and down the stairs to the basement. Their new hideaway was in the corner next to Dad’s workbench. They had set up a card table there and draped an old blanket over it. It was their pretend bomb shelter. A few Saturdays ago, when they went to the movies, they saw a newsreel that showed the different kinds of bomb shelters people used in England. One bomb shelter was a steel table with sides that rolled down. The sides were made of metal links. The table was set up in a living room. The newsreel showed a family rushing to get under the table at the sound of a warning siren. It seemed almost like a game, the same idea as musical chairs.
The girls had been very impressed. Imagine having a bomb shelter right in your own living room! It was horrifying and exciting at the same time. They had gone straight to Molly’s house after the movies and made a pretend bomb shelter of their own. They liked to sit under the blanket-covered table and play that the house was collapsing around them. It was pleasantly scary.
“It smells like mothballs in here,” complained Linda as she crawled under the table. “Do we have to have this old blanket over the table all the time?”
“Yes!” said Molly. “Remember the newsreel? When the bombs came, the people got under the table and rolled the sides down so they wouldn’t get hurt.”
“But those sides were like a fence,” said Linda. “They had holes so you could at least breathe.”
“Well, a blanket is the best we can do,” said Molly. “Let’s just play.”
“Maybe the English girl has a bomb shelter just like this in her house in England,” said Susan as she twisted the top off Molly’s Girl Scout canteen. They kept the canteen full of water in case they decided to stay in their shelter for a long time. They wanted to keep crackers there, too, but Mrs. Gilford thought cracker crumbs would bring ants.
“Do you think English people ever stay in bomb shelters overnight?” asked Linda. “It’s so crowded in here.”
“I think sometimes they do,” said Molly. She tried to straighten her legs, but there wasn’t enough room under the table. “They have to stay in as long as the bombing goes on. Because if they came out too soon, something might fall on them, like bricks or a building or—”
WHAM! Something heavy landed right above their heads. The table wobbled. BAM! The table was struck again.
“Bombs away!” they heard.
The girls looked at each other and giggled. “Ricky!”
Molly lifted the blanket and stuck her head out. Ricky was bouncing his basketball on top of the table. “Don’t do that!” Molly said. She didn’t mind very much, though, because the thud of the basketball made it easy to pretend there were real bombs outside.
“Some bomb shelter,” said Ricky. “This wouldn’t last two seconds if a real bomb fell. Don’t you girls know anything? Real bomb shelters are outside, dug into the ground like caves.” He bounced the ball on the table again.
“This is like what they have in England,” protested Molly.
“Like fish it is,” scoffed Ricky.
“It is, too,” said Susan from inside. “We saw it at the movies.”
“Where? In the cartoon?” asked Ricky.
“You wait, Ricky,” said Molly. “Wait till the English girl comes. She’ll tell you