Chapter One

Welcome the Coming!

This was the day! This was the day Beany Malone had been anticipating for weeks. Beany was down in the basement making peppermint- stick ice cream. Other folks might make small dabs of ice cream in electric iceboxes but Beany' s brother, Johnny, could, at one sitting, eat more than any icebox tray could hold. And besides, there was usually company dropping in, and someone would say, "Gather round, folks - we're about to uncork the ice-cream freezer."

So the Malones still clung to this old freezer which could make a gallon at a time. The clamps at the top had long since become loose and had been reinforced with nails which worked out and up and had to be pounded in again and again. But to Beany there was the very essence of celebration and holiday mood in the slushy, gritty sound of a turning ice-cream freezer crank. And on this Saturday in February when, outside, a meager sun shone over crusted snow, its very creak seemed to say, "Sheila McBride is coming today - Sheila McBride is coming to stay."

None of the Malones had met their distant cousin Sheila, or even seen a picture of her, but the very cadence of the name - Sheila McBride - conjured up to Beany a poetic and appealing image. How could a girl with a name like that be anything but romantically lovely? Beany Malone was the youngest of the four Malone children in the wide-bosomed ten-room home of the Malones on Barberry Street. Sixteen years ago she had been christened Catherine Cecilia, but her ears had long since become so attuned to "Beany" that when a teacher at Harkness High, where Beany was a sophomore, called on "Catherine" to recite, it took Beany a startled moment to identify herself.

There now - the turning was harder. It must be about time to remove the dasher and pack the cream down in ice and salt. She'd have to find the new bag of coarse salt. And some of the chunky pieces of ice would need mashing. Why hadn't Johnny found the mallet they used to pound the ice? If Johnny were only half as good at helping to make ice cream as he was at devouring it!

Beany stepped back and drew a panting breath. She pushed her stubby, light-brown braids back from her flushed face and wiped her wet, chilled hands on the tail of her plaid shirt that hung outside her rolled-up levis. She trudged up the basement steps, through the back hall, the front hall and climbed the wide stairs to the second floor, calling out as she went, "Johnny, hey! - why didn't you bring down the mallet - you know, the ice-smasher-"

A tall, lanky boy with a shock of hair like black feathers and dark, absorbed eyes came to the head of the stairs. He was shuffling a sheaf of typewritten pages in his hand. "The ice-smasher? Oh yes - I started on the trail of it and then the trail got cold. You don' t need a mallet, precious. You can use one of Mary Fred's riding boots or the potato masher."

"Push the hair out of your eyes, Johnny. Why didn't you get it cut? My goodness, you'll be down at the station to meet Sheila and your hair all drake's tails on your neck. A first impression is important."

"But, my pet, I want to impress her as being the long- haired genius of the family. What's a family without a screwball genius !"

Beany turned away to call out, "Mary Fred, have you seen the ice-smasher?"

An absent voice, a room away, answered, "No - no, not since we used it to mash some lumps out of the brown sugar-"

Beany walked into the upstairs living room from where the voice came. This was the room Sheila McBride would be sharing with Beany's older sister, Mary Fred. Off the room was a glassed-in porch which served as a sleeping room, while the warmer inside room was for dressing and studying and lounging - though there was little lounging in the Malone house.

Beany's eyes rested on the dressing table, which stood in almost brazen nakedness, since they had ripped off its old pink-checked skirt. Mary Fred and Beany had sewed . together widths of green and white polka-dotted chintz to brighten it up for their cousin, Sheila - "our cousin, much-removed," as Johnny described her.

Mary Fred was sitting cross-legged on the floor after thumb-tacking up about a foot and a half of pleated skirt; her lap was full of polka -dotted chintz, but Mary Fred's eyes were on the morning paper and its news of the mid winter Horse Show.

Her brown, curly hair was caught back by a blue tie and her eyes had taken on its blueness; if the tie had been green, her eyes would just as obligingly have turned green. Johnny Malone always described Mary Fred as "old bubble and bounce."

"You'd better hurry with that, Mary Fred. The telegram said Sheila's train would be here at four forty- five and it's almost one now."

"Um-hmm," Mary Fred muttered, without lifting her eyes from the paper. "Blue Boy is to be in the four-gaited finals today-"

"Do you have to read every word about the Horse Show? Look at all we have to do before we go to the train! You said you' d do the skirt while I made the ice cream."

"Beany, you're such a slave driver! What kind of ice cream?"

"Peppermint-stick. "

"Peppermint-stick! Hmm, sounds as though there'd be an extra place at the table for Norbett Rhodes." Mary Fred began to sing, fitting her words lumpily to "Springtime in the Rockies"

When it's pink ice cream at the Ma-lo-hones I'll be
com-homing back to you-hoo ...

The sprinkling of freckles across Beany's nose were momentarily lost in a blushing wave, for the turn of the ice-cream freezer had kept time to more than "Sheila McBride is coming today ." Another chant had kept up a deeper accompaniment, like the chording by the left hand, "Norbett will come for dinner, too. .." Norbett Rhodes was the tall, red-headed boy with dark, nervous eyes, who occupied a very special corner in Beany's heart. Peppermint-stick ice cream was Norbett's favorite. ...

Mary Fred was saying, "Beany, I can't let go of my gathering thread, or needle, or all this goods. When I lift my carcass, see if that lump I'm sitting on is a thimble. Only for someone named Sheila McBride would I pucker this half-mile of chintz that's as stiff as oilcloth."

The lump was a thimble.

"Just think," Beany mused, "if Father's Uncle Matthew hadn't come to Denver to that educational convention we would never have known about Sheila."

Great-uncle Matthew taught high-school Latin in a small Pennsylvania town. He had sat at the Malone dinner table during his convention trip - this scholarly, throat-clearing old teacher - and given a boring recital of a trip to England and Ireland. What a lot of ruined castles, poets' graves, and historical monuments he had visited!

And then the conversation took a sudden exciting lift. While he was in Dublin he had traced down a relative, an orphaned girl named Sheila McBride. "And so I was appointed her guardian and brought her back with me in order to educate her."

"How old is she?" Beany had asked quickly.

"She'll be eighteen her next -birthday. I've been tutoring her for college. I planned to have her major in Romance languages but -" he added, with the sorrow of a man who sees his own idols ignored, "I am meeting with great reluctance from her."

"What is she like?" Mary Fred had asked. Mary Fred had entered the university the previous fall and viewed certain subjects with great reluctance herself.

"Well-like all young girls, I suppose. I've wished that I weren't so out of touch - socially, that is - with the younger generation."

Everyone was asking questions about Sheila and he told them that she hadn't made many young friends. "No doubt she feels shy and strange - and lonely, perhaps - what with living with an old codger like me."

Those three words - shy, strange, lonely - had immediately unlocked the collective heart of the Malones. Beany couldn't remember which one of them had said it first, "Why couldn't she come and stay with us?" For it was promptly echoed by everyone at the dinner table.

Martie Malone, father of the motherless household, had spoken promptly through a cloud of pipe smoke, "Why not? We need a cousin or two around the place."

Mary Fred said, "I could take her under my wing and get her acquainted at the university. She could start mid- term and be just a semester behind me. She can even use my books-and I can introduce her to all her profs-" her voice took on a romantic lilt, "My cousin, Sheila Mc- Bride, from Dublin."

Johnny's wide smile flashed around the table. There was a rare something about Johnny Malone's smile that gave everyone within its radius a warm and delightful uplift. "Sheila McBride from down Dublin way! Sounds like something out of an old Irish ballad. Maybe she can teach Dad the tune to 'Kathleen Mavourneen' that he's been whistling at for lo, these many years."

Beany's generous heart had lifted at the thought of the orphaned Sheila McBride finding life strange and lonely with her pedantic and elderly Uncle Matthew.

Beany always sat in the "mother's place" at the end of the table behind the coffee or tea pot. The Malones often called her Little Mom. For Beany was the most efficient, the most practical, of the Malones.

To be sure, she knew occasional stabs of envy that she hadn' t the magazine-cover loveliness that her oldest sister Elizabeth had. Or the impulsive, bubble-and-bounce charm that was Mary Fred's. And, of course, Johnny was the impractical, writing genius of the family for whom a great future was predicted. Beany was the helper, the doer, the adviser, the scolder. Her prettiness was the soap-and-water, bright-eyed, firm-cheeked variety with a dusting of freckles for annoyance. She was loyal and honest and intense.

She said earnestly, "Why yes, Uncle Matthew, Sheila could have the bed Elizabeth slept in."

Elizabeth, the oldest of the three Malone girls, had married Lieutenant Don MacCallin during the war, had come back with her new baby, little Martie, to await Don's return from overseas. Don had returned with a leg injury which had led to an amputation below the knee. He and Elizabeth and their little boy had gone to an Arizona ranch where Don was recuperating. But now here was this heaven-sent, - or rather, Ireland sent - Sheila McBride to fill Elizabeth's empty bed and chair at the table, as well as the empty spot in their hearts.

Instantly, Beany began envisioning the unknown Sheila. She would be wistful and starry-eyed-yes, and shabby in a picturesque, old-world way. She would be like Beany's little-girl impression of "Peg 0' My Heart," which Beany had read three years ago when she was recuperating from the measles. Sheila, like Peg 0' My Heart, would be starved for love and understanding. And right then Beany started laying plans for Sheila's welcome. The Malones wouldn't blunder the way the relatives had in "Peg 0' My Heart." No indeed; they would all be at the station to meet her. She would never feel lonely, never feel unwanted.

Uncle Matthew told them Sheila had known a hard and cheerless life. They would make it up to her by giving her an easy and gay one. They would never expect her to help with the onerous chores the young Malones did in order to keep their easily ruffled housekeeper unruffled. They would see to it that Sheila had gay clothes and went to parties ...and Sheila would be forever grateful, forever loyal.

So on this cold and gloomy Saturday, Beany prodded, "Hurry up, Mary Fred, and put on your skirt - I mean the dressing table's skirt."

The back door's slam announced the arrival of their part-time housekeeper. Their housekeeper's name was Mrs. Adams, but the Malones always called her Mrs. No- complaint behind her back, because her constant boast was that she had worked out for over seventeen years, without ever a complaint from her employers.

Yet Mrs. Adams, herself, had innumerable complaints regarding her life in the Malone household. Her chief one was that their father, Martie Malone, had often to absent himself from home in order to write feature stories for his paper. Mrs. No-complaint always muttered, "Dear, dear! Things are always at sixes and sevens when your father's away."

And, simultaneously with the door's slamming, there was a scrabbling on the stairs as Mike, a raggletail of a pup with legs which hadn't quite enough starch in them to carry his roly-poly body, sought the safer haven of the upstairs. Mrs. No-complaint didn't take kindly to dogs. Mike was the offspring of a black-and-white stray, by name Rosie O'Grady, that the Malones had taken in. The Malones always excused Mike's more serious derelictions - such as gnawing a buckle off an overshoe or dragging a neighbor's porch mat onto their own steps-with a regretful, "He's had no mother to guide him." For, just two days before Christmas, and while Mike still depended on her for nourishment, Rosie O'Grady had met instant death under the wheels of a coal truck.

Red, Johnny's big setter, had too much dignity to make such a scrambling exodus. Even though he knew what the housekeeper's spiteful glance at the broom portended, he would walk slowly and sedately into the front hall and, after careful deliberation, mount the stairs to Johnny's room. Today Johnny patted his red head, said, "Hi, fella, don't let the womenfolks get you down."

Beany said, "I'll go down and tell Mrs. No-complaint about dinner tonight. We want it to be particularly nice on account of Sheila."

"Don't lay it on too thick, lamb. Remember we Malones are just on sufferance with Mrs. No-complaint."

In the kitchen, Beany took the rib roast out of the electric icebox. Mrs. No-complaint was muttering about the icy chill of the wind and the slipperiness of the sidewalks as she slid her feet into the gray felt slippers that were easy on her corns.

Beany enjoined, "Now don't put any water on the roast-and don't put the cover on the roaster-"

Mrs. No-complaint's grunt paid belittling tribute to Beany's ideas acquired in Home Ec at Harkness High. Beany continued, " And could you make a Yorkshire pudding to serve with it, Mrs. No -- Mrs. Adams?" It required a certain dexerity of tongue to call their housekeeper Mrs. Adams to her face, when she was always Mrs. No-complaint among themselves.

"Yorkshire pudding!" the woman discounted. "I don't go much on Yorkshire puddings. My mother used to make them - and you never can tell how they'll turn out. Might be they're puffy and light. Might be they'll be flat and soggy as wom-out half-soles. I shouldn't think a girl fresh from Ireland would go for an English dish like Yorkshire-"

"She's not fresh from Ireland. She's been here two years. And Ireland and England are so close together. And men I thought it'd be nice to have macaroons to go with the ice cream."

"Macaroons are a touchy business - what with cracking nuts and beating egg-white. Yes, and you get a little bit of yolk in the egg-whites they don't stand up stiff. And you know how that oven slants, so that things bake lopsided. You have to put your whole mind to something like macaroons and that's hard of a Saturday when you're all underfoot-"

"We won't be underfoot," Beany promised swiftly.

"We'll stay out of your way. And then we're all going to meet me train. Have you seen that heavy mallet we use for mashing ice?"

No, Mrs. No-complaint couldn't keep track of things when no one ever put anything back where it belonged. Beany hunted unsuccessfully through cupboards and under the sink. She looked through the little room between kitchen and dining room, which was always called the "butler's pantry" though, as Johnny said, no butler had ever sanctified it by his presence. And then, not daring to prolong her being underfoot longer, she grabbed up the wooden potato masher for a substitute, and went back to the packing of the ice cream.

You wouldn't think you could have such a time just mashing up ice with a potato masher. But that one stubborn chunk, shaped like a pointed iceberg, slipped out of her grasp and the potato masher came down hard on her thumb. You wouldn't think you'd have such a time unweaving the string on the cloth sack of coarse salt when just one throbbing thumb couldn't take part. The string wouldn't unweave neatly so she jabbed an opening in it with an ice pick.

The freezer could now sit in dark solitude in the fruit room until dinner time. Beany was staggering under its dripping weight when she heard the muffled jingling of the telephone bell in the hall above.

That could be Norbert, calling to ask her what time Sheila's train got in. She wanted to answer it herself because if Johnny or Mary Fred did, they'd yell out, "For you, Beany!" and then hum loudly, "Beany's got a fellah! Beany's got a fellah!"

She set the freezer down with a thump in the dark room and, with her banged thumb and heart throbbing, raced up the basement steps.