She stopped his hand. “Wha’s that?”
“A tiger, I think. Yes, that’s what it says.” He turned the page and came upon the title “London” under a picture of a child leading an old man through the streets, with the words he knew well and sometimes recited under his breath:
I wander through each chartered street
Near where the chartered Thames does flow
Jem shut the book. “Where’d she go-the London girl?”
The girl swallowed. “Can I see more o’ that?”
“Once I’ve found Maggie. Where were she going?”
“Piddletown, she said.”
Jem stood. “Well, you come to see your cousin one day and you can look at this. All right?”
The girl nodded.
“Get you home now. It be comin’ on evening.” He didn’t wait to see if she did what he said, but hurried up the hill out of Piddlehinton.
11
Maggie was sitting on the stile overlooking the first valley the track passed through. Seeing her perched there was so incongruous that Jem almost laughed. Instead he swallowed the laughter and quietly said her name so as not to startle her. Maggie whipped her head around. “Jem,” she said, her mouth tight, “who’d have thought we’d meet in a place like this, eh?”
Jem stepped up to the stile and leaned against it. “It be funny,” he agreed, looking down into the valley, much of it purple with shadows now that the sun was setting.
Maggie looked back at the valley again. “I got to this point and couldn’t go no further. I been sittin’ here all this time trying to get up the nerve to go down there, but I can’t. Look, there’s not a soul anywhere about but us. An’t natural.” She shivered.
“You get used to it. I never give it any thought-except when we moved to London and I missed it. I could never get away from people in London.”
“People’s all there is, though, an’t they? What else is there?”
Jem chuckled. “Everything else. Fields and trees and sky. I could be in them all day and be happy.”
“But none of that would mean anything if there weren’t people about to be with.”
“I suppose.” They continued to look at the valley rather than at each other. “Why didn’t you come to the house?” Jem said finally. “You come all this way and then turn round at the last mile.”
Maggie answered his question with her own. “The girls get there all right?”
“Yes.”
“Maisie didn’t have her baby in the middle of the road?”
“No, she got inside.”
Maggie nodded. “Good.”
“How did you find Rosie?”
“She found us, or the old stick, anyway.” She told Jem about discovering Rosie at Miss Pelham’s.
Jem grunted. “I don’t miss her.” His emphasis made it clear that there were things he did miss. Maggie felt her chest tighten.
“Thank’ee for bringing ’em back,” he added.
Maggie shrugged. “I wanted to see this famous Piddle-dee-dee. And they needed someone to take ’em, in their state.”
“I…I didn’t know about Maisie.”
“I know. You could’ve knocked me over when I saw her, I was that surprised.” She paused. “I have to tell you something, Jem. Maisie’s Maisie Butterfield now.”
Jem stared at her in such horror that Maggie giggled. “I know Charlie’s bad,” she said, “but he’s come in handy.” She explained about the lie she’d invented, adding, “Rosie’s married to Mr. Blake.”
Jem chuckled, and Maggie joined him with the bark of laughter he’d missed over the months they’d been apart.
“How be Mr. Blake?” he asked when they’d stopped laughing. “And Mrs. Blake?”
“The Association still bullies him. Nobody can say a thing about the King or France, or anything unusual, without ’em pouncing. And you know how Mr. Blake says unusual things. He’s had a bad time of it. Maisie can tell you-she’s been around him the most.”
“Did he give me this?” Jem pulled the book from his pocket.
“He did. Well, in a way.” At a look from Jem, she added, “No, I didn’t steal it! How could you think that? I’d never take anything from Mr. Blake! No, it’s just-he gave me two of ’em, both wrapped in brown paper, and the same size. And-well, I mixed ’em up in my pocket. I don’t know which is yours and which mine.”
“They an’t the same?”
“No.” Maggie jumped down from the stile-now she was on one side, with Jem on the other-picked up her bundle, and dug out the other book. “See?” She opened it to the title page, where the two children were reading a book at a woman’s knee. “Songs of Innocence,” she said. “I remember it from before. I didn’t know what the other said, so I chose this one. What’s that one called, then?”
“Songs of Experience.” Jem opened his to the title page and showed her.
“Hah! Opposites, then.” They smiled at each other. “But which is yours, d’you think, and which mine? I mean, which do you think Mr. Blake meant us to have? He was very particular about one being specially for you and one for me.”
Jem shook his head. “You could ask him.”
“Oh, I couldn’t. He’d be disappointed I got ’em mixed up. We’ll have to decide for ourselves.”
They contemplated the books in silence. Then Maggie spoke again. “Jem, why’d you leave without saying good-bye, back in Lambeth?”
Jem shrugged. “We had to leave quick ’cause of Miss Pelham.”
Maggie studied his profile. “You could’ve found me to say good-bye. Was it ’cause you couldn’t-can’t-forgive me for-for doin’ what I did, what I told you about, at Cut-Throat Lane? ’Cause when that happened to me-well, for a time I thought the world would never be right again. Once you do summat like that, you can’t go back to the way it was before you did it. You lose it, and it’s hard to get it back. But then you and Maisie and Mr. Blake came along, and I felt better, finally, once I told you-except I’m scared of the dark, and of being alone.”
“It’s all right,” Jem answered at last. “I were surprised, is all. It made me think of you different. But it’s all right.”
They looked down at their books in the coming dark. Then Maggie leaned over the page of Jem’s book. “Is that a tiger?”
Jem nodded, and peered at the words. “‘Tyger tyger-’”
“‘Burning bright,’” Maggie joined in, to his surprise,
In the forests of the night
What immortal hand or eye
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?
“Maisie taught me that,” she added. “I can’t read it-yet.”
“Maisie taught you?” Jem pondered this, wondering how much his sister had changed from her stay in London. “What’s ‘symmetry’?”
“Dunno-you’ll have to ask her.”
Jem closed the book and cleared his throat. “Where you going now, in the dark, all alone?”
Maggie tapped the book against her palm. “I was going to catch up to the button man in Piddletown, and offer to make buttons for him to raise my fare back to London.”
Jem wrinkled his brow. “How much do it cost?”
“A pound all in on the stage if I ride up top, less if I get a wagon.”
“Maggie, you’d have to make a thousand buttons at least to pay your fare!”
“Would I? Lord a mercy!” Maggie joined Jem’s laughter. It released something, and soon they were laughing so hard they had to clutch their stomachs.
When their laughter at last died down, Jem said, “So what were you going to do, stuck on this stile-stay here all night?”
Maggie ran her fingers over the cover of the book. “I knew you’d come.”