A Lion to Guard Us by Bulla Clyde Robert

Author:Bulla, Clyde Robert [Bulla, Clyde Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2013-06-25T00:00:00+00:00

XIII

The Devil Doll

Master Buck, the minister, talked to Amanda, Jemmy, and Meg.

“Dr. Crider was a good man,” he said. “Now he is in a better world.”

“Yes, sir,” said Amanda.

But she would not believe the doctor was gone. It was like a dream, she thought, and someday she would wake from it. She would wake and find him there . . .

After a week, a sailor came to look at the chests in the hold. He found the one with Dr. Crider’s medicines in it. He picked it up and set it on his shoulder.

“Where are you taking it?” asked Amanda.

“To the captain’s cabin,” answered the sailor.

Somehow she could not pretend after that. With the chest gone, she knew that Dr. Crider was gone, too.

He was gone, and Mother was gone, and she wanted to go away by herself and cry. But where could she go to be alone? Fear came over her. Mother had died, Dr. Crider had left them. How could she be sure that Father was waiting in the New World?

She saw Jemmy and Meg watching her, almost as if they knew what she was thinking. She tried to pretend that all was well. She sang them a song. She told them a story.

She dug into one of the chests and found some scraps of cloth.

“What are you doing?” asked Jemmy.

“I’m going to make something,” she said.

“What?” he asked.

“A surprise.”

By candlelight, while they were asleep, she made a doll for Meg and a ball for Jemmy. In the morning she gave them their presents.

But Meg would not take the doll. She would not even touch it.

Amanda looked at it. In the daylight, she saw how ugly it was. It had a crooked grin. The pieces of string she had used for hair looked like snakes. It was a devil doll.

The ball was not much better. It had no more shape than a bean bag.

Jemmy took it, then gave it back to her. “Could I have the door knocker?” he asked.

“It’s not a plaything,” said Amanda.

“I want it,” he said.

It was in one of the chests. She got it for him.

When they went up on deck, he showed the knocker to Anne and David Hopkins.

“A lion’s head!” said Anne. She and her brother wanted to play with it.

“No, it’s mine.” Jemmy ran away. The Hopkins children ran after him. Now and then he stopped and knocked on the deck with the knocker. Amanda heard him say, “Knock-knock, here comes Jemmy!”

She took the ball she had made and threw it overboard. She threw the devil doll after it. Almost at once she felt better—as if she had thrown away some of her sadness, some of her fear.

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