WHO: Nursery Rhymes and Fairy Tales WHEN: Pre-Marian arriving in Fairy Tales' garden WHERE: New York and Not New York WHAT: Sisters (doing it for themselves) WARNINGS: Poor gardening practices
The police came looking for Nanny, of course, and Nursery Rhymes let them in to search her apartment. She clutched her hands behind her back and nodded helpfully, earnestly, at the detective, and promised that she did not know where her great-aunt Mary had gone, and cross her heart and hope to die she'd tell them the moment Nanny contacted her.
He asked her name, and she answered, thoughtfully, "Arabella," and smiled sweet as a daisy.
Arabella she sang her new name to herself as she waltzed around her little rooftop garden. Yes, something a little more fancy for this fresh new face, although she rather fancied keeping Mary around, Arabella Mary, perhaps. It was just such a delightfully malleable name.
Arabella spent two days changing things about her house, pushing new little things into the planter boxes on her roof to see what would grow; mulberries, needles and pins, a green bottle, a silver bell.
The police kept bothering her; someone was watching her house in case Nanny came home. Arabella dropped nuts and chicken bones on their car as she leaned over the edge of her roof, and whispered at the baby bumblebees that visited her flowers to sting the backs of their necks. It got a little dull, though; she rather thought she needed a companion.
Perhaps, she thought, she should pay a visit to her sister; simply step out of time for a little while and poof! the police will have forgotten all about Nanny by the time she came back.
Arabella put together a little yellow basket, full of honeycakes and puddings, and hung it off her arm. She gathered her skirts about her knees, closed her eyes, and stepped faithfully off the edge of her roof, and came tumbling down into her sisters garden among the strawberries, laughing gaily at her tumble.