Harriet Spies


 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 Dedication
 For Henry, also known as Professor Higglebottom.
 Sisses adores you, you wonderful kid.
 
 
 
 Contents
 
 Cover
 Title Page
 Dedication
 1. A Visitor to Marble Island
 2. Time Stops for No One
 3. After the Ferry
 4. The Yard Sale
 5. What Happened to Moneypenny
 6. Not the Boy Who Cried Wolf
 7. Treasure Box
 8. In Clarence’s Room
 9. Harriet and Clarence the Spies
 10. Orange Things, Big and Small
 11. Shed Decorating
 12. Macaroni and Cheese and Marshmallows
 13. Close Up
 14. You’ll See
 15. A Tour of the Wood
 16. The Plot Thickens
 17. A Nightmare
 18. The Confession
 19. Close Up, Far Away, and Just Right
 Acknowledgments
 About the Author
 Books by Elana K. Arnold
 Copyright
 About the Publisher
 
 
 
 1
 A Visitor to Marble Island
 IF YOU’RE NOT A PEOPLE person, you probably wouldn’t like living at a bed-and-breakfast.
 (Even if you really like beds, and you really like breakfasts.)
 Lucky for me, I am a people person . . . most of the time. I think people are interesting. They look all different sorts of ways, and they do their hair in all different sorts of styles, and they wear all different sorts of outfits. Especially when they are on vacation. And pretty much everyone who comes to my Nanu’s Bric-a-Brac B&B on Marble Island is on vacation.
 I’m not here on vacation, though. I’m here because my mom back home is pregnant and on bed rest, so she can’t look after me, and my dad has to travel for work, so he can’t look after me, either. Usually, Nanu’s job is to run the B and B, but this summer her job is also to look after me. And my job is to help her with B and B stuff. And also to look after Matzo Ball, the world’s best cat.
 I guess Nanu’s basset hound, Moneypenny, doesn’t have a job, unless it’s hogging the sunny spot in the front window. She’s getting a little better at sharing with Matzo Ball, though.
 Actually, I have lots of jobs. Besides helping Nanu with the B and B and taking care of Matzo Ball, I’m also cleaning out Nanu’s storage shed and I’m making gingerbread birdhouses with Mabel Marble, the neighbor who lives on the other side of the wall in the backyard. And sometimes I help Hans and Gretchen by tasting new ice cream flavors at their shop (though vanilla is still my favorite).
 My goal was to get the back shed all cleaned out before my dad came to visit me. But it had already been two weeks since he’d first brought me to the island and he was arriving today, and with all my other jobs, the shed still hadn’t been cleaned out.
 Maybe that was better, though. It meant that Dad would be able to help me. Dad likes to be helpful.
 After we washed the breakfast dishes, Nanu and I got ready to go pick up Dad from the ferry. I was so excited to see him that I kept doing my Happy to See Dad dance, which I was making up as I went along. Basically it involved lots of spins and dramatic arm movements and things like that.
 “If you keep that up,” said the Captain, “poor Moneypenny won’t ever settle in for her morning nap.”
 The Captain, a visiting ornithologist to Marble Island, was Nanu’s longest-standing guest at the Bric-a-Brac. (An ornithologist, if you don’t know, is a bird expert. And do you know what experts love, more than almost anything else? Talking about the thing they’re an expert on. Don’t get the Captain going about island loggerhead shrikes if you don’t have at least half an hour to listen.) In addition to being Nanu’s longest-standing guest, the Captain is also the tallest. And maybe the strongest. Everything about the Captain is impressive. Now she was standing at the bottom of the stairs. She had on her birding vest, with all the little pockets, and her birding hat, with its wide brim, and she wore her binoculars around her neck. She was patting all the pockets of her vest, like she was looking for something.
 “Moneypenny already had two naps this morning,” I said, which wasn’t technically true, but might have been. “She’s all napped out.”
 “Hmm,” said the Captain, and she looked like maybe she was going to say something else, but just then Nanu came out of the kitchen carrying a big paper bag—the kind you get from the grocery store—and held it out.
 “Here you go, Captain,” Nanu said. “There was just enough olallieberry jam left to make your sandwiches. And there’s hard-boiled eggs, and a thermos of tea, and fruit, of course.”
 “Thank you, Agnes,” said the Captain. Then she asked, “Have you seen my compass?”
 The Captain was one of the smartest people I’d ever met, but she sure did misplace things a lot. Fortunately, Nanu was great at finding things. You know that saying, about how someone might lose their head if it wasn’t screwed on? I don’t think the Captain would ever forget her head, but she forgets most everything else. Except her binoculars. A bird-watcher wouldn’t get far without those.
 “I found the compass on the dining room table and slipped it into your lunch bag so you wouldn’t forget it,” Nanu said.
 “Ah,” the Captain said. “Thank you.” She took the lunch bag. It looked heavy.
 Nanu picked up her bright-yellow hat from the entry table and pushed it firmly over her curly hair. I like Nanu’s hair. I hope that one day when I’m really old mine will be silver and gray and white and brown, like hers.
 “Agnes,” said the Captain, frowning, “your hat has so much cat hair on it that it’s practically meowing.” She set her lunch bag on the front table, took the hat from Nanu’s head, and, opening the