On a Monday morning two weeks after their return from Pennsylvania, Mrs. Zimmermann and Rose Rita were at the bus stop in front of Heemsoth’s Rexall Drug Store to meet Jonathan and Lewis Barnavelt. The two had flown from London to New York, had taken the train to Toledo, and then had transferred to a Greyhound bus for the trip to New Zebedee, which was off the passenger-train route.
Rose Rita grinned as Lewis stepped down to the sidewalk. He looked grumpy, sweaty, and tired—just the way you should look when coming back from a long trip. But he caught sight of her and returned her grin. Behind him was a mussed-up Jonathan Barnavelt, his blue work shirt and his khaki wash pants wrinkled. His bushy red beard was crumpled on one side, where he had been leaning against the bus seat and sleeping. “Hello, Pruny!” he boomed as he lugged two huge suitcases off the bus. “And you too, Rose Rita. How’s the gimpy leg?”
“It’s all better,” Rose Rita returned. “Good enough for me to beat Lewis in a race!”
Lewis gave her a friendly sort of dirty look. “We’ll see about that.”
They all climbed into Bessie, and Mrs. Zimmermann started the engine. “Hey,” Uncle Jonathan objected when she turned left at the stoplight on Main Street. “This isn’t the way home!”
“No,” Mrs. Zimmermann said in a tart voice. Bessie clattered over the railroad tracks, and they were on the Homer Road. “It’s the way out to my cottage at Lyon Lake. You boys could use a bath, a swim, and a good home-cooked meal before going back to Castle Barnavelt. Don’t worry—Rose Rita and I gave the place a good going-over on Saturday, so everything is clean and ready for you. We even put Cheerios in the cupboard and milk in the refrigerator, so you’ll be all set to ‘cook’ your own breakfasts!”
“Well,” Jonathan said, “a bath and a swim do sound good at that. And we’ve got quite a story to tell you about our travels.”
But during the drive out he would not say a word about their trip, and neither would Lewis. Rose Rita kept glancing over at Lewis, who sat beside her in the backseat. He was subdued, and he stared out the window as the car rolled along. Something about him had changed. Rose Rita thought and thought, and then she noticed how his belt had a flappy tongue hanging out of the buckle. “You’ve lost weight!” she said.
Lewis started, then grinned sheepishly. “We walked a lot,” he said. “All over the place. And most of the food . . .” He wrinkled his nose. “Did you know that in France they eat snails?” With a sigh he added, “It’ll be great to have some normal food again.”
Lewis had lost a good many pounds during his six weeks in Europe. He still wasn’t exactly thin, but now he was more solid and chunky than fat. And Rose Rita thought he might have grown a little taller too.
As they parked in front of Mrs. Zimmermann’s cottage and got out of the car, Jonathan said, “Florence, I have a confession to make. While we were in Germany, I managed to take a side trip to the University of Göttingen, where you took your degree. Do you remember Professor Athanasius there?”
Mrs. Zimmermann laughed. “Of course! ‘Very goot, class. Und today ve begin a consideration uff alchemical thaumaturgy.’ Good heavens, is he still there? He must be about a hundred years old!”
“Yes, he’s still there, and no, he is not a hundred years old. He’s only eighty-two,” Jonathan said as he helped Mrs. Zimmermann remove a heavy picnic hamper from the car trunk. He sighed. “I thought perhaps he might have some way of restoring your magic—no, don’t object, I know it bothers you—but he couldn’t think of a thing that wouldn’t take seven or eight years to accomplish. Sorry.”
Mrs. Zimmermann’s eyes twinkled. “Well, we’ll just have to live with it, Weird Beard. Don’t let it bother you.”
Lewis and Uncle Jonathan took turns bathing, and then everyone went for a swim in the lake. Lewis’s dog-paddle style had not improved very much, but he perked up and enjoyed himself. He and Rose Rita raced, and he didn’t seem to mind losing. Afterward Mrs. Zimmermann cooked hamburgers on a grill, and they all sat on the lawn and had a picnic lunch. Lewis ate three hamburgers and cast a wistful eye at a fourth, but he turned it down.
“Tell us about your trip,” Rose Rita said. “Was it wonderful?”
Jonathan, full of hamburgers, leaned back and said, “Well, parts of it were. But I have a better idea. I won’t just tell you about the sights—I’ll show them to you.” It took a little preparation, but soon they were all laughing at a sort of home-movie show. Except that the movies were Uncle Jonathan’s magical illusions, three dimensional and so real it seemed as if you could touch them. The four friends saw the Changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace (Uncle Jonathan mischievously gave one of the guards Lewis’s face), and then a can-can dance from Paris (Rose Rita squealed to see that she and Mrs. Zimmermann were the last two high-kicking dancers on the right side), and then fairyland castles from Austria, the canals of Venice, and lots more.
“Not bad, Fuzzy Face,” Mrs. Zimmermann said when the show had finished. She flicked a match from the air and lit one of her thin cigars. “At least you haven’t lost your touch.”
“Thanks, Haggy,” Uncle Jonathan returned.
Rose Rita was curious about something. “You said only parts of the trip were wonderful. What happened that made the rest not so wonderful?”
Jonathan made a face. “Not now. Maybe Lewis and I will tell you that story some other day. But it’s enough for me that we’ve been on a great, long journey, and we got homesick, and here we are again, with the two people we like most in the world—right, Lewis?”
Lewis blushed. “Yeah,” he muttered gruffly, but he looked pleased.
Later Lewis and Rose Rita went for a walk along the edge of the lake. Rose Rita picked up a rock and skimmed it across the water, getting four good hops. Lewis tried, but his stone plunked down on the first splash.
“You have to throw with your arm level,” Rose Rita said. “Sidearm, like this.”
Lewis tried again, and finally he managed a couple of skips. “Thanks,” he said.
“That’s okay.” After a moment Rose Rita added, “You know, I could teach you other stuff too. Like, well, how to dance, for instance.”
Lewis looked away. Then he gave her an embarrassed glance. “Yeah, I guess that would be okay.”
They walked back to the cottage, where Uncle Jonathan and Mrs. Zimmermann had just finished repacking Bessie. The green car gleamed in the afternoon sunlight. “Oh,” Mrs. Zimmermann said. “I forgot one thing. Rose Rita, would you get it for me, please?”
“Sure,” Rose Rita said, grinning. She and Mrs. Zimmermann had worked out this little surprise ahead of time. She took the keys from Mrs. Zimmermann, unlocked the front door, ran into the cottage, and came back with a folded black umbrella. “Here you are,” she said, handing it over.
Uncle Jonathan looked puzzled. “What’s this, Hag-face? Isn’t that the umbrella I gave you a couple of Christmases ago? I thought it was useless.”
“I’ve made some modifications,” Mrs. Zimmermann said. “Watch.” She turned the umbrella upside down, and Uncle Jonathan and Lewis could see that the handle had been replaced by a bronze talon gripping a small crystal orb. A bright-magenta spark lurked at the center of the crystal. Mrs. Zimmermann held the umbrella straight out from her.
They all gasped. The umbrella suddenly became a tall staff, with a blinding purple star at its tip. Mrs. Zimmermann stood wrapped in billowing purple robes that flickered with crimson flame. She raised the wand and touched the hood of Bessie with the crystal. A pool of brilliant purple formed on the car’s hood, and it spread out like a ripple on a pond, the purple washing over the green. In an instant the car’s color had changed completely. In another instant Mrs. Zimmermann stood there with a broad smile on her face. She was wearing her normal purple floral-print summer dress again, and in her hand she held just a plain black umbrella.
Jonathan gave her a suspicious glance, then bent forward. “This isn’t an illusion,” he muttered. “It’s a transformation! You’ve actually changed the paint! But when we left, you didn’t have the power to change cream into butter!”
Rose Rita laughed. “Maybe we had our own adventures while you and Lewis were off in Europe.”
Lewis was blinking like crazy. “Wow” was all he could say for the moment.
Uncle Jonathan ran his hand over the new paint job. “Dry as a bone, and it looks like five coats and a couple of good hard wax jobs!” Straightening, he said, “I see you two have a story to tell. All right, Prunella, give!”
“All in good time,” Mrs. Zimmermann said in a happy voice. “Into the car now, and on the way back you’ll hear the tale.”
And so the four friends piled into the transformed automobile, and as Mrs. Zimmermann started the car and headed back to New Zebedee, she began to tell the story of the ghost in the mirror.