From Word To Word

This is the first chapter of a children’s novel that I am writing. I have several chapters completed already, but I will post them only as I get far enough in advance of them to know that they will not require any more revisions for plot continuity and character development. Any comments or suggestions are welcome.

Chapter One:
In Which Some Introductions are Made

Once there was a town that had been small for a very long time but was getting bigger and had just become that comfortable size that is the greatest time in the history of any town. It had some little shops, and a skating rink, and a town hall, and some lovely old churches, and several schools for children of different ages, and a small university for the oldest children. It did not have a loud highway running through it, or big factories, or superstores, but it did very well without these things, and no one felt the need for them.

Near the edge of this little town, there was a street called Devonshire. It followed a stretch of railway track that made its way from the main line toward the town’s old train station. It was mostly an ordinary street except that it had been built on both sides of the track rather than just on one side or the other. This meant that the trains ran down the middle, and the cars drove on either side, so the children sometimes had to wait a long time for the street to be clear enough to visit their friends across the way.

Though the street was a little different, most of the houses on Devonshire were of a regular sort. They were small, square, and brick, and they had become a bit shabby over the years. Their windows and doors needed paint, and their roofs looked leaky in places, and their fences leaned one way or the other as they chose. Because they were small and in bad repair, they were also inexpensive, and so the people who lived in them tended to be of two sorts: those who were down on their luck but were working very hard to make the best of things, and those who were down on their luck and were giving up hope that things would ever get better. The houses of the first sort seemed a little neater, even if the roofs still leaked, but the houses of the second sort had trash on the lawn, or burnt out porch lights, or broken bicycles in the driveway that no one bothered to fix.

There was one house on the street, however, that was not at all small and not at all shabby, even though it was very old. It had been the farmhouse when the whole street and everything around it had been farmland, and it had gradually been closed in, first by the railway that was laid along the road, then by the station that was built for the nearby town, and then, all of a sudden, by all the little houses that were built as the town tried to become a city.

The farmhouse was made all of grey stone, and there had been additions made to it several times, so that it had an irregular sort of shape, some parts having two stories, and others parts having three, and the little part at the back having only one. Its windows were also of different shapes and sizes, and the roof was at different angles depending on the place, so the house looked like it had been thrown together over the years without any thought as to how it might look, which was very likely the case.

Not only was the farmhouse the biggest house on the street, but it also had the biggest lot, which was big enough for five or six houses. Everything was surrounded by a stone wall that kept all but the tallest of people from seeing over it, so the house always seemed a bit mysterious, especially to the children of the street, who made up all sorts of stories about it.

What made these stories seem true was the man who lived in the house, who looked strange enough for any story the children might think to tell. He was a little older than middle age, and he had long, grey hair, which was normal enough, but he wore shabby, old-fashioned clothes that looked like they came from someone’s attic, and no matter what the season, no matter what the weather, he always had on a black, three-cornered hat, like the pirates in stories wear, all battered and worn around the edges.

Because he always wore this hat, the children called him Mister Hat, even though they knew that his name was really Mister Owen. They did not know whether to be afraid of him or not. They had all been told by their parents that they were not to speak to strangers, which is a very good rule, and Mister Hat was quite strange indeed, and he lived in a mysterious house besides, but he also smiled at everyone when he passed them on the street, and he would touch his hat with a little bow to them, even to the smallest of the children.

If they had asked their parents about him, the children might have learned that Mister Hat was even stranger than they thought. Even the adults who had lived on that street the longest, and some had lived there for many years, could not remember a time when Mister Owen had not lived in the old farmhouse. It seemed as though he had always lived there, and it seemed as though he had always been old, or, at least, that he had always been as old as he was, which, as I said, was a little past middle age.

When the adults bothered to think about Mister Owen at all, they would always say how odd it was that he never seemed to get any older, but nobody really gave it too much thought. Mister Owen kept mostly to himself, and the adults mostly forgot that they even had such an odd neighbour. The children, however, never forgot how odd their neighbour really was. They loved his peculiar clothes, his slow and royal walks, and the way that he would touch his hat to them as if they were not children at all. When he walked through the neighbourhood, they would run ahead of him and wait in line for the little bow he always gave them, so that it looked as if Mister Owen was a general reviewing some motley regiment of toy soldiers, or perhaps a giant of a king making a parade among his tiny subjects. He seemed to enjoy their attention, saying a grave “Good day” to them now and again, and most often taking his walk in the afternoon, just after school was finished for the day, so that he could be sure of meeting the children as they came home.

One girl in particular, whose name was Lindy, loved to watch for Mister Hat. She lived just to the right of his house, close enough that she could hear the creaking of the big iron gates at the end of his driveway whenever he opened them. Whether she was playing in her backyard or doing schoolwork or helping around the house, Lindy always listened for the creak of those gates, and when she heard them, she would race to the end of her driveway so that Mister Hat could give his little bow and perhaps wish her a good day. Even though he dressed strangely, there was something about Mister Hat that made Lindy feel happier whenever she saw him, and she was quite sure that he was not as crazy as people said he was. When he passed her on the street and they exchanged their little greeting, she would be cheerful for the rest of the day, doing her chores without complaining and singing to herself as she did her schoolwork, but if she heard that she had missed one of Mister Hat’s walks, she would be so disappointed that she might forget her chores or her homework altogether, so that her mother would sometimes ask what had gotten into her.

Some days, if Mister Hat took his walk early enough in the afternoon, and if there was a long while until supper, Lindy would follow him a little, making sure to stay out of sight. She would often follow right to the end of the block, across the one-way street, and through the little park with the band stand and the fountain, until Mister Hat crossed the main road, where Lindy’s mother did not allow her to go. It was not that Mister Hat did anything so very interesting that made Lindy follow him. He would just walk along with his slow, firm steps, very tall and grand, sometimes twirling his silver-headed walking stick, and sometimes smoking on the pipe that he kept in his jacket pocket. He never stopped to do anything at all and never said anything more than “Good day.” Still, Lindy felt that there was something mysterious about him, as if he might suddenly turn into a bird and fly away or disappear into thin air, if only she watched him long enough. Of course, he never did either of these things, but Lindy liked to think that he might all the same.

Now, just because Lindy imagined these sorts of fantastic things about Mister Hat, I would not want you to think that she was the kind of girl who spent all her time daydreaming, for she was quite the opposite. She was on the whole a very responsible girl, especially considering that she was only twelve years old at the time of our story. She was usually very good about doing her homework and helping around the house, and she had even begun babysitting for some of her neighbours, who would tell Lindy’s mother how lucky she was to have such a dependable daughter.

Indeed, Lindy’s mother, whose name was Missus Merton, often had to remind Lindy that she did not need to be quite so serious all the time. She would see Lindy reading in the livingroom or practising on the old piano, and she would tell Lindy to go and play with her friends. So, Lindy would go, just to make her mother happy, even though she would much rather have played by herself.

Rather than play with friends, Lindy preferred to climb the steep stairway to the attic, through the boxes of summer clothes and Christmas decorations, to the dormer window that faced the house where Mister Hat lived. It was not what some of you might think a very nice place. It smelled musty, especially in warmer weather, and it was a little dark, even with a reading lamp, and it had more than a few spiders. It was also cold in the winter, so that Lindy had to wear a sweater and wrap herself in blankets just to stay warm, but despite all of these things, she loved the dormer. She loved it because it was quiet and because it was dark, but most of all because she could just be by herself.

She also loved it because she could look out across Mister Hat’s garden, which was quite beautiful, especially in the spring and fall, even though Mister Hat did not keep it very tidy. It had almost a forest of trees all along the stone wall, more trees around the house, and an apple orchard at the back, which Lindy could hardly see from her window. It also had some broad, open spaces that looked like they had once been better tended, with flagstone walkways, and benches, and statues, and a big stone arch that had ivy growing up it. Everything was overgrown with bushes and plants, but it was still beautiful in a wild sort of way, and Lindy liked the view from her dormer window very much.

In the summer, however, the attic would eventually become so hot that Lindy had to go out to the backyard elm tree when she wanted time alone. The elm grew very close to Mister Hat’s wall, so she could climb to the top of the wall and sit on it, dangling her feet over the side as she watched the squirrels and the rabbits in the garden. Because of the trees in Mister Hat’s yard, she was well hidden from view, and she spent much of her summer holidays reading in this very spot, which perhaps accounts for the fact that she just happened to be there one day when a most peculiar thing happened.

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