Baby-Sitting by Catherine Woolley

“Mr. Gordon said I could play the piano for marching into assembly real soon,” said Geneva.

“Good,” Ginnie said.

Ginnie and her best friend, Geneva, were going home from school this September afternoon. Sunlight turned the leaves to green gold, and the air was full of summer warmth.

“Wouldn’t it be horrible if I made a mistake!” Geneva added.

“You won’t,” Ginnie assured her. “You’ve been taking music lessons forever.” She was silent for a moment. “Are you going to be a musician when you grow up?”

“I might,” Geneva said carelessly.

A car passed them, and Lucy Ransom waved at her classmates from the front seat. They waved back. “Lucy’s going to art school in New York Saturdays. Did she tell you?” Geneva said.

Ginnie nodded. “She’s wonderful in art.” She shook her head sadly. “I’m awful in it.”

“She has talent. Mrs. Johnson told her she had. Come on in,” Geneva invited, changing the subject as they stopped at her front walk.

Ginnie shook her head. “No. I’ll see you tomorrow.”

She often stopped at the Porter house on the way home from school. She and Geneva had been best friends for a long time. But today she wanted to get home. She was conscious of troubled feeling, and she wanted time to figure out what was worrying her.

She walked on slowly, deep in her thoughts. She passed a neighbor, Mrs. DeGraw, walking her dog, and said, “Hello, Mrs. DeGraw,” knowing that she had seen them.

Here was her own block, and here was the house, with its trim green lawn and bushes. Ginnie went up the steps and pushed open the door. Honey, her dog, greeted her with enthusiastic wiggles.

“Oh, I know!” Ginnie paused to stroke his head. “You tell that to all the girls!” Honey shook himself happily and followed her into the kitchen.

“Hello, dear.” Mother was mixing a cake, and she looked up as Ginnie came in.

“Hi.”

“Did you have a good day?”

“It was all right.” Ginnie put her books on the table and opened the refrigerator door. She got out a carton of milk and reached into the cupboard for a glass and a box of cookies.

Mother paused for a moment with her mixing, to follow her daughter’s movements.

“Anything worrying you?” she asked.

“No.” Ginnie pulled a chair to the table and sat down with her milk. And then the thing that was troubling her boiled up and over in a single question. “Mother, have I got any talent?”

Mother looked up in surprise. “What brings that up?”

It was a relief to talk about it. “Well,” Ginnie said, and drank some milk, “Geneva can play the piano and she’s going to play for marching into assembly. And Lucy is going to art school in New York Saturdays, because Mrs. Johnson says she has talent. But I can’t play the piano, and I’m terrible in art, and I haven’t got any talent!”

“You never wanted to take music lessons,” her mother reminded her.

“I know I didn’t, I like music,” Ginnie explained, “but I just don’t want to play the piano. And I don’t want to take art lessons. But”...her troubled eyes looked into her mother’s for help... “haven’t I got any talent?”

“You can cook.”

"That's a talent?”

Mother laughed. “It’s a very useful art.”

“Geneva isn’t any good at cooking,” Ginnie said with some satisfaction. She thought of Anna, the cousin who lived with Grandma. “Anna can sew real well.”

“I’d be delighted to teach you to sew,” Mother said.

Ginnie sighed deeply. “I don’t like to sew either.”

“Well, I wouldn’t worry,” Mother told her. “The important thing is to have lots of different interests. You’ll probably develop some talent that you don’t suspect at all right now.”

“I wish I could earn some money to buy Christmas presents,” Ginnie said quite unexpectedly. Christmas seemed years away on this September day, but suddenly a new problem sailed across Ginnie's horizon.

She rinsed her glass. There seemed to be nothing to gain at this point by further discussing the matter of talent. She took Mumbo, the little black cat, and settled herself with a book in the big chair in the living room. It was Friday, and homework could wait.

Mother’s fresh lemon-jelly cake was so good that both Ginnie and her father took a second piece at dinner. “That’s really cake!” Daddy remarked, passing his plate.

“Thank you,” Mother said modestly. She glanced at Ginnie. “My talent,” she murmured, and they both giggled. Daddy asked what the joke was.

“Just something between us girls,” Mother replied, and suddenly, for no reason, Ginnie felt lighthearted again. She played Scrabble with Daddy after dinner and forgot her problem.

Saturday morning was gloriously warm. Ginnie went over to Geneva’s. Geneva was practicing as she rang the bell, and the sound of the piano woke troubled thoughts again.

“Hi!” Geneva greeted her. “I just finished practicing. Oh, Ginnie, I want to show you the most adorable thing!” She led the way into the living room and picked up a small box from the table, “Don’t tell my mother. She’s upstairs. I’m going to give her this for her birthday.”

The gift was a bracelet and earrings of blue stones that caught the flash of the sun as Geneva lifted them from the box, Ginnie gasped. “Oh, they’re beautiful!”

“They cost two dollars, I saved my allowance. They’re for when she goes out to dinner,” Geneva explained happily,

“I wish I had a bracelet like this!”

“We’re not grown up enough,” Geneva said.

“I mean just to look at.” For as she looked at the lovely bracelet, a desire to possess beautiful things swelled into Ginnie’s heart. Suddenly she returned the bracelet to the box and looked at Geneva with decision. “We ought to earn some money,” she said.

“OK”, Geneva agreed. “What for?”

“Lots of things. I’d like to buy some beads. You know, the long kind.”

“So would I.”

“And if we could earn some money,” Ginnie went on, warming to the idea, “maybe we could even go to New York some time — just you and I — and go to a museum or something,”

“We could save our allowances and go.”

But there was this newborn wish for money of her own, to spend on luxuries of her choosing. “I’d like to earn some,” Ginnie repeated. “How can we?”

Geneva thought a little. “Baby-sitting?”

They looked at each other. Ginnie was an only child, and so was Geneva. They had had little or no experience with babies. Besides, they were only eleven.

“Most kids who baby-sit are older,” Ginnie said.

Geneva was not easily daunted. “We could try, couldn’t we?” And hope sprang up in Ginnie too. “Yes!” she cried. “Let’s! I know, Geneva! If we offered to sit together, that might make up for not being older.”

“Good idea,” Geneva agreed. “And we could get lower rates. Most kids get seventy-five cents an hour. We could get fifty.”

“You get twenty-five and I get twenty-five,” Ginnie agreed.

“And if we could stay three hours and get two jobs a week, that’d be good!” Geneva said with satisfaction.

Suddenly Ginnie was burning for action. “Let’s go out now and try and find some jobs!” she cried. “I know! In the block below my house there are a lot of people with little children. Let’s go there.”

They set out with high hopes. Mrs. West, in the first house, was home, and received their offer of service politely. She had a small baby, and she had a sitter, she said. But she was glad to know they were available in case of need.

“The Frasers live in the next house,” Ginnie said, as they went up the walk. “They just moved here.”

Mrs. Fraser’s small daughter Susan was three. She came to the door behind her mother. Susan had big brown eyes, red-gold hair and pink cheeks, she was chubby and adorable, and Ginnie fell in love at first sight. Susan, however, went away to the other side of the room.

“You two are awfully young, aren’t you?” Susan’s mother said doubtfully, looking from one to the other.

“That’s why we’re going to baby-sit together,” Geneva explained.

“And only charge fifty cents,” Ginnie added.

“You couldn’t come at night,” Mrs. Fraser protested.

The girls looked at each other. “We could come after school, if you wanted to go shopping,” Geneva pointed out. “And Saturdays. Sundays too,” she added hopefully.

“It’s mostly at night that I need a sitter,” Mrs. Fraser said, “but I’ll remember you two.”

They told themselves she really meant it, even if she did think them young. Both girls left their telephone numbers.

“Oh, Geneva,” Ginnie said, as they came out of Mrs. Fraser’s house, “isn’t that Susan adorable?” She glanced back and waved, as the little girl quickly ran away from the window.

They made several other calls, and Ginnie went home. She told her mother about the morning’s visits. “So if any woman calls up about baby-sitting, you say we’ll come!”

It was hard to concentrate on schoolwork that week, with the idea of a baby-sitting job. Ginnie hurried home each day hoping that a phone call might have come. But the days passed, and there were no calls to baby-sit. Gradually the excitement went away, and Ginnie’s great ideas of an independent income were forgotten too.

The school year was getting to an end now. Ginnie worked hard at homework. Geneva played for marching into assembly with never a stumble. Ginnie admired and envied, and the worry over having no talent herself returned to her.

Sometimes she wished again she could buy beautiful things to have and to admire. Why, she thought impatiently, doesn’t somebody ask us to baby-sit!

Then one day the call came. Mother opened the door when Ginnie came home from school. “Mrs. West has to go out unexpectedly, and she’d like you to wheel the baby in his carriage while she’s gone.”

Ginnie couldn’t believe it. “Oh, I’ve got to call Geneva!”

“Be quick about it. I told her you’d be over as soon as you came in.”

Geneva arrived at Mrs. West’s on the run soon after Ginnie got there. “I won’t be gone more than an hour,” Mrs. West told them. “Bobby’s asleep. I’ll put his carriage out, and you just walk up and down and around the block if you want to.”

Ginnie wheeled the carriage first, feeling it her right, as the baby’s mother had called her instead of Geneva.

“Now let me, Ginnie,” Geneva said. They took turns, block by block. The small West boy slept peacefully in his blue blankets.

“Isn’t he darling?” Ginnie murmured, adoring.

“I wish he’d wake up,” Geneva complained.

“No!” Ginnie said. “He might cry.”

“It's no fun when he’s asleep!”

They began to attract attention as they walked. Lucy came down the street and paused for an explanation. She admired the baby, and Ginnie began to enjoy an important feeling.

Peter Ladd, who lived next door to Ginnie, came by on his bicycle. “Whose kid?” he shouted.

“Sh!” Ginnie said. “You’ll wake him up. And he’s not a kid, by the way. He’s a little baby boy, and we’re baby-sitting him.”

“Looks like baby-walking to me,” Peter returned cheerfully,

“Want to see him?” Geneva cried.

“Nope.” He was off.

“Boys!” Geneva said disgustedly.

“Oh!” Ginnie’s eyes were on the baby. “You did wake him up, shouting. Oh, isn’t he the sweetest thing!” She stopped the carriage. “Hello!” she said softly, as the baby’s wondering blue eyes looked into hers.

“Oh, he’s a sweet darling lamb!” In her enthusiasm Geneva leaned over the carriage and put a hand on the baby’s blanket. “Kitchy, kitchy, koo!” Geneva cried, chucking the baby under his chin.

That was something new and unexpected to the darling lamb. His mouth turned down, his eyes closed and suddenly Bobby was crying loudly.

“Now you’ve scared him!” Ginnie cried. “There, darling; there, darling!” She rocked the carriage gently.

“Give him something to play with.” Geneva picked up a rattle tied to the carriage and shook it before the baby’s eyes. The loud cries only grew louder.

“No, let’s just walk. And I know,” Ginnie said suddenly, as she had a new idea. “Let’s sing. Singing puts babies to sleep.” She began to sing softly as they moved along with the carriage. “Rock-a-bye baby, on the treetop. .

Geneva joined in, and they walked slowly on, singing together, eyes on the small unhappy bundle waving its arms in the carriage. And gradually, as the soothing sound and motion reached him, the crying stopped, eyelids dropped, and the junior Mr. West drifted into dreamland once more. He was still asleep when his mother returned.

“Oh, thank you both so much,” Mrs. West said. “You girls saved my life. Come on in while I pay you.”

She gave them sixty cents instead of fifty. “It’s not much when you split it,” she said.

Ginnie ran home in seventh heaven, bursting into the house.

“How did it go?” Mother asked, coming downstairs to hear her report.

“Just marvelous!” Ginnie was so thrilled and excited she danced around like a top. “Oh, that baby is the most precious thing! She gave us sixty cents. Oh, he’s the sweetest thing! He only cried when Geneva tickled him. Mrs. West said, we saved her life. And she also,” Ginnie cried, “said she might call us again! Oh, I hope she calls tomorrow!”