All's Well with Boswell

Robyn Jacobs has done plenty of odd jobs around Odyssey, but the one waiting for her this morning is a first. Mrs. Fishbine has called on short notice, and Robyn arrives to find her hurrying through a long list of last-minute instructions. Her husband is out of town, she has urgent business that will take the whole day, and she does not feel right leaving Boswell home alone. There is food in the kitchen, Robyn may use the phone if she keeps the calls short, and there are records and videos so she will not be bored. Three good meals, no going outside, no jumping on the furniture, and if Boswell gets too rowdy, a few bars of "Michael Row the Boat Ashore" will settle him right down. Then Boswell finally comes out to say hello, and Robyn discovers that her first real babysitting job is not a baby at all. It is an extremely large cat.

By a quarter past eight Robyn is already bored, flipping past channel after channel of nothing - a weepy romance in which Roger confesses his troubles to Sylvia and learns she has known about his toupee all along, and a western in which Ringo orders a stagecoach robber to draw, only for the whole showdown to turn into an advertisement for a free artist aptitude test. Boswell, meanwhile, has ideas of his own. He gets onto the sofa, then onto the fireplace mantel, and on the way down he sends Mrs. Fishbine's little glass ballerina to the floor in pieces. Robyn remembers seeing figurines just like it at Greenblatt's department store, so she phones her friend Jessie Morales and begs her to buy a replacement and bring it over. Jessie does, and reports that she got the very last one.

That is where the day comes apart. Boswell climbs the counter and tips over an enormous bag of dry food, scattering it across the kitchen. When Jessie opens the back door to fetch a broom, the cat bolts. The girls chase him into the yard and the alley, where Robyn's plan to grab him off the fence ends with Robyn sitting in a garbage can, and by the time they catch up, Boswell has hopped onto the tailgate of a Connellsville Furniture truck and slipped inside. Robyn and Jessie climb in after him, the door slams shut, and the truck pulls away with all three of them in the dark.

Frank and Charlie, the two deliverymen, park in Connellsville and go off for lunch without ever noticing their passengers, and the girls sneak out with Boswell. Robyn does not want to call anyone. Her mother had not wanted her to take this job in the first place, believing she is not responsible enough to handle it, and Robyn is determined to prove otherwise instead of being bailed out. But Jessie points out that they are stranded, broke, hungry, tired, and responsible for somebody else's cat, and Robyn admits she is right. Just then Boswell spots a familiar pickup down the street - Tom Riley's apple truck. The girls hide under the tarp in the back while Tom finishes his delivery to Hank and heads for Odyssey, and they ride all the way to Whit's End before nearly being discovered when Tom offers John Whittaker a look at the apples. A boy arriving to find Mr. Whittaker interrupts at exactly the right moment, and Robyn, Jessie, and Boswell slip away.

They reach the Fishbine house near four o'clock, only to find the kitchen full of neighborhood cats drawn in through the back door they left open. Robyn is ready to give up and agree with her mother, but Jessie will not let her quit, and the two of them scrub the house from top to bottom with minutes to spare. Robyn sets the new ballerina on the mantel just as Mrs. Fishbine walks in - and Boswell promptly climbs up and knocks it off again. Mrs. Fishbine is not the least bit upset. Boswell breaks them all the time, she explains, which is why she buys them by the dozen at Greenblatt's and keeps a whole cabinet of spares under the television. Robyn can only stare at the shelf of replacements and think that her mother is never going to believe a word of this.