The dogs ran after me. They liked that game.

Good for them. They could follow me all the way into the house, which was just what they did, and just where I wanted them.

We stayed inside for the rest of the afternoon, since I didn't trust the dogs outdoors anymore, even on their leashes. I watched TV. The dogs chewed on their footb.a.l.l.s. Any time they started to get rowdy, I just held open the door to the laundry room and they calmed down. By the time Miss Hargreaves returned, I had decided something important. The members of the Baby-sitters Club should keep a notebook. Each time one of us finished a job, we should write it up in the notebook and the others should read about it. That way we could learn about each other's experiences. With a little luck, we wouldn't make any mistake more than once. For instance, no more dog-sitting.

I ran home, eager to start the notebook.

My first Baby-sitters Club job was over. I had earned three dollars and fifty cents.

Claudia didn't have an easy time of it at the Newtons', that was for sure. She called me on Sunday to tell me all about it. I was almost glad I hadn't gotten the job. What happened was that Mrs. Newton's sister, Mrs. Feldman, and her husband and their three kids were visiting, and the adults had gotten invitations to a show at an art gallery or something, so Mrs. Newton needed a baby-sitter for Jamie and his cousins. But somehow she forgot to mention that to Claudia, which wasn't at all like Mrs. Newton. It must have been because she's pregnant and thinking about the baby. Ordinarily Mrs. Newton is honest and thoughtful. She always calls her baby-sitters if there are any changes in plans. Once she even called when Jamie had come down with a cold, to ask whether I still wanted to come since I would risk catching it from him.

But things must have been slipping Mrs. Newton's mind, because when Claudia showed up that Sat.u.r.day, four children were waiting for her. And there were a whole bunch of problems. Jamie and Rosie apparently didn't like each other, Brenda was cranky (very cranky) because she was getting over the chicken pox, and Rob hated girls, which included Rosie, Brenda, Jamie's mother, his own mother, and girl baby-sitters.

When Claudia stepped into the living room, Rob was sulking on one end of the couch, muttering things like, "Stupid girls," and, "Why do we have to have a dumb girl babysit for us?" Brenda was crying and clutching Mrs. Feldman around the legs, which made it hard for both of them to get around, and Rosie and Jamie were fighting.

Rosie was trying to yank something out of Jamie's hand.

"That's mine!" Jamie yelled indignantly.

"It is not. It's mine!" Rosie made off with her prize and charged up the stairs.

Jamie ran after her. "It is not! It's mine!"

"Mine!"

"Mine!!" shouted Jamie at the top of his lungs. (Claudia said the house was practically shaking.) "Girls don't play with trucks. That's my moving van! Give it!"

"Nonononononono!"

Since the adults hadn't left yet, Claudia wasn't sure whether she was supposed to break up the fight or let one of the parents do it. Just as she was about to dash up the stairs, Mrs. Feldman managed to unwrap Brenda from around her legs and chase after Jamie and Rosie. She took each one by the hand and walked them downstairs, explaining patiently, "Jamie, sometimes girls do play with trucks.

Rosie and Brenda do. But Rosie, you don't have a moving van like this one. You must have gotten confused. That belongs to Jamie - "

"See," said Jamie and stuck out his tongue. Rosie stuck hers out, too.

" - so we'll get your dump truck out of the goody bag," continued Mrs. Feldman. "You brought three trucks with you, remember? Now maybe you and Jamie can play together nicely."

Jamie and Rosie looked at each other suspiciously.

Brenda burst into tears again and grabbed hold of her mother. And that's just how things were by the time Jamie's parents and the Feldmans left, except that Brenda was hugging a ratty teddy bear instead of her mother's legs.

Claudia looked around the living room nervously.

Rob looked around in disgust. His eyes fell on Jamie, who turned his back on Rosie and was pushing an ambulance back and forth, making loud siren noises. "Hey, Jamie," said Rob, "let's get away from all these girls, okay?" He glanced defiantly at Claudia.

" 'kay," replied Jamie vaguely, busy with the ambulance.

"Where are you going?" asked Claudia.

"I'm not telling," said Rob, and grabbed Jamie by the wrist.

Claudia dashed across the living room and blocked the doorway. Rob pulled Jamie around and hauled him off in another direction, toward the entrance to the dining room. Claudia beat him to it.

"Where are you going?" she asked him again. "I'm the baby-sitter and I have to know. Just tell me where you're going."

"Who's going to make me?"

"n.o.body. But I won't let you leave until you do."

Rob whirled around again. He let go of Jamie and grabbed his sister instead. Jamie sat down on the floor in surprise.

"Have we ever had a baby-sitter as mean as her?" Rob asked angrily.

"No!" said Rosie.

"No," sniffled Brenda, who hadn't quite finished crying.

"Are we going to let her be mean?"

"No!" shouted his sisters.

"Okay, let's do it!"

Claudia said that her stomach felt as if it were on a roller coaster. She had no idea what the Feldman kids were going to do. She found out immediately.

Rosie began running around and around the room, yelling at the top of her lungs. She wasn't yelling words; she was just making noise. Brenda leaped onto the Newtons' couch and jumped up and down on it as if it were a trampoline. And Rob turned his fingers into guns and aimed them at Claudia. "Powl Pow! Pow-pow-pow! You're a dead man! ... I mean, a dead lady." Jamie looked on dazedly.

At that point, Claudia almost panicked and called Stacey for help, but Jamie, sitting quietly on the floor, inspired her. She remembered that when she was little, and she or Janine misbehaved, her mother used to turn to her father and murmur, "I-g-n-o-r-e." And they would do just that. Claudia decided to try it on the Feldmans. She sat on the floor next to Jamie, reached for a copy of The Tale of Peter Rabbit lying abandoned by an armchair, and began to read to him. Jamie rested his head against her shoulder.

Thump, thump, thump went Brenda.

"Aiieeee! "shrieked Rosie, running by Claudia and stepping in her lap. Claudia didn't even look up.

"Pow!" shouted Rob. "Pow! . . . Hey, babysitter, I'm killing you! . . . Okay? . . . Babysitter?"

"Not now," said Claudia. "I'm busy."

She kept reading, raising her voice when she got to the part where Mr. McGregor chased after Peter, waving a rake.

The thumping stopped. Brenda sat down a few feet away from Claudia and tried to listen without appearing too interested.

Rosie continued to run around the room, but she stopped yelling, and every time she ran by Claudia she slowed up long enough to look at the pictures in the book.

By the time the story was over, Jamie, Rosie, and Brenda were as quiet as mice. Claudia moved them to the couch. She found a copy of Where the Wild Things Are, opened it, and read about Max putting on his wolf suit and making mischief.

"As much mischief as me?" asked Rob from across the room, dropping his guns.

"Not quite," replied Claudia. Rob looked satisfied. "If you come over here," she went on, "you can find out what happened to him."

Rob didn't say anything, but he perched on the arm of the couch and listened to the story. And to two more after that.

And that was Claudia's first Baby-sitters Club job (and the story of how she tamed the Feldmans).

Stacey had a fine time at my house, all right, but she had it discovering Sam. Stacey is boy-crazy and my brother is girl-crazy. They were perfect for each other. Not that Stacey neglected David Michael. But she did talk an awful lot about Sam after Wednesday. And Sam talked a lot about Stacey. Now here's the interesting part: Sam is in high school. He's a freshman. And Stacey is only in seventh grade. Most high school boys wouldn't be caught dead with a lowly junior high girl - unless the girl was a knockout. So I figured that Stacey's permed hair and colorful clothes (and the fact that she came from New York City) made her pretty special.

Anyway, Stacey got to my house just as David Michael was coming home from school, and about ten minutes before I dashed off to what turned out to be my dog-sitting job. I gave her a very fast introduction to our house (not knowing whether Sam or Charlie would be home soon).

"Here's-the-kitchen-the-dishwasher's-bro-ken-David-Michael-can-have-a-snack-cookies-in-the-j ar-nothing-af ter-f our-thirty-he' s-al-lergic-to-chocolate-oh-here's-Louie-he-won't-be-any-trouble-all-the-phone-numbers-are-on-the-bulletin-board-Mom's-is-on-the-phone-you-know-where-I'll-be-the-TV-is-in-the-play-room-we're-not-allowed-to-watch-cable-when-Mom's-not-home-David-Michael-likes-Candy- land-it' s-in-the-cabmet-by-the-stereo-see-if-there-are-any-notes-from-his-teacher-in-his-lunch-box-any-questions?"

Stacey shook her head.

"Okay." I knelt in front of David Michael. "This is Stacey/' I told him. "She's my friend. She's going to baby-sit for you today."

David Michael nodded. He's used to babysitters.

"I'm going to be baby-sitting somewhere else, not far away. I'll be back around five. Oh, Stacey, my big brothers are Charlie and Sam. Charlie is sixteen and Sam is fourteen. I don't know what they're doing this afternoon. They might be around, they might not. Have fun, you guys!" I ran out the front door.

Stacey said that she and David Michael sat right down at the kitchen table to have a snack. I hadn't been gone for more than five minutes when Sam showed up. He seemed to be angry about something. He was slamming his fist into a baseball glove. But he stopped short when he saw Stacey sitting in the kitchen. According to Sam, Stacey was a foxy chick. According to Stacey, Sam was a gorgeous hunk. When I heard that later, I thought about what they looked like, and tried to figure out what they saw in each other. (I have absolutely no interest in boys, of course. Still, I realized that that kind of information might be useful some day.) I remembered that Stacey was wearing a matching top and skirt made of gray sweat shirt material with big yellow number tens all over it. Her hair was pinned back with clips shaped like rainbows. Little silver whistles were dangling from her ears. It was all very cool, but it seemed kind of young-looking. And she was drinking a gla.s.s of milk.

I thought about Sam. Now, he is pretty good-looking, with dark curly hair and sparkly blue eyes and a few freckles, but he was wearing jeans so ratty he'd once promised Mom he'd throw them away (but then hadn't been able to go through with it), and a T-shirt that said: i KNOW YOU ARE, BUT WHAT AM i? To top it off, he was mad.

So where did the foxy chick and the gorgeous hunk come from? Was it the perm? The freckles?

I couldn't figure it out.

Anyway, Sam stopped being mad and Stacey finished the milk she was drinking as fast as she could, and checked to be sure she didn't have any on her upper lip.

"Hi," said Stacey.

"Hel-Zo," said Sam. He put his books and his glove on the table, leaned against the counter, and crossed his legs, running his fingers through his hair. I've seen him do that. He thinks it makes him look cool and casual.

Stacey and Sam both spoke at once.

"I'm Stacey, Kristy's friend," said Stacey, just as Sam said, "You must be Stacey."

"Oh," said Stacey, flattered. "Has Kristy mentioned me?"

"Uh, yeah. Well, she said you were going to baby-sit today. I was going to go over to this guy Ernest's house, but maybe . . . but I think he's busy or something. So I'll just stick around here."

"Well, listen," replied Stacey, "do you want me to leave? There's no reason for your mom to pay me to baby-sit if you're going to be at home."

"No, no," said Sam quickly. "The deal with my mom is that Charlie and Kristy and I only have to baby-sit David Michael one day a week each. The rest of the time we can do whatever we want, even if we're at home."

"Wow, that's really nice of your mom."

"Can I have a Twinkie?" David Michael interrupted them.

Stacey looked at her watch. "I guess so. Do you think you'll still be able to eat your dinner tonight?"

"Yes," replied David Michael firmly.

"Okay."

David Michael got a package of Twinkies from the cupboard, opened it, took one out, and handed the other to Sam. "Here," he said. "You want it?"

"Sure." Sam took the Twinkie, broke it in half, and gave one piece to Stacey.

"Oh . . . no, thanks," she said.

"You must be the one on the diet," Sam said. "Kristy told me one of her friends was dieting. That sure takes willpower."

"I guess." Stacey stood up. "So," she said to David Michael. "How about some Candy-land?"

"Yea!"

"Heck, I'll play, too," said Sam. "We can have a championship series. First one to win two games is the Candyland Champion of the Universe."

"You're going to play?" David Michael's eyes widened.

"Yeah, sure."

"But you nev - "

"Hey, little brother, your shoe's untied."

"It is?" David Michael looked at his feet. He was wearing sneakers that fastened with Velcro straps. "I don't have laces," he said wither-ingly.

"Made you look!" Sam ran out of the kitchen.

"You - you - I'm telling!" cried David Michael.

"Hey, squirt!" Sam called from the playroom. "Come on! We better start playing if we're going to have time for a championship series."

So David Michael, Stacey, and Sam settled themselves on the floor and played Candyland. They were still playing when I got home from dog-sitting. Later, in the privacy of my room, Stacey said they'd had a great time except that Sam kept teasing David Michael and accusing him of cheating. Stacey didn't know whether to laugh with Sam since she wanted to impress him, or take David Michael's side since she was his baby-sitter. She said she did both. Then I told Stacey about Pinky and Buffy McKeever, and Stacey laughed until she was practically hysterical.

All things considered, Stacey definitely had the easiest of the first four Baby-sitters Club jobs. Mary Anne's, which was next, was sort of scary, as you'll see. And it was pretty interesting ... at least to me.

Watson picked Mary Anne up at 8:45 Sat.u.r.day morning and drove her to his house. He lives all the way across Stoneybrook, so it's hard to get to his place by bike.

According to Mary Anne, Watson was very nice to her in the car, which was to be expected. He always makes an extra effort to be nice to me, since he knows I don't like to have him around, so of course he would be nice to my best friend.

Mary Anne says that Watson lives in a very pretty, big house. I guess he has a lot of money. He'd have to, the way he throws it around, buying Chinese food right and left, and taking my mom out on dates almost every night. Anyway, the house is large, and Andrew and Karen have neat rooms. And toys. Mary Anne had never seen so many - gigantic stuffed animals, dolls, a train that you could really ride around the backyard, cars, bikes, a playhouse, costumes to dress up in. It was incredible, kind of like being in Toys 'R' Us.

Watson turned out to be not only a very good father, but a very organized customer. The first thing he did was introduce Mary Anne to Andrew and Karen, whose mother had just brought them over. Then he showed her their rooms, took her back downstairs, showed her where all the stuff was for making lunch, and finally pinned up a list of phone numbers she might need.

And then he brought out Boo-Boo.

From what Mary Anne told me, Boo-Boo must truly be a boo-boo. What a mess of a cat. He was gray with big yellow eyes that were kind of handsome, but he was fat. He looked like a pillow with legs attached. When he stood up, his stomach touched the ground, and when he tried to run, it swayed back and forth. He was gross.