Part 3

New York and her own mother seemed very far away to Muffs as she hurried along the road, trying to match her small steps to Mary’s and Mrs. Tyler’s. She felt the way she had done when she broke the vase and when Mr. and Mrs. Lippett scolded her for having Bunny Bright Eyes in her hat. Little girls were supposed to know so much when they were away from home. And it was hard to tell dreams from real things, especially when the real things were stranger than the dreams.

“We might--we might just look for Tommy in the Post Office,” Muffs suggested timidly as they turned onto the big road.

“Why the Post Office?” Mrs. Tyler asked.

“Maybe--there wasn’t a fire. Maybe he really went to the Post Office to fix up the Public Notice.”

“But you said he went to see a fire.”

“I thought he did--and then I remembered he didn’t.”

“You mean you made up what you told me about the fire?” demanded Mrs. Tyler.

Muffs nodded. She didn’t think it would do any good to keep on saying she thought it was true at first.

Mrs. Tyler’s-lips went into a straight line. “What is this Public Notice?” she asked. “It must have been dreadfully important that Tommy should get up in the middle of the night and go to fix it.”

“It was dreadf’ly important,” Muffs declared. “He had to get there before people came for their mail. You see, we put up the notice and forgot to write our names on it.”

“Did we?” exclaimed Mary. “That’s so,” she remembered. “We did. Then that must be where Tommy went. He was running just as if he had forgotten something dreadfully important.”

The Public Notice was all fixed up when they looked for it in the Post Office. It had the three names on it:

There was also a P. S. about Bunny Bright Eyes:

But there was no sign of Tommy.

Farther up the road were shops and stores and the grange hall. Tommy might be playing there. Or possibly in the school yard or along the road that went up Lookoff Mountain. The air was misty and smelled queer but Muffs wouldn’t let herself think of fires any more. Tommy was lost and it was partly her fault that Mary looked so serious and Mrs. Tyler so worried.

Then they came in sight of the tailor shop, or what had been the tailor shop. The queer, crooked smokestack wasn’t there any more and the roof had a gaping hole right through the shingles. Just about all the children in the valley were crowded around and among them was Tommy.

“I saw you!” he cried, and came running toward them. “Where were you going?”

“Looking for you,” his mother answered. “Tommy! Tommy! What happened to you?”

“I was watching the fire.”

“The fire! What fire?”

“The tailor shop fire. I turned in the alarm,” said the little boy proudly.

Muffs was speechless except for one excited squeal. Things were growing queerer and queerer. Here she had told a story that she thought was true and just when she remembered that it was only a story, up bobs Tommy saying that he has been to see a fire after all.

Mrs. Tyler drew him closer to her. “You brave boy!” she said. “Tell me how you knew.”

“That’s easy,” he answered. “I smelled something burning. You know how it smells when you forget the iron and leave it on the board too long. Well, it smelled like that only worse and pretty soon I saw some smoke coming out of the roof of the tailor shop. I waked up the grocer and the man in the gas station and we stayed to help fight the fire. I guess you’d want to help fight a fire if you had turned in the alarm your very own self and everybody thought you were a hero.”

“I guess I would,” his mother agreed and patted his shoulder.

It was all a little confusing and she was anxious to hear more about the Public Notice so Tommy told her about the glasses and how they had found them in the woods and put them on the Guide’s twig nose. He took them out of his pocket to show her and she agreed that someone might need them badly.

“Everything would have been all right,” she said, “if Muffs hadn’t said you went to see a fire.”

“Well, he did, didn’t he?” Mary asked.

“Yes, but Muffs didn’t know it. She had us all worried with her story of lights and cars and fires. I didn’t know _what_ to make of it.”

“I’m sorry, Mom,” said Tommy. “I guess I scared her with my lantern shining in her eyes. She went back to sleep while I was talking and prob’ly dreamed part of it. Don’t you s’pose we could go back and just let Muffs and Mary see where the fire was? It’s all been burned black inside and it’s wet from the pails of water and shines like anybody’s new shoes.”

Mrs. Tyler laughed. “I guess we could. I’ll tell your father and Donald that you’re safe. I had them out hunting for you. Then I’ll stop in at the Lippett’s. There was something I wanted to talk over with them----”

“Oh, Mom! Couldn’t we play around where the fire was while you talk?”

Muffs was afraid to coax. She couldn’t believe it was true until she saw Mrs. Tyler walking on down the road. She had left them to play alone.

THE HEADLESS MAN

The burned tailor shop had stopped smoking but there was still a crowd around the ruins and the queer little tailor was still hopping about and talking of his loss. He was a thin man with big glasses and very bushy hair. It stood straight up under his hat and looked almost like the splints on the broom that Tommy had made into a make-believe tailor. Tommy and Muffs and Mary edged closer to hear what he was saying.

“Twenty pair of pants!” he said sorrowfully.

“What’s he talking about?” Tommy asked an older boy.

The boy grinned. “Twenty pair of pants.”

“We heard that. But what about them?”

“He burned them up,” answered the boy. Then he looked at Tommy. “Sa-ay! Aren’t you the fellow who turned in the alarm? Come and I’ll show you.”

So the big boy led the way through the ruins of the tailor shop. It wasn’t very safe but nobody was paying any attention to that. Muffs touched the blackened wood as they passed and thought of the charcoal that her mother used to draw pictures with. She broke off a piece and drew a picture on the back of the big boy’s white shirt.

“What’s this?” asked Mary. She kicked something hard that lay on the burned place where the floor boards used to be.

“It’s his iron!” exclaimed Tommy. “I’d like to bet that’s what started the fire.”

He picked it up and ran outside to show the tailor but the tailor had gone. Everybody had gone except a few children who took turns holding the iron to see how heavy it was. It was pretty heavy for any of them to carry but Muffs had an idea. She took off the hair ribbon that she was wearing Alice-in-Wonderland style about her head and tied one end of it through the holes in the iron where the handle, if it hadn’t burned up, was supposed to go.

“Now it’s a duck,” she said. “It’s Fannie Flatbreast.”

She pulled the duck about the ruins of the tailor shop and its flat breast sounded clank! clank! whenever they went over a crack.

The next discovery was an old broom. It was made of fibre and only a part of it had burned. The red strings that bound the fibres together looked even more like a mouth than the strings on Tommy’s broom in the workshop. The Bramble Bush Man’s glasses provided eyes and made the creature look wondrous wise as well. Tommy hid himself behind the broom and made believe it was the tailor. He was hopping around, nodding his head and explaining the fire to a group of play customers when along came a real customer. He stood still for a moment, then muttered something to himself and turned to go away.

“Look at him!” called all the children. Several of them pointed their fingers at his back with oh’s and ah’s of surprise. Muffs skated to the burned door of the shop with Fannie Flatbreast and what she saw was the strangest sight on earth.

“Why, he hasn’t any head,” she squealed. “He hasn’t any, any, any, any head!”

The other children laughed and squealed too and before long they had all caught up her song and were calling at the top of their voices: “He hasn’t any, any, any, any head! He must be a ghost! He must be a giant! He must be the Headless Horseman of Sleepy Hollow! He hasn’t any, any, any, any head!”

“He has so!” cried Mary. “He’s only covering it up with that coat on a hanger!”

“He’s a fake!” shouted Tommy and started running after him, waving the scary-looking broom-tailor. The other children followed. They were all laughing and shouting. None of them stopped to think how they would feel if they came with a coat to be cleaned or mended and found the tailor shop burned down. They didn’t know how heavy the coat was or how far the man had carried it held above his shoulders on a hanger. Of course they knew it was only a coat on a hanger and that he was holding it above his shoulders. But it looked so queer! And it was such fun to chase him and play he was a headless man.

Other children joined the chase until there were more than a dozen. Older people looked out of windows and stopped in the road wondering what the noise was all about. A dog set up a furious barking. But still the children kept on running.

“Who are you?” called Muffs and Mary and Tommy.

The headless man did not answer. He ran and ran and ran until at last he turned in at the Millionaire’s House. He slammed the door shut and left the children still singing outside.

“He hasn’t any, any, any, any head! He must be the Headless Horseman----”

“He must be somebody important to live in a house like that,” Muffs interrupted them in a loud voice.

Then they all stood still and looked up at the house. It was the same one that used to belong to old Mr. Pendleton and he had sold it. Nobody knew who lived there now but, whoever it was, he must be another millionaire. On the top floor of his house was one room all of glass and filled with flowers.

“Maybe he got rich selling flowers for funerals,” Muffs suggested.

“I think he’s a miser,” said Mary. “He probably sits upstairs all day counting his money.”

“I wish we knew what his face looks like,” Tommy put in. “Muffs, I dare you to walk up on his front porch and ring the doorbell.”

“I dare you! I dare you!” shouted all the other children, jumping up and down and clapping their hands.

So Muffs marched straight up to the door and rang the bell. She was laughing and panting because she was out of breath. But she stopped laughing when the headless man opened the door and she saw his face. He was very, very angry.

“What do you mean by ringing my bell?” he demanded.

“I--I just wanted to see what you looked like----”

“Well, you’ve seen,” he said and was about to slam the door when Tommy darted in and planted his sturdy little body between Muffs and the headless man.

“She’s not used to having doors slammed in her face,” he said. “Besides, she’s really a princess doomed to live with a couple of dragons who are mean to her and I think it’s about time someone treated her like royalty.”

The man looked surprised for a moment. His face was a nice face and his eyes looked as if they might twinkle when he wasn’t so angry.

“Princesses don’t chase strangers through the public highways,” he said. “Princes don’t either. So get out!” and the door closed with a bang.

“Aw, heck!” muttered the older boy with the picture on the back of his shirt, “he would have to be a sore head and spoil all the fun.”

“He can’t be a sore head,” sang out contrary Mary, “if he hasn’t any, any, any, any head!”

Other voices joined her and the children were singing again. Tommy waved the tailor, and Muffs swung Fannie Flatbreast on her ribbon. The others took hold of hands and paraded back and forth across the grass on the man’s neatly trimmed lawn. They jumped over his hedge and broke off pieces of shrubbery to wave like flags as they sang:

“Headless man! Headless man! Come and catch us if you can!”

The boy who had made up this new and still more tantalizing song banged on the door with a piece of primrose tree.

“You’ll break the glass!” cried Muffs in a fright. “Come away and leave him alone. Maybe he’s got a headache.”

“He can’t have a headache! He hasn’t any, any, any, any head!” called all the children. “Headless man! Headless man! Come and catch us----”

“I’ll catch you and wring your necks,” he cried, bursting open the door. He had a stick in his hand and shook it at them as he shouted, “Get out of here! I’ve had enough of children. It’s a pity a man can’t have peace in his own house what with children banging on doors and breaking in windows----”

“Did someone break in his window?” asked one of the older boys, looking a little frightened.

“He’ll get us in trouble yet,” said another as the group scattered.

“Go on home!” the headless man was shouting. “Go on home to your mothers, every last one of you!”

“I can’t go home to mine,” Muffs said sadly.

“Why not?” the man demanded. He came right down the steps to look at her as if he had seen her somewhere before and wanted to remember.

“I can’t go home because my mother’s in New York and I’m here,” the child replied. “That’s why.”

“She ought to take better care of you,” snapped the headless man as Muffs turned and ran with the others. Tommy was ahead. He was still waving the broom and shouting but Muffs’ flat-iron duck had grown heavy and hard to pull.

“Tommy! Tommy!” she called after him. “Don’t run so fast! I can’t keep up with you.”

So Tommy turned around and the Tailor turned around and, for the first time, the headless man saw that he was wearing glasses. The bows were hooked securely to his fibre ears, giving him the appearance of a creature half-man, half-cat.

“Wait a minute!” he shouted. “Whose glasses are you carrying around on that ridiculous-looking broom?”

“Whose glasses!” gasped Tommy, stopping for breath.

“Oh, mister,” Muffs put in, “I’m sure they’re not yours. They belong to a wondrous wise man and we’re keeping them until he comes for them.”

“So!” snorted the headless man and looked angrier than ever. “I’m sure no wondrous wise man would trust his glasses to a gang of reckless children.”

“I don’t see why he shouldn’t,” Muffs replied.

“Humph! Wise men have more to do than chase around after children.”

“Just what do you know about wise men?” Mary asked. She had a way of making people feel uncomfortable and the headless man must have felt very uncomfortable then. He pulled his coat collar up around his neck and walked away.

“Headless man!” said Tommy under his breath. “Gee! He looks like a headless man with that collar turned up.”

“Anyway,” said Mary, “he lost his head. That’s what Great Aunt Charlotte tells me I do when I’m angry.”

Muffs’ face clouded. “I guess that’s what Mrs. Lippett will do when she hears about this. She’s sure to hear ’cause everybody saw us running with the Tailor and I’d rather go right into a dragon’s cave than go back there alone.”

“We’ll go with you,” Tommy offered.

Mary thought it wouldn’t be wise to take the Tailor and Fannie Flatbreast so, after many fond goodbyes, they were left in the ruins of the tailor shop. Muffs’ ribbon was left there too, but all the children carried home tell-tale smudges on their hands and faces.

When they neared the corner house they saw there was reason for going in together for Mrs. Tyler and Donald were both standing on the porch talking with Mrs. Lippett.

“Well, it’s about time--” Mrs. Lippett began but, because of something that was felt rather than said, she waited and let the children explain. Their reasons for chasing the headless man sounded funny to Donald. He had seen them running with the scary-looking broom and had, though he did not confess it until later, cheered them and whistled. Mrs. Tyler, however, was grave and Mrs. Lippett red-faced and angry. She scolded. She complained because the check Muffs’ mother had sent for her board was smaller than she thought it ought to be.

“With all this trouble,” she declared, “it’s worth twice what Mrs. Moffet gives me.”

“Perhaps you don’t understand children,” Mrs. Tyler suggested.

“I don’t understand this one. The Lord knows I’d be grateful if someone would take her off my hands.”

“Couldn’t we?” Mary whispered.

Mrs. Tyler looked very stern. “Do you really think, Mary, that you and Muffs and Tommy should be rewarded for acting like little hoodlums instead of well-behaved children?”

“But, Mom--” Donald began. “You told Mrs. Lippett----”

“Never mind what I told her,” Mrs. Tyler stopped him. “The fact remains that the children have been very thoughtless and very unkind. They must be made to realize that such a thing must never happen again.”

“I’m sure we’d never chase the headless man again, would we?” Mary asked and Muffs and Tommy agreed that they never would.

“Anyway,” Tommy said grandly, “we left the broom and the flat-iron in the tailor shop and it’s a buried city as far as we’re concerned.”

“Let’s bury the whole thing and go home,” Donald suggested.

So they went home together--Mrs. Tyler, Donald, Mary, Tommy and Muffs who knew for sure now that she wouldn’t have to go back to Lippetts and face the dragons alone. When Mr. Tyler heard about it he only laughed and said, “Children will be children.” Baby Ellen waved her arms about and called “How-do” to Muffins. Even Great Aunt Charlotte gave her pink peppermints and the sun came out and shone all afternoon.

BUNNY TAG AND A PRIZE FOR THE WINNER

All this time Bunny Bright Eyes was sitting like a prisoner in the dark little A-coop. Muffs was the first one to remember him. She and Mary and Tommy ran across the yard and out into Mrs. Tyler’s garden. They brought lettuce and carrots and spinach leaves to hold in their hands while the rabbit nosed through the bars and ate.

It was fun to watch him eat. But it was more fun when they let him out of the coop and he followed them over the grass. At first they watched him very carefully for fear that he would run away or one of the cats would get him although Mary and Tommy felt perfectly sure that neither Tabby nor Thomas Junior would harm an innocent little white bunny.

Before long they learned that Bunny Bright Eyes would come into the Guide’s tall hat just the way a canary bird comes into a cage. Some one had trained him and the children felt sure it was the Bramble Bush Man. They played right close to the house and kept watch for him.

After a week had passed without anyone coming for Bunny Bright Eyes, Muffs began to think maybe he was hers to keep. She and Mary and Tommy were playing Bunny Tag around the A-coop. Bunny Tag was a new game they had made up themselves. You couldn’t be tagged if you were hopping like a bunny. Baby Ellen, who could creep far better than she could walk, enjoyed the game and Bunny Bright Eyes played and never was tagged at all.

“I think we ought to give him a prize,” announced Tommy.

“We haven’t any,” Mary objected, but Tommy wouldn’t say anything. He just looked mysterious and later they heard him talking with Donald about taking a trip to Balo.

“What does he mean?” Muffs asked.

So Mary told her about the secret charm Tommy had made up a long time ago.

“He plays Balo is another world and the walk that we call the Way of Peril is a path of light.”

“And it’s really only the carpenter shop?” asked Muffs.

“Yes, but you mustn’t breathe a word because you’re supposed to believe it else it won’t come true.”

“I’ll believe it,” said Muffs.

“Then shut your eyes and keep on believing.”

Muffs shut her eyes and believed as hard as she could. Soon she began to see things that looked like shooting stars behind her eyelids.

“Could we ride there on a shooting star?” she asked.

“We’ll try it,” said Mary and, taking her hand, led her carefully along the walk.

“This is our own private magic,” she said. “Now you’re a Magic Maker too.”

Before they were halfway across the Way of Peril they heard the tap-tapping of a hammer pounding something.

“That’s the Hammer Headed Snake welcoming us to the Land of Balo. May we come in?” Mary called.

“Maybe it wasn’t a welcome,” Muffs said doubtfully.

“May we come in?” Mary called more loudly through the door and Tommy swung it open.

“Spies!” he shouted. “Spying on Bunny’s prize.”

“We didn’t mean to spy,” said Mary penitently. “We came quite properly on a shooting star.”

“It sounds like a declaration of war to me,” observed Donald with a fierce scowl. He was nailing something while Tommy stood with a bunch of nails in his hand, giving them to Donald one by one. There on the bench beside them was the dearest little house Muffs had ever seen. It was even nicer than the doll houses in New York stores at Christmas time.

“The people of Balo made it,” Tommy said proudly.

“With us to help, of course,” Donald added. “It’s a prize for Bunny Bright Eyes. Think he’ll like it better than the A-coop?”

“He’ll _love_ it,” cried Muffs. “Look, Mary! Don’t you love it too?”

“We wouldn’t have come if we’d known it was such a nice surprise,” she said. “I guess we spoiled it.”

“Not by a long shot,” laughed Donald, forgetting his declaration of war. “Now you can help too. Tommy hurried things up a lot by sawing off pieces of wood and holding the hammer and nails. I made a bird house this Spring and this is made the same way only bigger. Of course,” he went on with some pride, “I had to fix the roof so that half of it goes back on hinges.”

“Oh,” said Muffs, admiring it, “that’s so we can put Bunny Bright Eyes in.”

“And this chicken wire,” Donald continued, showing her how carefully he had nailed it, “is so he can see out.”

Muffs thought of the funny little rhyme she had made up and told it to him.

“There could be a C-coop after all,” she said. “This house must be a C-coop ’cause Bunny can see out.”

“And because you sneaked in to _see_ it,” added Donald with a laugh. He had finished nailing on the roof and now he was carefully cutting out a round window in the peak. When that was done he announced that the house was all finished but the paint. “Here’s green for the roof and red for the house,” he continued, taking down two paint pails from a shelf above the work-bench.

Tommy noticed the dim outline of the chalk faces he had once painted on them when they stood guard over the gates of the City of Balo. He knelt before them.

“Oh, knights in tin armor,” he pleaded. “Your humble servants desire some of your blood.”

Mary found three brushes in a rack on the wall and the Sawhorse lent his brushy tail so that there were enough to go around. Soon everybody was spattering paint on Bunny’s house. Muffs painted the right side. Mary painted the left side while Tommy did the back and Donald the roof.

“Guess Bunny Bright Eyes will think this is a palace after that dirty A-coop,” he said.

“How long will it take to dry?” Muffs asked.

“Not more’n a day. Better give Bunny a farewell feast. He’ll be moving into his new house tomorrow.”

So Muffs and Mary and Tommy started toward the garden while Donald, careful to do as his father had told him, stayed to clean up the brushes. The garden was at the right of the house and a little nearer than the barn and the A-coop where the children supposed Bunny was waiting for his very special feast. They picked only the young vegetables because they tasted sweeter and then ran down hill to surprise him.

“Bunny!” Muffs called softly. “Bunny Bright Eyes!”

The little rabbit did not hop up to the bars of his coop as she had expected.

“He must be asleep,” Mary said, and called a little louder.

“He isn’t there!” exclaimed Tommy going nearer to the A-coop and looking in. “Muffs, you promised to put him back the last time we played Bunny Tag.”

“I did put him back. I know I did.”

“Then Mom must have taken him out,” said Tommy. “Let’s go in the house and see.”