Part 4

Muffs and Mary lifted their dresses high because they were full of lettuce and spinach leaves. Tommy held his hands straight out at his sides dangling yellow carrots. Mrs. Tyler was sitting at the kitchen table peeling potatoes when they entered the house. She looked up.

“Oh, you’ve gathered lettuce for dinner,” she exclaimed. “How nice of you to think of it.”

Muffs emptied the lettuce into a pan without a word.

“And carrots,” Mrs. Tyler went on, taking them from Tommy’s hands. “How young they are! Almost too young to cook, but I guess we can eat them.”

“Mom, where’s Bunny Bright Eyes?” Mary asked.

“A man came for him.” She stopped speaking when she saw the blank way that the children were looking at her.

“Who was the man?” they asked.

“He didn’t give his name. He asked about the glasses but I’d forgotten where you put them. I called and called.”

“We were in the workshop.”

Tommy didn’t say, “painting a house for Bunny Bright Eyes.” He felt there was no need of saying that. His mother would say the children were foolish to plan on keeping the rabbit. She would be right too. But what a shame that they had missed seeing the Bramble Bush Man!

“Maybe he’ll come for his glasses another time and we can see him,” Mary said hopefully.

“I don’t want to see him,” sobbed Muffs. “He’s taken Bunny Bright Eyes.”

For days after that Muffs was very quiet, refusing to play and half the time refusing to talk. Then, one morning, she borrowed Mary’s pencil and paper and went out into the workshop alone.

“She’s walking the Way of Peril,” Mary whispered. “She’s like you used to be, Tommy. She’d rather be alone in the Land of Balo.”

“She’s got a secret then,” he declared. “People always want to be alone when they’ve got secrets. Let’s wait here and see if she won’t tell us when she comes out.”

So they waited on the One Way Steps. It was nearly noon when Muffs came out of the workshop. She was walking along the Way of Peril, holding the paper in one hand and a post card in the other and smiling to herself.

“Wait a minute!” called Mary. “Can’t we see it too?”

Muffs turned around in surprise and held out the paper. “Look!” she cried. “I’ve made him come back again. I’ve made Bunny Bright Eyes go into his little house!”

On the paper was the picture she had drawn, first the house and then a rabbit that looked for all the world like Bunny Bright Eyes.

“But he isn’t in the house,” Mary objected.

“_Now_ he is,” said Muffs and, placing the edge of the post card between the rabbit and the house, she bent closer and looked. Tommy looked too. At first the rabbit didn’t go all the way in, but when he looked a little closer, sure enough, there he was inside his own little house. He sat there behind the wire screen until Tommy took the card away.

“It’s magic,” said Mary. She helped Muffs print directions so that other people could work the magic too.

But to Muffs it was more than magic. Whenever she longed to see Bunny Bright Eyes, she could look at the paper bunny and play he was real. She could even forgive the Bramble Bush Man for taking the real bunny away.

CAKES AND TEA

As time passed the children became more and more determined that they must see the Bramble Bush Man. Tommy often spoke of it and blamed himself for forgetting the Guide.

“We could have a _play_ Bramble Bush Man anyway,” he said, “if I hadn’t been so scared. We could play he was wondrous wise and make him answer important questions.”

“He couldn’t answer anything we didn’t know ourselves,” said Mary.

“He couldn’t tell me where the ends of the earth are,” Muffs put in. “Besides, the man that came for the glasses was real because your mother saw him.”

“He’ll come again,” said Mary hopefully and whenever anyone came to the door they ran to see who it was. Once, when they were playing in the front yard, Muffs saw a man coming up the road and felt sure it was the Bramble Bush Man. She ran towards him, eager to make friends, and bumped into--not the Bramble Bush Man at all, but the cranky headless man.

“’Scuse me!” she murmured and ran back to tell Mary and Tommy. “He’s coming to put us in jail! Quick! Hide somewhere!”

They were darting this way and that looking for a safe place when the headless man turned right into the yard.

“Where’s your mother?” he called out. “I want to see her.”

Muffs, who was really braver than she supposed she was, crawled out from a good hiding place she had just discovered underneath the porch.

“I told you,” she said simply. “My mother is in New York.”

“His mother then,” he demanded, pointing to Tommy.

“She’s letting me board here,” Muffs explained. “She went shopping.”

The headless man was losing his temper again. He turned to Mary who had just emerged, dirty and looking rather ashamed, from underneath the A-coop.

“Where’s your mother? I’ve got to see somebody.”

“My mother’s the same as Tommy’s mother,” Mary said. “But if you must see somebody I think Daddy’s home. He’s working out in that house at the end of the walk. It’s his carpenter shop.”

“I’ll see him later. What were you doing in there?” he asked, scowling at the A-coop.

“Hiding,” Mary confessed. “That’s where we used to keep Bunny Bright Eyes. He was a rabbit. The man that owned him came and got him while we were busy making him a house.”

“Look!” cried Muffs, holding up the picture she had drawn. “This is the house and if you know the trick you can make Bunny Bright Eyes hop right into it.”

“Who drew that picture?” demanded the headless man.

“I did. I did it so I wouldn’t miss him so--I mean the rabbit.”

“Who taught you how to draw like that?”

“My mother. She’s an artist,” Muffs added proudly. “She sent me here while she goes to school.”

“Your mother goes to school?”

“Yes. Art school so she can sell her pictures and we can move some place else ’cause it’s such a little place and the landlady doesn’t like children.”

“I see. I see. And so you were making the rabbit a house----”

“Donald, that’s my big brother, made it,” Mary spoke up. “He made it out in the workshop. We call it the Land of Balo. The paint pails came to life and gave us their blood to paint it with. We made a stick come to life too and went on an expedition. Then we found the glasses----”

“Oh,” said the man, “so you are the children who put up that sign?”

“I wrote it,” Tommy explained with pride. “Did you read it?”

“I tried to, but it didn’t make sense. Where did you find the glasses?”

“’Way up in the woods. We were following a trail to the ends of the earth. We found the glasses in a bramble bush so we called them eyes and said they belonged to a wondrous wise man. That was because we found them in a bramble bush. You know the rhyme?”

“What rhyme?”

“Why, the one about the man from our town,” Tommy answered. “Say it for him, Muffs, won’t you?”

So Muffs made a curtsey and recited the nursery rhyme. She was surprised that the headless man had never heard it.

“Everyone knows it,” she said. “It’s just one of those rhymes that you hear everywhere.”

“Perhaps,” said the headless man thoughtfully, “I don’t go to the right places to hear such rhymes.”

“He is nice,” thought Muffs. “He’s just as nice as he can be when he isn’t angry.” Aloud she said, “You can come here and I’ll say them for you. I think I like you.”

“But I’m not a very wise man, am I?” he asked.

Muffs shook her head. “I’m ’fraid not. There aren’t many wise people, you know. I don’t believe I ever saw one.”

“Most little girls think their fathers are wondrous wise,” said the headless man.

“Hers wasn’t,” Tommy put in. “He ran off to the ends of the earth just because she broke some of his things. That wasn’t wise.”

“But the things might have meant a great deal to him,” the man said with a queer look at Muffs. “What is your name, little girl?”

“Miss Muffet.”

“But I mean your real name, the name your mother gave you.”

“My father gave me my name,” said Muffs. “Madeline, after my mother. I guess he used to love her.”

But the headless man had turned and seemed not to be listening. Without speaking to the children again he started toward the workshop.

“He’s going to tell on us,” cried Muffs. “I didn’t think he would!”

“Oh, dear!” sighed Mary. “I hope he doesn’t tell too much. I broke off a flower in his yard and even Daddy would scold me for that.”

“We ought to write an apology,” said Tommy who was fond of writing things.

“I’ll write it this time,” Mary said. “I’m older and can spell better than you can. He said he couldn’t make sense out of the Public Notice.”

So they let Mary do the writing but Muffs and Tommy told her what to say.

“It looks all right,” said Muffs after she had read it and passed it on to Tommy. “Shall we mail it to him?”

“We don’t know his name and we haven’t any stamps. I’ll tell you what,” Mary said. “We’ll walk right into the workshop and give it to him. Then if he and Daddy are talking about us we can hear what they say.”

Muffs and Tommy didn’t think they ought to sneak into the shop like that. But Mary coaxed and at last they gave in. Holding each other’s shoulders and stepping very carefully on the edge of the outside plank, they played they were a three-headed monster creeping stealthily to his lair.

Great Aunt Charlotte opened the kitchen door just in time to see them, although to her they looked like ordinary children.

“Mary!” she called. “Can you hold a tray straight without spilling your father’s tea?”

Mary, who was the monster’s head, turned around so quickly that the middle section of the monster fell off the Way of Peril and landed in a forest of needles. Anyway, Muffs said it felt like needles and the monster’s tail curled ’round her and lifted her back on the walk again.

Tea and cakes served in the workshop! It was something that had never happened as far back as the children could remember. Mary was now a prim maid-in-waiting carrying the King’s tray. She lifted the latch of the workshop door and Tommy dropped the apology in among the tea things.

“Bless my buttons!” exclaimed Mr. Tyler, looking up in surprise. “How long have you children been there?”

“We’ve only been children for the last minute,” Tommy said solemnly. “Before that we were a three-headed monster only our middle fell out and now Mary’s a maid-in-waiting.”

“So I see. Great Aunt Charlotte must have suspected that I had an important guest this afternoon,” Mr. Tyler said as Mary handed him the tray. He passed the cakes, took one himself and then held up the paper. “What’s this? The bill?” Then he saw it was addressed to _the headless man_. “We all have heads here,” he chuckled. “Must be some mistake.”

“I am the headless man,” the guest announced and reached for the slip of paper.

While he read it the children stood watching. They said things to each other in whispers and nudges. He hadn’t told! He hadn’t come to tell on them at all. Why, he was actually smiling over their apology.

“This is quite a document,” he said when he had finished reading it. “Magic Makers, are you? Hmmm! What do you know about magic?”

“We know a whole lot,” Muffs answered quickly. “Tommy made up a secret charm and whatever we play comes true.”

“Well, now that is a lot. His father was telling me....” Then a mysterious look passed between them that left the children wondering just what Mr. Tyler was telling. Whatever it was, the headless man seemed pleased. He tucked the apology in his vest pocket as though it were a treasure and then put some sugar in his tea and passed the cakes around to the children.

“This is a new rôle for me,” he said.

“This is cakes,” said Tommy between mouthfuls.

The headless man laughed. “Oh, I see. This is cakes, not rolls at all. ’Twould take a magician to turn cakes into rolls, wouldn’t it?”

“I can turn ’em into sponges,” Tommy announced. He reached in his pocket for the Bramble Bush Man’s glasses while the headless man and Mr. Tyler both looked on in amazement. Muffs and Mary looked too and saw the tiny cakes turn into sponges with holes large enough to put a finger in.

“Wonderful glasses!” exclaimed Mr. Tyler.

“They ought to be when they belong to such a wonderful man,” Muffs said as she handed them back to Tommy. “He even made his house disappear.”

“That’s strange,” said the headless man. “I never saw a house disappear.”

“Well, we did,” the children assured him. And nothing would do but they tell him all about it. With three of them to tell it, what one forgot the others supplied and nothing was left out. They expected him to say “Nonsense” to this and “Fiddlesticks” to that. But he didn’t. He listened to every word just as if he believed in magic too.

There were tears in Muffs’ eyes when she told him about the vase and how she had broken it. Such a pretty vase and she had barely touched it.

“I guess it’s just the way I am,” she sighed. “I’m always and always breaking things. Even when I was a little baby----”

The headless man interrupted her with a cough and, all at once, Muffs wondered if they weren’t telling too much.

“I don’t know you very well,” she said. “Mother says I mustn’t talk to people unless I know their names.”

“The Headless Man fits me very well,” the stranger said sorrowfully, “but perhaps even a headless man could do something.”

“You could if you knew the Bramble Bush Man. He lives in a house with looking-glass walls----”

“He does indeed!”

“You’ll help us find him!” the children cried. “You really know him?”

“I believe I do.”

“And is he a wondrous wise man?” Muffs asked breathlessly.

The headless man nodded. “He’s growing wiser every day.”

THE MYSTERIOUS MOVING VAN

Muffs wrote all about the headless man in a letter to her mother. It was the longest letter she had ever written all by herself and she felt very happy when she slid the fat envelope through the letter drop in the Post Office. She felt happier still a few days later when the answer came back addressed to Muffs herself in care of Mrs. Tyler. It was a long letter and Tommy helped her read it.

Dear little Madeline Muffins Moffet: Whoever thought you could write such a letter? I think your headless man sounds nice. He must have looked funny but I’m glad you apologized for chasing him. It isn’t fun to make people cross, especially men. If I were you I would forget the Bramble Bush Man because he isn’t real and be nice to the real headless man.

“Are you sure the letter says the Bramble Bush Man isn’t real?” Muffs asked, looking worried.

“That’s what it says,” Tommy replied. “I guess you didn’t tell your mother that the headless man knows him.”

“Do you think he really does, Tommy?”

The boy nodded and Muffs, with a happy sigh, went on reading her letter.

Now I have something important to tell you. Summer school will be over in just one more week and I am coming to take you home. I don’t know whether you will be glad or sorry but, till then--

Goodbye, and all my love, Mother.

“Which will you be,” Tommy asked, “glad or sorry?”

“A little bit of both. Glad to see Mother and sorry not to have you and Mary to play with any more. I’ll miss Donald and baby Ellen too and your mother and father and Great Aunt Charlotte--and the headless man. He’s getting sort of--sort of mysterious, don’t you think?”

“And he promised to help find the Bramble Bush Man. Gee! You’ll miss him too,” Tommy said. “Couldn’t you coax your mother to let you stay?”

Muffs shook her head. “My school begins in a week. But I do like it here,” she added wistfully.

She and Tommy were sitting on the Way of Peril and everything around them had grown dear to Muffs. She looked out across the swamp to the trees and little stream beyond and thought how different the city was--just hard pavement and children who had never learned how to play. She tried to think of all the nice things she used to do in New York but none of them were very exciting. They weren’t a bit like the expedition or the burned tailor shop or painting the house for Bunny Bright Eyes. There was no Way of Peril to walk, no make-believe creatures and no children half as nice as Mary and Tommy. Donald and Mr. Tyler were always doing wonderfully interesting things too and Mrs. Tyler was a dear. So was Great Aunt Charlotte bedtimes when she passed out pink peppermint candy pillows. Muffs’ little dream fairies slept on them. And it was nice to have a baby in the house to pet and play with. Even the cats were comforting when they sat in anyone’s lap and purred. Thomas Junior wasn’t much given to sitting in laps but Tabby often sat with Muffs. Her fur was soft and white and made the little girl think of Bunny Bright Eyes, the only pet she had ever had.

“If only Mother would stay here,” she thought, “and I had Bunny Bright Eyes again, everything would be just perfect and I wouldn’t care if we never went back to the studio in New York.”

Then she saw Mary coming up the road, wheeling Ellen in her carriage. She had just put her to sleep and now she was ready to play.

“Muffs’ mother is going to take her back to New York,” Tommy announced as soon as Mary came into the wood yard.

To their surprise, Mary burst into tears and ran up the One Way Steps and into the workshop.

“She’s gone to tell Daddy,” Tommy decided. “She tells Daddy and Donald everything.”

“I didn’t know she liked me that much,” Muffs said.

As the time for her to go home came nearer Muffs grew more and more puzzled. There were days when they hardly saw Mary. Ever since that day she went to the workshop crying she had acted as if she knew a secret. Donald was in on it too and so was Mr. Tyler. The three of them had taken the short-cut and gone somewhere without saying a word to Muffs and Tommy.

“We could watch and see where they went,” Muffs suggested.

So she and Tommy, hand in hand, started along the short-cut. It went through the swamp on stepping stones and then through the field and over what Tommy called the fairies’ hills because they were only little mounds with wintergreens growing on them.

“Want to taste a fairy apple?” he asked and Muffs, who had never tasted a wintergreen berry before, thought the fairies had nicer apples than those that grew on full-sized apple trees.

They crawled under the pasture fence and then, as they came in sight of the grange hall, things began to appear strange. A big truck was standing in the driveway and men were carrying things out of it and into the grange hall.

“It’s a moving van,” Muffs exclaimed. “Somebody must be moving in.”

“People don’t move into public halls,” Tommy objected. “Maybe they just bought some new furniture for the grange. But gee! What funny furniture!”

“A new piano,” guessed Muffs as the moving men shouldered a box-like object and carried it through the door.

“They have a piano,” said Tommy. “I know because they play it at socials for the grown-ups to dance.”

“Then it isn’t a piano. Look-ee! I know what those are. Japanese lanterns in all different colors. It must be a ball like Cinderella went to. I wish we had a fairy godmother.”

The next thing to be unloaded was a pile of folding chairs. Then another pile of folding chairs--and another and another.

“My! What a lot of chairs,” exclaimed Muffs. “They’ll be fun for playing ‘Going to Jerusalem.’”

“We won’t be allowed to play,” Tommy said. “It’s prob’ly some grown-up doings and they’re just going to sit. Muffs, do you suppose Daddy and Donald and Mary are over there?”

“I thought I saw Mary, and look! There’s the headless man! He’s showing the moving men where to put the chairs!”

“Gee!” exclaimed Tommy. “He’s not so good at keeping promises. I should think he’d come and see us if he’s really trying to find the Bramble Bush Man.”

“I don’t believe there is any Bramble Bush Man,” said Muffs suddenly. “We just made it up.”

Tommy whirled on her. “You’re not a Magic Maker if you quit believing. You’ll never have any fun. You’ll just grow up full of scowl wrinkles like Mr. and Mrs. Lippett and people will call you a dragon. You wouldn’t want that to happen, would you?”

“No-oo,” Muffs agreed doubtfully. “But you can’t keep on believing forever when nothing happens.”

“We’ll make something happen then,” declared Tommy. “Pretty soon the moving van will be empty and we can climb in and hide. Then when they start to drive away we can pop up and surprise the headless man. He’ll remember his promise all right then. He may even tell the men to drive us around to the Bramble Bush Man’s house.”

This plan was a little too daring to suit Muffs. Things happened sometimes and whenever things did happen she usually got the blame.

“They might not stop,” she said. “The headless man won’t tell his name and those moving men may be kidnappers for all we know.”

“’Fraid Cat!”

“Well, I want Mother to _find_ me when she comes.”

“Oh, shucks!” said Tommy. “You’ll be going and we can’t have just one last adventure. If you don’t see the Bramble Bush Man pretty soon you’ll never see him.”

Still Muffs felt afraid.

“All right! Don’t!” Tommy said angrily. “I’ll climb into the moving van and go to see the Bramble Bush Man myself.”

“Without me!” cried Muffs. “Oh, Tommy, not without me!”

He grinned. It was easy to make Muffs do what he wanted her to. Soon they were crossing the road and stealing up to the empty moving van. The men were still busy in the grange hall and it was easy to climb in without being seen. There were a few old quilts and a mattress on the floor of the truck. The mattress was clean and comfortable and the children sat down on it to wait.

“They’re taking a long time,” said Tommy after about ten minutes of waiting.

“Maybe they can’t find places for all those chairs,” Muffs replied. “I hope they don’t put them back in here so we can’t lie on this nice bed. I’m getting sleepy.”

Tommy yawned and sprawled on the mattress too. He and Muffs had played hard that morning and both of them were tired.

“I’ll keep my ears open,” thought Tommy as he closed his eyes. But ears have a habit of drifting off to dreamland too and so when the men returned, talking and laughing, neither Muffs nor Tommy heard a sound. And when the driver started neither he nor his helper nor the headless man guessed that there were two children in the back of the van lying on a mattress sound asleep.

A PARTY IN THE AIR

The sun’s rays streaming through wide windows the next morning woke Muffs from her long sleep. She sat up in a bed that she had never seen before and looked about. Someone had taken off her shoes but she was still wearing her dress and it was dreadfully wrinkled. She felt quite untidy in such a clean little bed. The bed was just her size too and had a gay spread with butterflies on it. There were butterfly curtains at the windows too and beyond she could see a door opening into another room, like a palace, with a ceiling all of glass. Along the window sills in both rooms were flowers and growing plants. A long glass tank had plants in it too and tiny fish that swam about and made silver streaks through the water.

“I must be in fairyland,” thought Muffs, not quite sure that she was fully awake.