Part 5

She climbed out of bed and there were her shoes, side by side, on the floor under the bed. She didn’t put them on at once because the soft rug felt good to her bare feet. It was such a lovely room all green and gold like the studio at home only much, much richer. It was a little bare though. Muffs was used to seeing a great many things crowded into two small rooms and so most places in the country seemed bare. She began exploring first the room and then the hall. She tried to open the door of the room across the hall but it was locked. Then she looked out of the hall window and saw a lawn with hedges and farther down the road was the school where Tommy went.

“Why-ee!” she gasped. “This must be the headless man’s house. He found me in the moving van and put me to bed. I wonder where Tommy is. Tom-meee!” she called, beginning to feel rather frightened.

“Here I am,” cried an impish voice and a tousled head appeared at the foot of the stairs. “Gee! I thought you’d never wake up. Look whose house we’re in. The Bramble Bush Man’s!”

And to prove it he held up the Guide, his gash of a mouth smiling as happily as before. Tommy had placed the glasses on his nose and he looked the same as ever except for his withered leaves and one broken arm.

“But this is the headless man’s house,” Muffs answered, more puzzled than ever.

“Sure! The Bramble Bush Man lives with him. _This is the Bramble Bush Man._”

Muffs looked long and hard at the stick creature and then opened her mouth as wide as she could and let out one scream after another.

“I don’t want it to be the Bramble Bush Man! I don’t want it to be the Bramble Bush Man!” she screamed. “I want the Bramble Bush Man to be real and tell me where my daddy went.”

Tommy stood helpless, holding his beloved stick. It suited him all right. It was real enough for him.

Then the headless man appeared and Muffs stopped a scream right in the middle of it. The headless man would be as angry as he was that day the children chased him.

But stranger things were happening by the minute. The headless man wasn’t angry at all.

“There! There!” he said. “Stop this screaming and we’ll find the Bramble Bush Man at once.”

“He isn’t--he isn’t a stick?” gasped Muffs, still sobbing a little.

“Tommy’s Bramble Bush Man may be a stick, but yours isn’t. He’ll find your daddy for you if he has to go to the ends of the earth. Now dry your tears and have breakfast with the lonesome old headless man.”

“Are you really so lonesome?” asked Muffs when they were seated around the breakfast table. They had gone down two long flights of stairs and into a spacious dining room.

“Yes,” said the headless man. “Very lonesome indeed. A big house like this ought to have children in it.”

“It’s funny,” Muffs replied. “But Mother and I live in two tiny rooms and the landlady doesn’t like children.”

“I thought I didn’t--once.”

“I’m glad you’ve changed your mind,” Muffs said, smiling at him over her grapefruit. He had put a cherry in the center just the way she liked it and after that came Tommy’s favorite dish--pancakes. Muffs ate five and Tommy had seven and an extra helping of jam. That was for the Guide who sat in the chair beside him.

“Wise people like jam,” he said in explanation.

While they ate the headless man told how he had discovered them asleep when he went back to the van to find something the moving men had forgotten to deliver.

“Otherwise,” he said, “you might be on your way to Chicago with a load of furniture that left at four o’clock this morning. It was taking an awful chance to climb into an empty moving van. Why did you do it?”

“We wanted to surprise you,” Tommy explained. “We thought you had forgotten about the Bramble Bush Man.”

“Indeed I haven’t and if it’s in my power you shall see him this very day.”

Of course the children wanted to know when and where but the headless man would say no more and hurried them away from the table.

“Come! Come!” he urged. “You mustn’t stay here any longer or you’ll miss the party.”

“Party!” exclaimed Tommy. “It must be a surprise party. We never heard about it.”

“It will be a surprise party,” he said.

Muffs looked puzzled. “Is it somebody’s birthday?” she asked.

“I’ll have to go along and see,” declared the headless man.

“Were you invited?”

He scratched his head as if he were thinking. “Now let me see,” he said slowly. “I wasn’t exactly invited but if it’s a surprise party, don’t you think I might go as a surprise?”

The children thought at first that he was joking but when he said goodbye, his last words were, “I’ll see you both at the party.”

When they reached Tommy’s house someone was waiting on the porch. It was someone with golden hair and golden brown eyes and cheeks as rosy as Muffs’ own. It might have been Muffs herself except that this lovely person was a lady instead of a little girl. She held out both arms and Muffs rushed into them.

“Mother!” she cried, half laughing and half crying. “I didn’t think you’d come for another week.”

“I had to come when my little girl was lost. Mrs. Tyler sent a telegram. Muffs, _dear!_ Where were you?”

“Oh, Mother! The loveliest place, all light and flowers and pretty colors. You would have painted it. It was so beautiful!”

“But how did you happen to go there? And why didn’t you come home before?”

“She slept too long,” Tommy explained. “We went to sleep in a moving van,” and he told Mrs. Moffet all that had happened and how kind the headless man had been. He even told about the Guide and how he had saved him. Tommy had the Guide under his arm and that proved everything.

“We’d have been to Chicago by now,” he finished, “if he hadn’t found us and taken us to his house. He just let us sleep ’til we woke up. Then we had pancakes! Mmmm! And can the headless man cook!”

Muffs’ mother laughed but there was a worried look in her face as well. It might have happened so differently. She clasped her little girl very close and held her for a long time.

“I must dress,” Muffs said finally. “We’re going to a party.”

“We can’t, darling. The train----”

“But we _must_,” Muffs interrupted. “It’s a surprise party but the headless man told and he says it’s still going to be a surprise. He’s expecting us to be there and I wouldn’t miss it for anything.”

“If that’s the case,” said her mother, “we’ll take a later train. Put on your blue dress----”

“It’s got ink on it.”

“I spilled it there,” Tommy owned up. “I must have spilled it when we wrote the Public Notice,” and he told about that too.

My! What a lot of things there were to tell. Muffs and Tommy chattered all the time they were getting ready. Mrs. Moffet put on a fresh dress too and stood waiting by the window. She could see across the pasture to where crowds were already beginning to gather around the grange hall.

“We’re ready now,” Mrs. Tyler said, coming into the room with the baby toddling at her side.

“But where’s Mary?” Tommy asked.

“She went on ahead with your father and Donald and Great Aunt Charlotte.”

“Is Great Aunt Charlotte going too? Gee! What a funny kind of party.”

“It’s in the grange hall.”

“And we’re just going to sit? Aw, Mom! That won’t be any fun.”

“Won’t it?” she said with a knowing smile. “Hadn’t you better come along and see.”

They took the short-cut. Muffs always wanted to take the short-cut now so she wouldn’t have to pass the dragons’ house but she soon discovered that Mr. and Mrs. Lippett and everyone else in the valley were coming to the party. Not only that, there were big, expensive-looking cars from the other side of Lookoff Mountain and a whole bus load of school children. The road was full of parked cars and the grove at the end of the short-cut was crowded with children. There was a great circle of them playing “Drop the Handkerchief.” Muffs slipped into the circle quietly but as soon as they saw her the whole crowd of children called out, “Surprise!”

“But it isn’t my birthday,” Muffs objected.

“It’s a farewell party because you’re going, Muffs,” Mary whispered.

“Speech! Speech!” they all shouted.

“I--I can’t speak. I wouldn’t know what to say.”

“You can sing, honey,” her mother said softly.

So Muffs stood on tiptoe and her voice trilled an old love song her mother had taught her. When she had finished she saw that the headless man had been standing under a nearby tree listening to her. She waved to him but he had his handkerchief out blowing his nose and didn’t notice. Then Muffs turned to her mother, or to the place where she thought her mother would be standing. There was no one there.

“Where’s Mother?” she asked Tommy.

He pointed to a chair. “She went over there and sat down,” he said. “Her face got awful white. I guess she’s sick.”

Muffs ran to her and put her arms around her neck. “What’s the matter, Mother?” she asked. “Did it make you dizzy to play the games?”

“No, dear,” Mrs. Moffet replied, rising to her feet in a hurry. “But we must go, dear. We must go quickly! We must take the next train.”

“And miss the party!”

“Would you mind very much if we missed the party?”

Muffs stared at her mother without answering. She couldn’t think of anything to say. Her mother knew she’d mind and she had said they could take a later train. Then Mrs. Tyler saw that something was wrong and came hurrying along the grass with baby Ellen snatching at timothy heads as they passed and calling, “Pitty pussy. _Want_ pitty pussy.”

Muffs spoke in a voice that was full of bewilderment. “Mother says I must go home. She says I must go home and miss the party.”

“Really, Mrs. Moffet,” Mrs. Tyler said, “hadn’t you better think it over a little longer? You’re welcome to stay with us and besides--it isn’t fair to Muffs.”

There was a long silence.

“No,” she said finally, lifting her head and looking into her little girl’s anxious face. “I guess it isn’t. Run along, dear, and have a good time. Don’t mind me. I’ve just got a headache.”

“We’ll ask the Bramble Bush Man what’s good for headaches,” said Muffins brightly. “I forgot to tell you, Mother, but the headless man knows him and he really is wondrous wise and we’re going to meet him today. Look! Everybody is going into the grange hall. Mr. Tyler is calling them.”

And so he was! He had a horn to his lips and his voice came out with a hollow sound:

“THIS WAY TO THE BIG SHOW. MEET THE BRAMBLE BUSH MAN, THE WORLD’S GREATEST MAGICIAN. WATCH HIS WONDERFUL TRICKS! COME ON, FOLKS! DON’T MISS IT. IT’S THE SHOW OF A LIFE TIME!”

“He’s giving a show!” cried Muffs and her eyes were like stars. “Mother! Do you hear it? The Bramble Bush Man is giving a show?”

“Whoops!” shouted Tommy. “Talk about a surprise party--and I thought we were just going to sit.”

“We are,” exclaimed Mary, joining them and taking Muffs’ hand. “We’re going to sit and watch the wisest man in the world and if you don’t believe it, just ask him what a tuffet is. I asked him to make sure and he said it was a round cushion.”

“You talked to him, Mary?”

She laughed. “Yes, and so did you. But just wait ’til you see him on the stage. That’s the surprise!”

INTRODUCING THE MAGICIAN

In the grange hall rows and rows of chairs were lined up, like soldiers, before the stage. Green and yellow streamers hung from the ceiling and flowers were everywhere. Mary said she helped decorate.

“What did you do with all the colored lanterns?” Tommy asked.

“Oh, did you see them? They’re going to be hung out in the grove after the show. There’s cake and ice cream and we’re going to bring the chairs out and sit and talk with the Bramble Bush Man.”

Muffs felt too excited even to guess what he looked like. “The Bramble Bush Man! The Bramble Bush Man!” her thoughts kept saying. “He’s real! He’s true! I’m going to see him!”

“You’re going to be so surprised,” Mary went on. “I was. I couldn’t believe it at first and then I began to get used to it and he isn’t at all the way we thought he was and he’s studied so hard and tried out every one of his tricks before that big mirror so that he’s _sure_ how it will look to us down here in the theatre. Honest, now, doesn’t the grange hall look something like a theatre?”

Tommy said it did although he hadn’t the ghost of an idea what Mary was talking about. She seemed to have found out a lot all that time she wouldn’t play.

“It seems as though Muffs would have guessed it. She must have remembered a little of what he looked like,” and Mary kept talking things like that until they had walked the whole length of the hall and were standing beside the first row of chairs. A printed sign said RESERVED but Mary turned it over and sat down, pushing Muffs and Tommy into the two empty seats beside her.

“Mom’s out there in back with Ellen so she can go home early if she cries. Daddy and Donald and Great Aunt Charlotte are helping and we’re supposed to help too,” Mary whispered.

“But how can we help?”

“By sitting right up near the front so that I can go up quickly when he calls on me.”

“When who calls on you?” asked Tommy, much mystified.

“Why, the Bramble Bush Man, of course. I’m to take part in his show.”

Tommy gave a whistle of surprise but Muffs did not even hear what Mary was saying. She was busy looking at the stage. There everything was, just the way she had seen it in the Bramble Bush Man’s queer little house that day they came in through the window. There was the long table with many strange things piled upon it. There was the plate and the ball and hoops and rings and giant playing cards in a pile. Even the vase was there and it looked as if it had never been broken. But the flags and ribbons were not to be seen. Neither was the cage with the rabbit in it.

“I wonder where Bunny Bright Eyes is,” Muffs said aloud. “I wouldn’t like it if he wasn’t in the show.”

“Mary’s in it,” said Tommy reassuringly.

“Is she? Then why isn’t she on the stage?”

“I’m supposed to go up when he calls me. It’s near the end of the show. I disappear.”

“You--what?”

“I disappear,” Mary repeated calmly. “The Bramble Bush Man makes me disappear.”

“I don’t believe that,” declared Tommy. “Even a wondrous wise man couldn’t make a girl disappear.”

“He could too. He made his house disappear, didn’t he?”

“Will you come back?” Muffs questioned anxiously.

“Of course I’ll come back and when it’s over I’ll tell you how I did it.”

“Will you tell us how the house disappeared?” asked Tommy.

“I can’t,” said Mary, “because I don’t know.”

More and more people came in. All the chairs were filled and the doorway, too, was filled with people who had come to see the Bramble Bush Man’s big show. Tommy had the magic glasses to his eyes and was looking over the crowd.

“I wonder where Mother is,” Muffs said.

“Maybe she’s back there with Mom minding Ellen,” Tommy suggested. “Maybe she’s afraid to come too close to a wondrous wise man.”

“I guess she’d be afraid to disappear like I’m going to do,” said Mary importantly.

Muffs was thinking very hard. The Bramble Bush Man must be a rather terrible person if he could make things disappear whenever he felt like it. Even his house! She looked again at the stage, at the long table and the big bowls and rings and playing cards upon it. She looked at the vase that was whole again and shivered.

“I b’lieve he’s a giant after all,” she said.

Mary laughed and laughed. “Ha! Ha! Why, he isn’t even a big man. Look! There he is now!”

She pointed but Muffs and Tommy could see no one who looked in the least like a wondrous wise man. Mr. Tyler had walked up toward the stage and he and the headless man stood there talking. Then he pressed a button that made lights all around the stage. A blue light shone from the ceiling, making everything shadowy and mysterious the way it had been in the Bramble Bush Man’s own house.

“But where is he?” Muffs and Tommy both asked. “We don’t see him.”

“There he is! There! Right where I’m pointing.”

Mr. Tyler had gone back to his seat and left the headless man standing alone. Soon he went up the little stairs that ended on the stage. Now he was standing before them and smiling.

“He’s got a lot of nerve,” Tommy said.

Then everything was quiet for the headless man had begun to speak. “Boys and girls, big and little,” he said. “I have come to introduce the Bramble Bush Man, a wondrous wise magician. He owes his name to three children who are sitting here in the front row. Also, I think, his wisdom.”

“What does he mean?” whispered Tommy.

“He means us,” Mary whispered back. “Sh! He’s still talking.”

“Watch carefully now. Hokus! Mokus! Pokus! and PRESTO! You have the Bramble Bush Man.”

There was a flash of light and a booming sound. The headless man had disappeared and there, in his place, stood the Bramble Bush Man himself. He wore a golden robe with black stars on it and a tall black silk hat. He had a black moustache and black glasses but he was about the size of the headless man.

“I bet he’s the headless man with a black and gold robe and a make-believe moustache,” Tommy whispered.

He looked around, expecting Mary to say, “he is not,” but she and Muffs were both busy watching the magician. He had pulled a hair from his moustache. It couldn’t have been more than an inch long when he pulled it out but now he was stretching, stretching it until it became the length of his arm.

“There,” he said. “That is how we stretch a hair. Now that it is long enough, I shall proceed to thread it through my hands.”

This he did, to the amazement and mystification of all who were watching.

“Now,” he continued, “I shall sew it through my head.”

He put the needle, hair and all, into his mouth.

“He’s swallowed it,” cried Tommy.

This time Mary did contradict him. “No, he hasn’t! He’s sewing it through his head. Watch now! He’s taking his hat off!”

First he felt for the hair and everyone expected him to pull it out of his head but he searched awhile and couldn’t find it.

“Perhaps it’s in my hat,” he said at last and reached in one hand to see. He drew the hand out and with it, a white rabbit. “One hare is as good as another,” he chuckled and then made a low bow.

“That’s right,” said Mary in a hushed voice. “They do call a rabbit a hare.” But Muffs said, not in a hushed voice at all but in a very loud one, “It’s Bunny Bright Eyes!”

The bunny twitched his nose just the way he used to do and seemed to say, “Yes, little mistress, it’s Bunny Bright Eyes and how glad I am to see you again!”

“Will this little girl step up to the stage just a moment?” the magician was asking.

“Who? Me?” cried Muffs. She looked at Mary. Surely he must mean Mary.

“Yes, you. Madeline Moffet. You’re the girl I want to hold this rabbit while I make him a cage.”

Muffs walked uncertainly up the steps and onto the stage. She felt afraid at first but all that feeling left her when she had Bunny Bright Eyes in her arms again.

“Place this hat on the table,” said the magician. “Bunny Bright Eyes has a little present for you.”

“What is it?” asked Muffs moving closer to the Bramble Bush Man and wondering if maybe he wasn’t the headless man’s twin brother. He wanted her handkerchief and she gladly gave it to him.

“I hope you don’t mind what happens to it,” he said as he began rolling it into a ball. Soon the handkerchief was gone and in its place was a round white egg!

“My handkerchief!” cried Muffs.

“Perhaps it’s in your pocket,” said the Bramble Bush Man.

“But what became of the egg?” Muffs asked.

He suggested that she look in the hat where Bunny Bright Eyes was. Sure enough. There was the egg!

“Ha! Ha!” laughed the magician. “Now will you believe in the Easter Rabbit? It’s a magic egg too. I’ll break it and show you.”

He gave it three taps on the edge of the long table. It broke and a cage unfolded before the audience. It was the same cage that had disappeared back in the Bramble Bush Man’s house.

“As a rule,” he said, “magicians don’t explain their tricks but a certain little girl,” and he looked at Muffs, “would just love to know something about this cage. Look, everybody!”

He touched the cage with the magic wand and it disappeared in his hand. Then he held up a tiny piece of metal and unfolded the cage again.

“Easy! A folding cage inside a hollow wooden egg. You’ve seen a magnet attract a pin or a needle. Well, the magnet on the end of my magic wand attracts the spring that collapses the cage.”

He set the cage down on the table. “There’s a house for you, Bunny Bright Eyes,” he said and the rabbit hopped into it.

Suddenly Tommy stood up in his chair. “Oh, Mr. Bramble Bush Man,” he called. “We have a better house than that. Just wait!”

So everybody waited and the Bramble Bush Man entertained them with more tricks until Tommy came back with the red and green house that the children had painted. He walked boldly up on the stage and placed it on the long table. “There!” said he, “It’s a prize for Bunny Bright Eyes.”

The audience thought this was part of the show. They watched the house, expecting it to disappear but this house was solid. The rabbit could live in it without any danger of having it vanish over his head some cold night in winter. Tommy explained this in a loud voice and the Bramble Bush Man thanked him.

“Boy! What a show!” said a voice below the stage.

Muffs and Tommy both took their seats soon after that for the great act of vanishing a girl was about to begin. Muffs almost held her breath and Tommy looked a little whiter than usual. It might be fun to watch some stranger disappear. But Mary! They remembered how they had never been able to find the Bramble Bush Man’s house again.

“Are you sure you’ll come back, Mary?” they both asked, holding her hands until the last minute.

“Oh, yes,” she promised them. “I told you I’d come back only you couldn’t guess in a million years how I’m going to do it.”

STAGE MAGIC

Muffs was glad when her mother slipped into the empty seat that Mary had left. She looked beautiful with her face turned up toward the stage. She wasn’t paying any attention to Muffs, only to the Bramble Bush Man standing there in the blue shadows. Mary stood beside him. Muffs had always thought of Mary as a big girl but now she looked very, very small. Could people shrink, Muffs wondered. Could they grow so small they couldn’t be seen and then grow big again? Alice in Wonderland did but, of course, that was only a story. Muffs couldn’t think of any other way that a girl could disappear. She wiggled and turned in her seat. It was impossible for her to sit still when she was so excited.

Oh! Mary was climbing up onto the long table! The Bramble Bush Man was telling her to lie down!

“It doesn’t hurt to disappear, does it, Mary?” he was asking.

Mary laughed and said, “Of course not,” in a very happy voice. Nobody seemed worried. Even Muffs’ mother who had been afraid sat there watching just as if she felt sure everything would be all right.

“He isn’t going to put up a screen the way most magicians do,” she said almost to herself. “He would be different. The dear man!”

“What did you say, Mother?” Muffs asked.

“I said he was different,” her mother replied quickly. “Watch, darling! He’s doing this for us.”

Muffs wondered why her mother said that. But there wasn’t much time to wonder. The Bramble Bush Man was chanting something and waving his wand over Mary. There was that same flash of light and then--Boom!

“She’s gone!” cried Muffs but nobody heard her because at the same time exclamations of surprise went up from everyone else in the audience. The table top was empty. The magician had done what he said he would do. He had made a girl vanish right there on the stage.

“That’s magic,” he said, beaming. “But it wouldn’t be real magic if I couldn’t bring the girl back again. Have you ever heard of Mistress Mary Quite Contrary? Would you like to see how her garden grows?”