Part 6

The clapping below the stage showed that everybody did want to see it so the Bramble Bush Man, still holding his wand, walked over to the edge of the platform where the large vase that Muffs thought she had broken stood on its stand.

“We have to say a few magic words first,” he explained, “and then wave the wand and presto! Up comes a rose bush. Why, hello, Mary! There you are. I thought you disappeared a while ago.”

Right out of the vase, if it wasn’t some strange dream, grew first the rose bush and then Mary herself smiling through the parted branches.

“They’re real roses too,” declared the magician, “not wooden like the egg. Here they are! Catch this one! And this one!”

He and Mary were throwing all the roses out to the children who were watching. Muffs’ mother caught one but instead of giving it to Muffs she kissed it and put it away in her purse.

Soon the vase was as empty as it had been before the Bramble Bush Man waved his wand over it.

“Ah, there!” he said. “I’ve given away all my flowers.”

“Grow some more,” Mary told him. She was still standing on the stage and looked very lovely indeed for she had kept one of the roses and fastened it in her hair.

“Grow a lily,” somebody in the audience shouted.

Almost immediately a tall, slender lily sprang up out of the pot.

“Who asked for the lily?”

“I did,” said a tall, gawky boy in the audience.

He came up on the stage to get it and everybody laughed as he took the lily, sniffed it and some of the yellow pollen came off on the end of his nose.

Tommy nudged Muffs and whispered, “He’s wondrous wise all right if he can grow anything you tell him. Grow a Bramble Bush!” he shouted.

“Yes! Yes!” called several other children. “Grow a Bramble Bush.”

“That’s right,” the magician answered. “If I can’t grow a Bramble Bush and scratch my eyes out in it I’m not the real Bramble Bush Man.”

“Gee! He can’t really scratch his eyes out!” Tommy exclaimed.

“He can so,” said Mary who had come down from the stage and squeezed in the chair between Muffs and Tommy. “He can do anything!”

“Can he, Mother?” Muffs asked.

“Yes, dear,” she replied. “I think he can.”

The children were growing more excited now. They were standing up in their chairs and calling when, all at once, everything became quiet. The magician was saying his magic words and slowly, slowly, out of the flower pot a real bramble bush spread its branches. It was bigger than the rose bush and taller than the lily and it was covered with berries which the Bramble Bush Man passed around for the children to taste. All the time they kept watching him, wondering if he really meant to scratch out his eyes.

They had not long to wonder. Soon the berries were gone from the bush and the magician stood beside it again.

“_Hokus! Mokus! Pokus!_” he said in a mysterious voice. Then he gave one leap and the bush seemed to leap toward him. The vase was empty once more and the Bramble Bush Man was caught in a tangle of briars. Laughter and squeals filled the room while he struggled to free himself and then--it happened! He hadn’t any eyes.

“Don’t worry, folks,” he said cheerfully. “All I need to do is grow another bush and scratch them in again.”

The audience was clapping now. Clap! Clap! Clap! went a hundred pair of hands. Perhaps some of them guessed that the magician had only closed his eyes so tightly that they appeared not to be there. Whether they did or not, they knew it was the trick they had been waiting for. None of them expected the surprise.

The Bramble Bush Man had turned around, jumped into the other bush and scratched his eyes in again. He had scratched his eyes in again _but_--he had scratched off his moustache. His black robe with the gold stars was gone too and he not only looked like but he was the headless man.

“Headless man! Headless man!” a few of the children who had chased him began to call.

He put up his hand. “Not any more. From now on I want to be known as The Bramble Bush Man. Have I earned the title?”

“Yes! Yes!” shouted a great many voices and almost at once as many questions were shouted up from the audience:

“How did you stretch the hair? How did you make the bramble bush grow? Where did Mary go when she vanished?”

There were others too, but Tommy asked the most baffling question of all:

“How did your house disappear?”

THE TRICK HOUSE

The show was over. The Bramble Bush Man had left the stage saying very briefly that magicians don’t explain their tricks and thanking the people for watching him. Then Mrs. Tyler called out something about refreshments being served in the grove and, in almost no time, the hall was empty.

Out in the grove the Japanese lanterns were lighted and Great Aunt Charlotte was passing out trays of food to several girls in white who were serving. Muffs pulled her mother’s hand.

“There’s the Bramble Bush Man and he’s standing all alone. Let’s go over and talk with him.”

“Not now, dear,” Mrs. Moffet said in a strange voice. Then she walked swiftly away leaving Muffs there with Mary and Tommy.

“She didn’t stay for the ice cream!” they exclaimed all at once.

“No matter how grown-up I get,” Mary said, “I’m sure I’ll _always_ stay for ice cream.”

“Shucks! We can go over and talk to the Bramble Bush Man anyway,” declared Tommy. “He didn’t have a chance to explain about the house disappearing.”

“He said magicians don’t explain their tricks.”

“But that wasn’t part of the show. Say, Mary! Maybe he made the house disappear the same way he did that trick with you. You promised to tell us.”

“I’d show you,” she said, “only I don’t know how to get in there under the stage now that the table is closed up again.”

“What do you mean?” asked the other two.

Mary stood stock still and spoke in a mysterious voice that made her secret seem even greater than it was:

“There’s a hiding place inside the table. You remember how thick the top was? Well, there’s a sliding panel of thin wood and when I disappeared the panel really slid out from under me and I dropped right into the table.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Muffs.

“Gee!” said Tommy. “How did you get out?”

Mary laughed. “Oh, that was easy. I slid out through the table leg. It was hollow and went down like a tunnel right under the stage. Donald was down there to help make the flowers grow and he wrapped me all up in the roses and pushed us both right up through the stand and through the bottom of the vase----”

“You and the roses?”

“Of course. The thorns were all taken off so they wouldn’t scratch me. They did though, just a little,” and she showed them the tiniest scratch on her arm above the elbow.

“Well,” said Tommy after a moment of deep thought, “the house couldn’t have disappeared the way you did, now could it?”

The disappearance of the house, they all decided, was something the Bramble Bush Man alone might tell them. He seemed to be waiting for them there under a tree. He even had extra plates of cakes and as soon as he saw them coming he drew up their chairs and called to one of the girls to bring more ice cream.

“I thought we might have tea together again,” he said. “I wanted to hear how you liked the show.”

The children were all silent for a moment. There weren’t any words big enough for them to tell him how well they liked it. Finally, when Muffs was seated and he had passed the cakes, she asked a question.

“My mother said you gave the show for us. Did you?”

“For you, angel girl, and your delightful friends. I did not flatter myself to think that your mother would want to watch it.”

“She did!” Muffs told him, “and she kissed the rose you threw down to her and put it in her pocketbook.”

At first Muffs thought maybe she had said the wrong thing because the magician looked at her so strangely. It was hard to talk with him. There had been so many things she wanted to ask--where the ends of the earth were, how to make her mother happy and what had happened to his house when it disappeared.

Mary and Tommy were asking things. Tommy was even forgetting to eat his ice cream he was so interested in the wondrous wise man’s replies. At last he asked about the house but, instead of answering him, the magician began to draw pictures on a little note book that he took from his pocket.

First he drew a large house. The children knew it at once. It was the Millionaire’s House where the headless man lived and, since the headless man was the Bramble Bush Man, it must be the house where he lived also.

Next he drew a tiny house with only one window.

“That’s the house that disappeared!” cried the three children all at once.

“Only,” Tommy added, “you forgot the walk that went up to the window.”

“The walk! The _walk!_ My stars! That was no walk!” exclaimed the magician. “That was only a plank that the moving men placed there so that they could move in my big table without carrying it up three flights of stairs.”

“How could there be three flights of stairs in such a tiny house?” asked Mary.

Without a word, the magician began drawing another picture. It was a picture of the side of the house and now the children knew the secret.

“You see,” he explained, “it’s a trick house, although I swear when I bought it I had no idea that it would ever fool anybody. I just wanted a bigger lawn so I chose a house built back into the side of a hill. It’s a steep hill. You must know that if you climbed down it. So the house is only one story high where the hill cuts into it and three stories high where it faces the road.”

“And we ran away without looking!” exclaimed Muffs, “because we were so scared.”

“You’re not afraid of me now, are you?” he asked gently.

“No. That is, only a little because you’re wondrous wise and I’m--I guess I’m afraid to ask you some of the questions I wanted to. You see, you might think the earth hasn’t any ends because it’s round but I know it does have ends because my father went there.”

“That’s right,” said the Bramble Bush Man, “it does have ends. The ends are mighty lonesome too.”

“Have you been there?” asked Tommy who was just about ready to believe anything.

“I live there,” replied the Bramble Bush Man.

“Then that path did lead to the ends of the earth just like you said, Muffins, only your father wasn’t there.”

“It’s just as well,” she returned with a grown-up air. “He was a cranky man anyway and the Bramble Bush Man is nice.”

“I’m glad you think so.” He held out his hand. “Let’s shake on that. I think you’re nice too.”

But the children thought he was shaking goodbye to them. They had almost forgotten to thank him for his magic. Then, when they did remember, he surprised them by turning the tables and thanking them for theirs.

REAL MAGIC

“Our magic?” asked the children in bewilderment.

“Why, yes,” replied the Bramble Bush Man, sitting down in his chair again. They saw that he hadn’t meant them to leave at all. “Certainly I should thank you for your magic. It is a great deal more wonderful than mine. I could never change glasses into eyes or a stick into a man. You are Magic Makers of the first order while I am only a trick magician.”

“You are not. You’re wondrous wise,” said Mary forgetting to be polite.

“I was not always so,” he admitted. “Not so long ago I was a cranky headless man--headless in more ways than one. It was your magic that worked the change.”

They began to see what he meant. But still they did not quite understand.

“I’m no good at explaining things,” the magician confessed. “My business is mystifying, not explaining. Run and get your mother, Muffs girl. She can explain.”

“My mother!” Muffs exclaimed. “She’s afraid of you. She said she didn’t want to meet you.”

“I want to meet her,” he insisted. “Tell her the Bramble Bush Man wants to meet her, that he won’t take no for an answer.”

“You’ll wait right here?” asked Muffs uncertainly. “And may Mary and Tommy go with me? Mary’s good at getting her own way.”

The Bramble Bush Man agreed to this with a chuckle and sat there smiling to himself as they walked away.

“He’s happy over his show,” said Tommy. “He has fun fooling everybody and making them think he’s wondrous wise.”

“He is wondrous wise,” said Mary, “and he’s happy because we worked magic on him.”

But Muffs was beginning to think that her mother might have something to do with his happiness. It was hard to make her consent to seeing him but, finally, she gave in. She walked with the children across the lawn to the place where he sat waiting.

Muffs could not understand the timid way she approached him or why they looked at each other for a moment and then kissed. Strangers didn’t do things like that.

“Tommy,” she whispered. “Let me take those magic glasses for a minute. I want to see something.”

“Gee!” he exclaimed. “I forgot to give them to the Bramble Bush Man.”

“Never mind that now, Tommy. I must get a better look at him. Who is he anyway?”

“He’s the headless man. I thought you knew.”

“He is not. He’s the Bramble Bush Man. He’s the wisest magician in the whole world and I’m one of his helpers,” Mary added proudly, remembering her part in the show.

Then Muffs put on the magic glasses. She was beginning to see it anyway, but now, with the glasses to help, she saw as plainly as day.

“Why, he’s my daddy!” she exclaimed. “Only he used to have a real moustache like that make-believe one he wore in the show. He’s my daddy that went away to the ends of the earth.”

The magician turned around and there was a new brightness in his eyes.

“My little girl!” he said. “Do you remember? Will you ever forgive your blundering old daddy for running away and leaving such a wonderful woman as your mother?”

“She never told me that you were a magician,” Muffs replied.

Mrs. Moffet hung her head for a moment, looking like a naughty little girl who has been punished. Then she confessed.

“I didn’t think he was much of a magician, darling.”

“And I didn’t think your mother was much of an artist. Maybe that’s why we didn’t get along.”

“Wise man,” she teased him.

Muffs and Mary and Tommy stood watching them. The party was over and Mrs. Tyler had taken baby Ellen home long before. Great Aunt Charlotte had gone too. Only Mr. Tyler and Donald were left. They strolled about on the far side of the grove blowing out Japanese lanterns and when Mary saw them she ran to keep them company.

Tommy was ready to go too but first he must return the magician’s glasses. He reached in his pocket and held them out. “Here,” he said. “I almost forgot these. I guess they’re yours.”

“They were once,” replied the Bramble Bush Man. “But I have a new pair now and your Guide will want his eyes.”

“Why didn’t you tell us before?” asked Muffs. “You knew Tommy had them and all you needed to do was to tell him they were yours.”

“You’re wrong, my dear,” he said. “I had to do a great deal more than that. You were so sure the glasses belonged to a wondrous wise man that I had to do something, well, rather wonderful.”

“You did!” cried Miss Muffet. “It was wonderfuller than wonderful. It was the most wonderfullest show in the world!”

“My! What big words,” laughed her mother, “but I agree with all of them.”

“You think I’m wondrous wise too?” he asked softly.

“Oh, yes you are. You’re changed!”

“It was the children’s magic and something else too--the words of that song Muffs sang.”

“I know. I’ll sing it again,” she said happily and when she came to the part that went:

For Love has made me wondrous wise. Your eyes have told me so,

her father sang with her and looked into her mother’s lovely brown eyes.

Right then Muffs knew that they wouldn’t be taking the train back to New York and the crowded little studio and the landlady who didn’t like children. They would be moving into the Bramble Bush Man’s big, beautiful house and all the bare places would be filled with her mother’s dainty things. She could have the fairyland where she had slept for her very own and perhaps her mother could have the glass topped palace for a studio.

“It’s going to be so wonderful,” she said. “Mary and Tommy can play with me all the time and so can Bunny Bright Eyes. We can help you with your tricks too, can’t we Daddy Brambles?”

“I like that name,” he said.

“But can’t we help you?” she insisted.

He looked at her with the old scowl that the headless man used to wear. “Magic Makers like you help me with my poor tricks?”

“You might even teach them a few,” her mother suggested.

“Nonsense! They’ll be too busy teaching me.”

But Muffs, who had learned a lot in a very short time, took her father’s arm and then her mother’s arm and looking up at them she said, “Come, let’s go home.”

It was almost midnight when they walked up the steps. The house seemed to smile a welcome and its mysterious magic room held forth a promise of more and more adventures for Muffs and Mary and Tommy.

THE END