The Magic Makers and The Bramble Bush Man

THE FIRE THAT WASN’T

Muffs’ face was streaked with tears as well as dirt when she finally rapped on the door. Mr. Tyler came to answer it.

“Please, mister, will you keep my rabbit?” she said, handing him the hat, rabbit and all.

“Bless you!” he exclaimed. “Of course we’ll keep your rabbit but first you must come in and tell us what’s the trouble.”

Muffs came in. Mary and Tommy and their big brother, Donald, were seated around a table in the kitchen eating alphabet soup. Mrs. Tyler was serving them from a steaming yellow bowl and, when she had finished, she dished out another serving for Muffs. “Come here to the basin,” she said, “and wash away those tears. We can talk while your soup is cooling.”

That was all she said. She didn’t ask Muffs if she’d had supper. She just seemed to know that the little girl was tired and hungry and wanted nothing more than to sit down in someone’s clean kitchen over a steaming bowl of alphabet soup.

Tommy was telling the day’s adventures while Thomas Junior mewed about the table just as if he felt hurt that he had been left out. Mary added to the story and soon Muffs joined in and told about the rabbit.

Great Aunt Charlotte, who had finished supper long before, sat in her chair rocking and holding baby Ellen. The baby was asleep and would have been in bed if Mrs. Tyler hadn’t been so interested in the story the children were telling. Once she did say something about it being made up but Donald defended them.

“One thing’s sure,” he said. “They didn’t make up the rabbit.”

“I made up a name for him,” said Muffs. “It’s Bunny Bright Eyes.”

“And a bright little rabbit he is too,” agreed Donald, “to get inside the hat without your knowing it.”

“Mr. Lippett says I played a trick,” Muffs told him sorrowfully. “But I wasn’t playing any trick. It was Bunny Bright Eyes played a trick on me.”

Mrs. Tyler had to laugh at this, but Great Aunt Charlotte kept looking at Muffins as if she were not telling the truth. Mary and Tommy didn’t say anything because they were busy eating the alphabet soup. Muffs ate her soup too and a little while after that Mr. Tyler came in again.

“The rabbit’s all fixed up for the night,” he said. “I put him in an A-coop until someone comes for him.”

Muffs wanted to ask what an A-coop was but just then it was decided that Donald should go for her things and, if Mr. and Mrs. Lippett were willing, make arrangements for her to sleep all night with Mary.

“She’s far too tired to walk back there herself,” Mrs. Tyler said. Then she showed Muffs the high bed where she and Mary were to sleep and told her Mary would be up as soon as she had finished drying the dishes.

Muffs undressed herself quickly and slid between the blankets. She lay there listening to the clatter of dishes downstairs and thinking. At first she thought it was strange that she had been sent to bed ahead of Mary. Then she thought how tired she was and how warm the alphabet soup made her feel. Maybe the letters spelled w-a-r-m down in her stomach. They ought to spell s-l-e-e-p. The rabbit was probably asleep now in his A-coop. What a funny name! Muffs made up a little song about it and sung it to herself. The song went like this:

and so on clear through the alphabet.

It wasn’t a very sensible song but people don’t often think sensible things when they’re almost asleep. All night long Muffs dreamed about her mother. They went shopping together on the subway the way they often did at home. How she loved that! She would scramble for the front train so that she could look out of the window and play she was flying. There were all the colored lights along the tracks. They flashed green, telling the train to go; then big and red, telling the train to stop.

Muffs sat up in bed. That big red light wasn’t a stop light at all. It was shining right in her eyes. Opening her mouth, she screamed, “Fire!” and was going to scream it again but Tommy clapped his hand over her lips and she could only whisper, “What’s the matter?” through his fingers.

“The Public Notice. It’s got to have our names on it or the Bramble Bush Man won’t know where to come for his glasses. Don’t you see?”

Muffs didn’t see very well because she was too sleepy. Besides, the lantern Tommy was holding blinded her and she couldn’t quite get over the feeling that it was really a fire. Mary, who had somehow managed to creep into bed without disturbing Muffs, was now asleep herself and even Tommy’s Shaking wouldn’t rouse her.

“Wake up, Mary! Come on, Muffs!” Tommy was calling in an excited voice. “We could fix it up now and get back before anyone missed us in the morning.”

Mary turned over in the bed and didn’t answer.

“Take that light out of my eyes,” said Muffs. “I was having such a nice dream about the cars when you woke me up. My mother sold some of her pictures and we were spending the money for hats and dresses and dolls—and—carriages——”

“But Muffs! We’ve got to fix up the public notice,” cried Tommy. “We’ve got to put in about the rabbit too or it wouldn’t be fair.”

“He’s asleep—in an A-coop. What’s an A-coop, Tommy?”

But Muffs went back to sleep while he was telling her and didn’t know the answer until morning. Mrs. Tyler’s voice calling Tommy sounded dimly through her dreams but at first she thought it was only her mother talking to someone in the studio. She reached out to touch the green and gold screen but her hand found only empty air.

“Someone must have taken the screen away,” she thought sleepily. The room looked big and empty without it. Her heart felt empty too when she heard the voice again and knew it was not her mother at all. It was Mrs. Tyler and she kept calling:

“Tom-mee! Tom-mee!”

An echo came back from the big barn door and soon Muffs and Mary were both wide awake. Mary’s clothes were ready and she dressed herself quickly but Muffs had to hunt for hers in the suitcase Donald must have brought in while she was sleeping. She found a pair of green socks and a blue linen dress that was a little wrinkled from being packed so long. Her clothes weren’t like that at home. They were kept on hangers in neat little rows and her mother always told her what to put on. Mrs. Tyler didn’t tell her. She just kept on calling Tommy.

“He’s a bad boy not to answer,” said Mary impatiently.

Muffs had a feeling that something had happened to him in the night but she couldn’t remember what it was. Together, she and Mary went over to the window and looked out. There was Mrs. Tyler walking toward the barn still looking for Tommy. Right beside the barn was what Muffs knew must be the A-coop because a dear little white rabbit was jumping about inside of it.

“They call it an A-coop because it’s in the shape of an A,” Mary explained, “only there are too many bars across it.”

“I think so too,” Muffs agreed. “Bunny Bright Eyes must feel as if he’s in prison. Let’s go down and talk to him.”

When they were halfway there they met Mrs. Tyler and her eyes were red as if she had been crying.

“Have you seen Tommy?” she asked.

Muffs tried harder than ever to remember what had happened in the night. He had come into her room and whispered something. It must have been something about a fire.

“I think,” the little girl said in a voice that didn’t sound sure, “I think that he went to see a fire.”

Mrs. Tyler put her hand to her heart. “Don’t tell me, child! Whatever makes you think that?”

So Miss Muffet told what she remembered of Tommy’s visit to their room in the night.

“Were you asleep, Mary?” her mother asked.

Mary said she was. “But I woke up early,” she went on, “before it was time to get up and I did see Tommy through my front bedroom window. I’m sure it was Tommy. I could just see him through the trees and he was running along the big road so fast I thought he must be going to see a fire.”

“But he would have told us—” his mother started to say.

“Not if he thought you wouldn’t let him go.”

“He’s a good boy, Mary,” said Mrs. Tyler and all at once she was crying again and saying between sobs, “Suppose he’s been hurt! Oh, my poor little boy!”

Mary went over and put her arm around her mother and pressed her own cheek against that other cheek where the tears were.

“Don’t cry, Mom,” she said. “We’ll go and get him. Maybe he’s still watching the fire.”

“You are a comfort,” said Mrs. Tyler. “Maybe you know what you’re talking about after all. Tommy’s gone and he must have gone somewhere. It wouldn’t do any harm to walk down the road a bit and ask about fires.”

THE FIRE THAT WAS

Muffs tried to remember something about the Public Notice. It was something important that she should have remembered before. Tommy had told her. He had told her in the middle of the night when she was too sleepy to listen. Now, after she had mixed things up and frightened everybody, she remembered all about it. She had told Mrs. Tyler that Tommy went to see a fire when it wasn’t a fire at all but only his lantern shining in her face. He had really gone to the Post Office to fix up the Public Notice before people came for their mail. He hadn’t hurried right back the way he said he would and, with things appearing and disappearing the way they did, something terrible might have happened to him.

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” thought Muffs. “What a perfectly awful mess! What am I going to do?”

She looked at the side of Mrs. Tyler’s face and wished that she would smile. Maybe she’d dare tell her then. She looked at Mary, walking along on the other side of her mother, and knew she couldn’t tell her either. Mary would argue and Mrs. Tyler would never believe that she had forgotten. It would be like her story about the rabbit. She guessed nobody ever would believe what she said any more. After that queer expedition to the ends of the earth she and Mary and Tommy (if they found him) would be like three children in a fairy tale. Only it was easier for Mary because she wasn’t afraid to argue with grown-ups.

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:

M. MUFFET    T. TYLER    M. TYLER.

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

IF ENNYONE LOST A RABBiT
WE FOUND HiM IN THE GIDEZ HAT.

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:

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.”

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.

PUT THE EDGE OF THE CARD HERE
AND HERE
NOW PUT YOUR NOZE DOWN
ON THE OTHER EDGE
AND LOOK!

“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.”

MARY

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.

Dear Headless Man,

We dident mean to teese you but
you looked so funny without eny
head. We thot you new how to
play. This is sposed to
be an apology

Yours respecktfully
The Magic Makers

“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.

MOVING VAN

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.

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.

One Hare Is as Good as Another,” the Magician Said.

“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?”

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:

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