Chapter VI: The Little Lost Laugh

Sara had always intended to take her dolls with her to the Garden, but every morning before the sixth morning she forgot it. On the sixth morning, however, her arms were so full of dolls that she could not take off her dimples. She had not foreseen that difficulty.

She had not really intended to bring them all. But the Brown Teddy-Bear looked so fiercely sad that she decided at the very outset that she could not leave him. He was not really a doll, of course, but as Sara kept him dressed in a kerchief and full skirt, he had the effect of a doll--a sort of Wolf-Grandmother-of-Red-Ridinghood doll. And the Billiken looked so cheerful that Sara decided that she must surely take him along, to reward him for being so unfailingly pleasant. And the Japanese doll had to go, because he was the newest, and because he was the only one who was large enough to wear the pink tulle lady-doll's hat Sara's aunt had sent her on her birthday. His head was as bare as an egg, because the little rosette of black hair that distinguishes a Japanese doll had come unglued. This made the effect of the hat a little odd; still, he could wear it. The Kewpie was just too cunning to leave--that was all there was to that; and no right-minded mother ever left the baby. So that made it necessary to take the Baby doll with the long clothes. (That is, she should have been wearing long clothes, but Sara's dolls never wore the clothes that belonged to them; and this morning the Baby was tastefully attired in a wide red sash, with the Japanese doll's paper parasol stuck through it, like the dagger in a comic opera.)

So there was Sara, with five dolls in her arms, and the Snimmy shuddering deliciously from head to foot because he was beginning to smell dimples in his sleep.

"What in the world shall I do?" wondered Sara, half aloud.

"What in Zeelup, my dear," corrected the Teacup, leaning out from her perch with sympathetic interest.

And then, what do you think the Teacup saw? She saw the Kewpie, who was always a friendly little soul, reach up and take off Sara's dimples himself!

"I'll do it for Sara," he said, helpfully, as he dropped them safely upon the whipped cream cushion.

And then what do you think happened? Why, the daintiest little creature sprang right out from between Sara's lips and went skipping and leaping and tumbling and running over the ice-cream bricks around the pool, across the blue plush grass, and, before you could tell it, disappeared around the turn of a little dim path Sara had never followed.

Sara stood gazing after him. She had never seen anything that looked like that before. Some of Avrillia's children came nearest to looking like it: but not even they were so tinkly or so bubbly or so altogether gay-looking. And how nimble it was--disappearing like a drop of water trickling down a rock!

"What in the world?" breathed Sara again.

"--In Zeelup?" breathed the Teacup, quite as softly. But Sara hardly heard her: she was so astonished at the babel of small voices that started up about her feet. She had been so startled at the appearance and the disappearance of that strange little creature that she had not noticed that all the dolls were wriggling out of her arms and sliding down her skirts and legs like schoolboys escaping from a burning dormitory. Not that they were afraid of anything: it was only that they were so glad to be able at last to move and talk.

"There he goes!" cried the Japanese doll, pointing excitedly: and indeed they did catch one more glimpse of the fleeting sprite between the shrubs. "He was mighty jolly," said the Brown Teddy-Bear enviously, in his deep, mournful voice; and "Let's go catch him!" cried the Baby, where it sat flat on the bricks, crowing and clapping its hands.

"I'll have to get off these togs, then," said the Billiken, who was always fat and cheerful, but seldom spoke. He was driven to it this time by the fact that Sara had dressed him in the Baby's long clothes.

"But what is it?" asked Sara, still bewildered.

"Why, it's your laugh, child," said the Echo of the Plynck, who, all this time, had been watching the scene with much amusement. "Don't you know your own laugh when you see it?"

"I never saw it before," said Sara with a wondering smile. "I guess I've heard it."

"Now, isn't that odd--and interesting!" said the Echo to the Plynck. "The child says she has heard it, but never seen it. Here," she added, turning to Sara, and speaking in a louder tone, "we see a great deal of laughter--but we never hear it."

"Well, and are you going to stand there all day staring?" suddenly put in the wife of the Snimmy from the prose-bush. "Ain't you going to go after it and ketch it? What'll your Maw say if you come home without your laugh? And your Paw?"

Sara had not thought of that. But when she did think, she realized that it would be dreadful. What would Father think when he told her his funniest story and she did not laugh?

"But--but what shall I do?" she wondered, half to herself.

The dolls at her feet set up a clamor of plans, but as they were all talking at once (except the Brown Teddy-Bear, who looked even more pessimistic than usual) their suggestions were not very helpful. Sara and her other friends stood knitting their brows in perplexity. (Sara was just learning to knit, so she had her needles and a ball of yarn sticking out of her apron pocket. She was delighted to find brows so much easier to knit than yarn.)

Suddenly the Snimmy's wife spoke again. "Send for Schlorge," she said. "He'll know what to do."

No sooner were the words out of her mouth than they saw a Gunkus running down the path toward the Dimplesmithy to tell Schlorge.

"In the meantime, Sara, you'd better dress me more suitably," suggested the Billiken kindly. Sara had never heard him object before to wearing the Baby's long dress; but he was evidently looking forward to a race and did not wish to be handicapped.

So Sara sat down on the blue plush grass, and undressed the Billiken while they waited for Schlorge. She had time now to notice that the snow had melted and left everything beautifully fresh and bright, just as Pirlaps had assured her it would do. She had never seen the Garden look so lovely and spring-like. She was glad, too, to see that the stump had grown back exactly as it was; they had even removed the ropes and scaffolding.

She took the Baby's clothes off the Billiken, and left him all free and unimpeded in his own, fat, white, furry body. You see, she always called the Teddy-Bear the Brown Teddy-Bear because the Billiken was his first cousin, and had a white Teddy-Bear body; it was only their colors and their heads that were different. Oh, yes,--and their dispositions; for the Billiken was a supremely cheerful person, while the Brown Teddy-Bear was a misanthrope. Sara had always known that he had something very depressing on his mind; and she was planning, now that he had learned to talk, to ask him what it was at the first suitable opportunity.

When she had got the clothes off the Billiken, she started to put them on the Baby; but the Baby behaved as it had never done before. It had always been a good baby, adapting itself amiably to any schedule its mother saw fit to adopt. Sara saw at once that animated babies are not so easy to manage as inanimate ones; for the Baby kicked and cried and positively refused to be dressed. So Sara, who was really a very young mother, and had not yet trained herself to be firm and self-willed and contrary, put the Baby's clothes in her pocket with the yarn and knitting needles and a ginger-snap she had brought, and set the stubborn Baby down on the blue plush grass, where it rolled around quite happily again in its red sash and parasol.

And just at that moment she saw good old Schlorge hurrying down the path from the Dimplesmithy with the Gunkus at his heels.

Of course they all had to tell Schlorge about it at once, even the dolls (all except the Brown Teddy-Bear), so that Schlorge looked quite wild, and scratched his head a good deal before he was finally quite clear what had happened. Then he turned and looked thoughtfully down the path they had pointed out to him, and scratched it some more. Finally he said slowly,

"I tell you what we'll have to do,"--and then, looking about him all at once very wildly,--"where's the stump--I'll have to tell Sara! Where's the--"

But this time he found it without loss of time; and scrambling upon it, he adjusted his hands and shouted loudly,

"Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough briar,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
We'll have to follow everywhere,
If Sara's laughter we would snare.
I will go and lead the van,
You may follow if you can.
Sara's would be an awful plight
To go home laughterless tonight."

Then he sprang from the stump and went rushing straight down the little dim path, shouting back over his shoulder, "Come along, all of you! Sara, ask the Plynck to come, too!"

Down the path they went tumbling--the Snimmy, his wife, a crowd of Gunki, and all the dolls. Sara and the faithful little Teacup stayed behind to see if the Plynck would come, and the Snoodle was still asleep.

"Will you come with us, dear Madame Plynck?" asked Sara, softly, looking up into the tree; and "Do you think you could stand it?" fluttered the Teacup solicitously.

"It's against my rules to leave the Garden," said the Plynck, and Sara's heart sank; for she really thought the search would be a sort of picnic, and she had hoped that the lovely Plynck would go, too. It sank clear to the bottom of the pool, and the Plynck's Echo fished it up and handed it back to her, all wet and shiny, just as the Plynck finished her sentence, "So I think I'll go."

Sara clapped her hands, and to add to her pleasure she heard just then the most delicious crashing sound: the kind of sound she had imagined when she stood at the top of the basement steps at home with the glass pitcher in her hands, wishing she could hurl it down upon the cement because Mother would not let her wear her new short-sleeved dress. She saw at once that the Plynck had broken the largest rule she had, and dropped it upon the pile at the foot of the tree; and now she was moving her plumes softly for flight, so that the golden spice was falling in Sara's hair. The Teacup was looking intensely pleased and flustered, and both of them had forgotten the poor Echo, who was scrambling about the rim of the pool like a swimmer trying to draw himself out of the water by a slippery bank. When she saw Sara looking at her, however, she stopped trying, and sat down stiffly in her usual place.

"I can't go, of course," she said with dignity, "but go ahead--don't mind me."

"Oh, my dear, I'm so sorry!" said the Plynck, hovering over her softly. "I wish you could!"

"Go ahead," said the Echo, trying hard not to look sulky and virtuous; and so Sara ran down the path after the others, with the Plynck and the Teacup fluttering gracefully over her head. As she passed through the hedge she cast a backward look at the Garden, which was now so still that she thought it looked like a picture in a dream--shimmering and bright and clear, without a soul left at home but the Plynck's cerulean Echo and the sleeping Snoodle.

As soon as they passed through the hedge they found themselves in a picturesque broken country, rather difficult to traverse, but very prettily decorated with rocks, streams, and waterfalls. Little groves of cedars, the exact size and shape of Christmas-trees, grew out of the rocks; the candles were already full-grown, but Schlorge sent the Japanese doll running back to tell Sara that she must not light them, as they would not be ripe till Christmas Eve. Sara had never seen a prettier place, but she was rather worried by a maternal anxiety about the dolls. For it was certainly not a very safe place for them. Of course the Brown Teddy-Bear and the Billiken were all right, though the latter might come to grief if he should fall on his head. The Japanese doll, who had lost a hand, was unbreakable; but unbreakable only means that you may be dropped from a reasonable height upon hard-wood floors, but not from a second-story window on concrete or asphalt. That was how the Japanese doll had lost his hand (it would have been his head, but for the fact that the accident happened while he was indisposed from neuralgia, and had his head pinned up in the Baby's flannel petticoat). And these rocks certainly looked as hard as any pavement. And even as Sara worried, the worst happened: she heard a dreadful cracking sound, followed by a shrill clamor from the dolls and a hoarse cry from Schlorge, and the grim, excited voice of the Snimmy's wife. It was by no means a pleasant sound, like the cracking of breaking rules: no, it was the familiar, heart-rending sound that makes the heart of any mother of dolls turn cold. Sara went leaping and scrambling down the rocks, with the Plynck and the Teacup hovering anxiously over her. In a few moments she reached the scene of the accident, and found them all gathered around the Kewpie, who lay in the lap of the Snimmy's wife with both legs broken. Sara ran and knelt beside her.

"Now, here, don't you go and burst into tears," said Schlorge, speaking in the gruff tone an anxious doctor uses toward an excitable patient. "I'll have my hands full mending your baby here, without having to mend you. He has no internal injuries," he added, turning the Kewpie upside down and peering down the stumps of his legs (which were hollow) into a perfectly pink and smooth and healthy-looking interior, "and you might have. Besides, we'll fix it up all right."

"Can you really, Schlorge?" asked Sara. There were tears in her voice, but, by trying very hard, she did keep from bursting into them.

"Of course I can!" said Schlorge, speaking quite crossly to conceal his sympathy. "Here--you Gunki! A stretcher!"

So the Gunki came running with a stretcher made out of a large mullein-leaf, and they put the Kewpie and his legs tenderly upon it. He was a trifle pale, but still smiling, and insisted that he did not suffer at all.

"Only it's inconvenient, you know, not to be able to walk," he explained, "and I didn't want to miss the fun. Would it be too much trouble--could you take me this way? These gentlemen, now--"

"Sure!" said the four Gunki at once, in tenor, baritone, bass, and second bass. Sara, even in her distress, was charmed; for that was the first time she had heard a Gunkus speak.

"Are you sure you won't faint from loss of air?" asked Schlorge looking at the patient anxiously; and indeed the air was pouring in a steady stream out of the Kewpie's inside.

"I'll be all right--only take me along," maintained the Kewpie, valiantly.

So they all started on again across the rough, uncharted country.

Now, all this time they had not had so much as a glimpse of Sara's laugh. The Snimmy ran along ahead with his long, quivering, debilitating nose to the ground; and two or three times he raised it, and said in an excited undertone, to Schlorge, "It touched here." And then they would all look anxiously about, under every rock, and behind every stump, without finding a trace of it.

But after they had gone a long way, and were all getting tired and thirsty (not to say hungry) they came to a most inviting little grove around a spring; and here, with one accord, they all threw themselves down to rest. The Teacup, with an arch look, dropped down to the spring, filled herself with water, and fluttered up to Sara's lips, saying softly, "Allow me, my dear!" Sara drank, in delight and wonder, and found that the spring was not made of water, but of a sort of super-lemonade, the most delicious beverage she had ever tasted. After she had drunk, the Teacup took a drink to the Plynck, explaining to her with an apologetic smile, "I served her first, my dear, because she was the guest of honor--so to speak," and the Plynck assented most graciously. Then the kind-hearted and democratic little Teacup performed the same gracious office for the whole company, one after the other--even the Baby doll and the Gunki who bore the stretcher. But the Billiken did look very funny drinking out of the Teacup; and it was just at that moment that they were startled by a little gurgling sound in the tree above them (as if a Brownie had overturned a blue honey-pitcher, and the little drops were tumbling over each other upon a silver floor) and Sara's lost laugh sprang from the top of the tree to the ground, and went tinkling off again among the rocks. They all looked after it with their mouths open, as a fisherman gazes at the hook from which he has just lost the largest fish that ever was on sea or land.

"There, now! If we had only been more watchful!" exclaimed the Japanese doll. The pink tulle lady-doll hat had slipped far back on his perspiring head; he looked as if he had come a long way.

"I thought I saw something moving up in the tree--I was just going to speak about it," said the plucky little Kewpie, who, being compelled to lie on his back, had been gazing straight up into the branches.

"Well!" said Schlorge grimly. "It won't do that again."

They all saw that Schlorge had something on his mind, and began to watch him as he took his gimlet out of his pocket and began to cut a small willow wand.

"What are you going to do, Schlorge?" asked the Japanese doll, who was a good sort of a person, but a little lacking in tact.

"Never mind me," said Schlorge, "the rest of you take a nap!"

Sara saw that his professional pride, as the leader and practical man of the party, had been hurt by the escape of her laugh; and he spoke so crossly that they all turned around and began to try to make conversation to cover their embarrassment. But they didn't succeed very well; and presently the Baby spoke the thought that was uppermost in everybody's mind.

"I'm hungry!" he said.

Alas, so were they all! It was no use trying to disguise it! So the Snimmy said, almost tearfully, "Why didn't we think to bring some lunch?"

"Humph!" retorted his wife. "You'd never think of anything--except dimples!"

So saying, she took down a large hamper which she had been carrying on her head, and removed the cloth which was tucked neatly over it. They had all noticed the hamper, but supposed it was Avrillia's wash, which the Snimmy's wife always took home on Poppyday.

Now it proved to be packed full of a rich and varied picnic luncheon, the sight and aroma of which made even the Brown Teddy-Bear look eager. The Snimmy's wife set all the viands out on the grass, and the Plynck graciously drifted down and took her place at the head of the table. There was a trifle too much sand in the sandwiches, but everything else was perfect; and they all ate as immoderately as people do at picnics.

Sara found herself seated next to the Brown Teddy-Bear. After he had eaten a pickle or two and begun to look cheerful, she asked him, tactfully, what he had had so long on his mind.

"I'll tell you, Sara," said the Brown Teddy-Bear candidly and mournfully. "I'm so ephemeral."

Sara opened her eyes, and looked at him carefully. What new affliction was this? "Do you mean you're sick?" she asked, after a while.

"No, Sara," said the Teddy-Bear, smiling sadly. "You don't understand. What I mean is, I'm already old-fashioned; I've had my day. Twenty years from now, nobody will know what you mean when you speak of a Teddy-Bear."

"I will," said Sara, squeezing his paw affectionately.

"Well, perhaps you will, Sara," admitted the Teddy-Bear, "because you'll remember. But the children won't, and they're the only ones that matter."

"I'll tell mine," insisted Sara stoutly.

"Ah, yes, Sara," said the Teddy-Bear, still more sadly, "but such loyalty as yours is rare. I have but a frail hold upon posterity. The same is true of many of my colleagues--the Billiken, for instance, and the Kewp. But the Billiken is a philosopher, and doesn't care; and the Kewp is a careless child. But I feel it, Sara; I have to confess to you that I am a prey to the 'last infirmity of noble minds.'" After a moment he added, less sadly but more irritably, "That creature, now, brainless as it is, is just a doll. And dolls are immortal."

"It's a Baby doll," said Sara, wishing to offer consolation, but really not knowing what to say.

"Humph," said the Brown Teddy-Bear disgustedly. "Babies are as universal as dolls."

Sara was still trying to think of something pleasant to say to him, when she noticed that the Plynck, having finished her luncheon, had flown up to a bough of the tree just over the spring; and suddenly she heard her speak.

"Well!" she said in astonishment. "Where did you come from?"

And looking down, Sara saw the Echo of the Plynck in the water. She looked quite imperturbable again, and quite cerulean. "Oh, I have ways of doing things," she answered, preening her feathers. And the Plynck was so mystified that she did not say another word.

Really, she didn't have time, for Schlorge strolled back into their midst at that moment, carrying a butterfly net he had just finished. The stick was made of the willow wand Sara had seen him cut; and the bag was made of two thicknesses of spider's web. "Now I'll get him," said Schlorge grimly. "Pack up now, and let's start out again."

So all together they started out, climbing hills, and jumping across tumbling streams, and scrambling over rocks. It was quite hard for the stretcher-bearers, but they bore up manfully; and the Kewpie never lost his arch, heroic smile.

Suddenly Schlorge, who was ahead, came stealing back to them. "Hist!" he cried, and all the Gunki hissed venomously. "I saw it light in an am-bush just to the left of that big rock. Now, I want you all to spread out and form a large circle, with the bush in the centre; then, if I miss it, everybody must try to shoo it back toward the middle. Don't let it pass over you."

So they all stole to the places Schlorge indicated, and then waited breathlessly while he stealthily approached the am-bush. The little laugh, feeling over-confident, must have been dozing; for it did not see him until he was within a few feet. Then it flew out wildly, with a sound like that made by the wings of a mother bird who leaves her nest at the last moment. But it was caught at last. With one skilful, triumphant swoop Schlorge had it.

And then how it did titter and twitter and giggle and struggle! It fanned its wings as furiously as a Zizz; it was as wild as a moon-moth in a net, or a bird you hold in your hand. And all the time, it was about to die with amusement.

They all gathered around to see what a darling little thing it was. Even Schlorge admired it openly; and the Snimmy's wife said grudgingly, "It sure is pretty." As for the Snimmy, he buried his face in his hands. "I can't stand it!" he groaned, and the gum-drops began to squeeze through his fingers. "It makes him think of dimples," his wife explained, in a low tone, to Sara.

"'So near and yet so far,' you know," fluttered the Teacup, sympathetically.

The next thing was to decide how to get their captive home. Schlorge was quite sure it couldn't break the net; still, he thought it best to accept the Brown Teddy-Bear's suggestion that they put it, net and all, into the Snimmy's wife's basket, and tie the lid securely.

"'Specially since we have to go around by the Smithy," he added, "and patch up our brittle friend, here."

So they made the little laugh secure in the basket, and went on toward the Smithy. It kept them all amused by the happy, ridiculous little sounds it made, giggling and scuttling and fluttering about in the basket. Even the Brown Teddy-Bear smiled once or twice.

Toward sundown they reached the Smithy, and Schlorge had soon turned his anvil into an operating table, on which they laid the uncomplaining little sufferer. The Snimmy's wife said there were plenty of onions at home in the sugar-bowl, and Schlorge offered to send a Gunkus after them; but the Kewpie would not hear of it, so Schlorge mended him quite quickly and neatly without an anaesthetic at all. He declared himself able to walk, at once, but they persuaded him to let the Gunki carry him to the gate on the stretcher. And so they all escorted Sara and her dolls back to the dimple-holder in state.

The Snoodle was awake, and howling lonesomely; but he was soon frisking happily about their feet. The Plynck flew at once to her branch and looked into the pool, and there sat her Echo.

"Have a pleasant day?" the latter asked, inscrutably.

But the Plynck was so puzzled that she said nothing at all. However, when she was leaving the Garden, Sara heard her say to the Teacup, as she slipped on an iris-colored kimono and shook down her back plumes,

"I think I won't break any rules tomorrow. I think I'll just rest."