Chapter II: Part 2

The Public Notice was all fixed up when they looked for it in the Post Office. It had the three names on it:

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

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:

“Headless man! Headless man!
Come and catch us if you can!”

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.

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.”

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.

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.

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.