Chapter III: Part 3

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Were you invited?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“We can’t, darling. The train----”

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

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

“It’s got ink on it.”

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

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

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

“But where’s Mary?” Tommy asked.

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

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

“It’s in the grange hall.”

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

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

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

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

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

“Speech! Speech!” they all shouted.

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

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

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

“Where’s Mother?” she asked Tommy.

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

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

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

“And miss the party!”

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

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

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

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

There was a long silence.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You talked to him, Mary?”

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

INTRODUCING THE MAGICIAN

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“But how can we help?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“You--what?”

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

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

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

“Will you come back?” Muffs questioned anxiously.

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

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

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

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

“I wonder where Mother is,” Muffs said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“What does he mean?” whispered Tommy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He’s swallowed it,” cried Tommy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“My handkerchief!” cried Muffs.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

STAGE MAGIC

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Who asked for the lily?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Can he, Mother?” Muffs asked.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“How did your house disappear?”

THE TRICK HOUSE

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh!” exclaimed Muffs.

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

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

“You and the roses?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Next he drew a tiny house with only one window.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

REAL MAGIC

“Our magic?” asked the children in bewilderment.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Wise man,” she teased him.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, yes you are. You’re changed!”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I like that name,” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

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

THE END