Crumbs and Waffles
Sara beheld such an entrancing sight the next morning that her dimples
nearly escaped from her control while she was putting them into the
dimple-holder. The Snimmy leaped up with a wild sniff, only to sink
down again, trembling, as Sara shooed the little rollicking things
safely down through the opening.
For it had indeed snowed in the night; the whole glittering Garden was
as white as the Snoodle. The pool was unfrozen, and in her accustomed
place within it sat the Echo of the Plynck, looking wonderfully happy
and refreshed; the bark of the Gugollaph-tree was again a healthy,
dazzling blue, and the branches were piled with little ridges of
fluffy-looking snow, which produced a delightful effect. And among
them, with her happy golden feet in the snow, and her rosy plumes
fluffed out, sat the Plynck, looking as softly dazzling as a snowy
sunrise. An army of Gunki were busily mowing the deep snow with
scintillating long-handled ice-sickles. It flew up in clouds as they
mowed, and another army of Gunki was engaged in catching it in baskets
and spreading it smoothly down again. One and all, they seemed deeply
absorbed in this useful work.
Still a third crew of Gunki were engaged in helping Schlorge reset the
stump. They had got it nearly into place by the time Sara arrived. It
was a tremendous engineering feat, and had evidently required any
number of ropes and pulleys and things.
Sara could see that the ropes were made of taffy, but she could not
imagine where they had found enough pulley-bones to supply all the
pulleys. So she asked Schlorge about it, and he explained with great
relish that they had used the wish-bones of the Fractions themselves.
"Oh, we've made 'em useful!" said Schlorge, triumphantly. "We've used
everything about 'em except their conceit. We didn't want that, so we
just raked it up into piles and burned it."
As he talked, Schlorge was busy fitting the stump exactly to the root
that was left in the ground, so that it would grow back just right
when the snow melted.
"I have to hurry," explained Schlorge, working away with an anxious
expression, "because I have an announcement to make to you--a message
from Avrillia."
"Oh, do hurry!" cried Sara, clapping her hands so recklessly that
Schlorge looked up from his work to say, "Take care--I don't mend them
knuckles ones, you know."
So Sara sat down very quietly on the snow near by, keeping a watchful
eye out for the Gunki with the keen ice-sickles, and sitting very
still so that she would not disturb Schlorge. And in a very little
while, indeed, the work was finished, and Schlorge scrambled eagerly
upon the stump and arranged his hands. Then he began:
"I'm requested to say
On this glickering day
That Avrillia is feeding the Birds;
And if Sara will come
She will find her at home,
With waffles and welcoming words."
Schlorge jumped down and began scrambling his tools together; then he
went rushing wildly, as usual, down the road to the Dimplesmithy. "Go
see her, Sara!" he shouted back over his shoulder encouragingly.
"You'll enjoy it! Go on!"
So Sara, who really needed no urging, went smiling down the little
path (it was curly again, though very white) toward the little arch in
the hedge. And from there she looked out upon another exhilarating
scene.
Now I did not think it necessary to say that the snow in the Garden
was of powdered sugar, as it is in all well-informed stories; but
beyond the hedge, as far as the eye could reach (and Sara had quite a
long eye for her age--her mother was kept busy letting out hems) the
snow was of powdered silver. I am sorry to say it was not good to eat
at all; but it was so much more beautiful than the common garden kind
that I do not believe you would have minded, any more than Sara did.
It was, of course, fairy snow, while the other was just the plain
imaginary kind.
But the scene before her was so strange and animated that even the
snow could not hold Sara's attention for long. (It was slippery, for
one thing; and, besides, the crust was thin, and Sara's attention was
so excited and skippy that it was continually breaking through.)
Beyond Avrillia's house on one side, in the direction Sara had gone
with Pirlaps to see his relations, was a long, delightful hill; and
there all the seventy children were coasting and snowballing. Every
one of them had on a cap that seemed to be made of a tiny red pepper,
and their little mittened fists looked exactly like holly-berries.
Their sleds were of curled rose-petals, and Sara knew without being
told that it had cost their mother quite a struggle to spare so many
from the supply she had collected to write poems on. Sara had watched
them for several minutes before she noticed that they always coasted
uphill and dragged their sleds down. And all the time the air flashed
with snowballs so big that they looked like the tantalizing silver
balls which sometimes occur in the nicest boxes of chocolates.
It was some time before Sara could disengage her attention (it had
become entangled in the rope on one of the smaller children's sleds)
to examine the extraordinary scene near at hand. For, on the lawn at
one side of Avrillia's house, opposite the rose-garden, where Pirlaps
usually sat painting under the fog-bushes, a large table had been
placed; and around it were assembled a group of the most
remarkable-looking persons Sara had ever seen. If they had not been so
large, Sara would have been sure that they were birds; but the largest
one was a head taller than Sara herself, and the very smallest was at
least as large as her youngest cousin.
Pirlaps, who was helping Yassuh put some sort of food on the table,
looked up and saw Sara; and in a moment he put down the dish he had in
his hand and seemed to slip away unnoticed, to come to her. Sara
wondered at this, for Pirlaps was always so polite; it would have been
much more like him to excuse himself with a courteous bow to his
guests.
"Good morning, Sara," he said in a low tone, when he reached her side.
"A glorious morning, isn't it? Avrillia thought you would enjoy seeing
the Birds fed, and the children at their winter sports. Avrillia
herself is very busy just now; the suet gave out and she's gone to
order some more. But I daresay she'll have time to speak to you after
a while. Meantime, I'll tell you who they are: it isn't polite to
introduce them to anybody. Indeed, I must tell you that their ways are
very peculiar, and they are very easily offended; so try to be
careful. For instance, you must never speak aloud in their presence,
but only behind your hand, in a whisper; and if you wish to make the
best impression, do not seem to see them at all. Also, if you should
care to partake of any of the food, remember not to touch it with your
hands: that is the very worst of bad manners. Always take it with your
beak--I mean your mouth."
Sara stood perfectly still, watching; never had she been so charmed
and astonished.
"Who are they?" she asked, after a moment.
"Well, the tallest one, with the high blue beaver hat, is the Popinjay,"
said Pirlaps. "He's just about the cock of the walk, and he's quite
self-important and touchy. The one with the very long bill, and the
stiff, stumpy tail that he uses for a cane, is the Redpecker. The one
in the checked suit, with the black necktie, yellow satin
sleeve-linings, and white patch on his coat-tail, is the Snicker. He's
full of fun and a good fellow, but rather crude--for he'll sometimes
talk to you a little if he's sure the others aren't looking. Ants are
his favorite food, but Avrillia didn't put up any this summer, so I
had to send Yassuh down to the colony to get one of my uncles for him.
Poor Uncle," said Pirlaps, looking very sad for a moment, "I hated to
do it; but he was only a half-uncle and quite old, and lately he had
grown so thin that he was hardly more than a three-eighths one.
However, he was plenty for the Snicker," he added more cheerfully,
"he's not as exacting as most of them. The little lady in brown, with
the bustle, is a When; like the Snicker, she's really quite a charming
little person, though of an interrogative turn of mind; and they all
frown on her sociable ways. The fierce-looking old gentleman with the
Roman nose is the Squawk; he has a worse disposition, even, than the
Popinjay. That beautiful little lady with the deep blue velvet cloak
and the vest that looks like ploughed fields in March, is the Skybird;
she is lovely and gentle, and reminds me of Avrillia. But she's quite
absent-minded. Besides, she's very careful of her manners; so don't
expect her to speak to you. Now come on, and watch them eat."
Sara was very curious, but a little timid, the visitors looked so
large and so strange; so she held tight to Pirlaps' hand as they stole
carefully up to the group and stopped near the table. The Popinjay,
the Squawk, the Redpecker and the Skybird went on eating as if nothing
had happened, so Sara felt sure she had been sufficiently polite; but
the little When, who was hopping about from one side of the table to
the other, cast a bright, questioning glance at her that made her
whisper, behind her hand, and under her breath, "Next August!" And
then she was sure she heard the Snicker wink.
All this time Sara had been aware of an irresistible curiosity about
the table. It looked somehow familiar and unpleasant; and yet it was
of a beautiful primrose yellow, decorated with blue roses. At last she
put up her hand and whispered to Pirlaps, "The table! Where did you
get the table? It wasn't here the other day!"
Pirlaps laughed softly. "Ah, Sara," he said, "you aren't easy to
hoodwink! That's the Seven-Times table. Avrillia and I had a regular
battle about it. Of course we never really quarrel," he explained
seriously, "but we sometimes have a lively clash of wills. After we
finished off the Fractions yesterday, I was determined to save that
table for a memento. Avrillia hated the idea, and positively refused
to have it in the house; and then I won my point by remembering that
we'd never had a table large enough for the birds to eat from when it
snowed. I told her we'd keep it on the lawn. She tried to persuade me
to order a plain Time-Table from your country, instead; saying that,
though it would be bad enough to have our nice clean eternity
cluttered up with a Time-Table, it would be better than one of these.
But I finally brought her around, by promising to paint it and make it
as pretty as possible. She'll forget its real nature after a while,
and I shall always value it greatly for its historical interest."
Sara's mind was distracted toward the close of this explanation by the
peculiar, not to say angry, behavior of the Popinjay and the Squawk,
who, she was sure, had become displeased about something. One
peculiarity of the Popinjay's she had not noticed until she came near
the table. It was that, though he had two perfectly good feet, they
seemed to have grown to a sort of perch, which was fastened crosswise
to a sharp peg; and when he wished to move he had to hop from place to
place, sticking this peg into the snow. He was now hopping round and
round the table with loud, incoherent cries, while the little When
flitted from place to place to keep out of his way, and the Snicker
laughed softly in his yellow satin sleeve. Sara touched Pirlaps on the
arm.
"Mercy me!" cried Pirlaps, speaking softly, but forgetting in his
excitement to cover his mouth with his hand. "The table is quite empty,
and Avrillia has not come with the rest of the suet! Yassuh should
have brought more crumbs long ago. Let's go to the house and see
what's the trouble, Sara!"
They hurried to the house, and began looking everywhere. They even
opened the door of Avrillia's own bed-room, which was upholstered
entirely in pink morning-glory satin, with hangings of opalescent mist;
Sara thought it was quite the most ravishing place she had ever seen;
at least she though so until Pirlaps distractedly led her down into
the basement to Avrillia's kitchen. A smell of something delectable
scorching enveloped them as they opened the door. And there beside the
stove, all deliciously sticky and comfortable, lay Yassuh, fast asleep
and half melted; while little wisps of smoke curled out of the crack
between the oven and the door. The stove was almost as big as the tin
one Jimmy had given Sara for Christmas, but much more massive and
efficient-looking. On the table, looking so delicious that they made
your mouth water, were the ingredients with which Yassuh had been
working: a bubble-pitcher of milk-weed cream, a bowl of butterfly eggs
(the daintiest things!), a silver panful of flour from the best white
miller, and a large silk sack of snow-sugar from the Garden. Sara had
to put her hands behind her back.
"Yassuh!" shouted Pirlaps; and Sara had never before heard him speak
angrily. "The messy little rascal! I can't even kick him to wake him
up--I'd never get my foot out! Where are the tongs? Here, Sara, you
take the poker, and help me with him!"
So saying, Pirlaps picked the soft and sleeping Yassuh up gingerly
with the tongs, and Sara put the poker crosswise under the softest
part of him to keep him from pulling apart, and together they carried
him to the door and dropped him outside, where he made a
delicious-looking brown puddle on the silver snow.
"You stay and watch him till he hardens," called Pirlaps, hurrying
back toward the kitchen, "and don't let him go to sleep again. As soon
as he's hard enough, send him straight in here to me."
Sara stood on the doorstep watching Yassuh, who was now awake and
grinning, and she was very much interested to see how, as he hardened,
he wriggled himself back into shape, like a chrysalis that has just
shed its caterpillar skin. She was sure this was no new experience to
Yassuh.
Presently she thought he was hard enough to be taken back into the
kitchen; and there they found Pirlaps, sitting with flushed face upon
his own fast-melting step, taking little muffin-pans full of
fresh-baked crumbs out of the oven. One panful, alas, was burnt to a
crisp, and some of the others were a shade too brown; but oh, they did
smell and look so very delightful! Considered as muffins (and they
looked so like them that Sara could not help being reminded of them)
they were certainly the tiniest things imaginable; considered as
crumbs (and that was what she had heard Pirlaps call them) they were
considerably above the average in size. For all that, what
discouragingly small crumbs for such appallingly large birds! No
wonder Pirlaps was so worried, and looked so unnaturally hurried and
strenuous!
"Here, Yassuh!" he called, without stopping to scold him. "You empty
these into the baskets and take them right out to the table; and then
you hurry right back and get another batch into the oven as quick as
you can. Roll!"
Yassuh, apparently quite refreshed by his nap, went tumbling out with
the fragrant baskets, and Sara hurried after Pirlaps in his anxious
search for Avrillia. At last they thought of the balcony; and as they
ran up the stairs, there, indeed, they saw Avrillia, with her white
arm outstretched above the balustrade, watching a curled rose-leaf as
it floated down, down, down.
"Avrillia!" called Pirlaps. "Where is the suet?"
Avrillia was leaning far out over the balcony, gazing down into
Nothing. She straightened up and turned around, looking at them with
eyes that hardly saw them.
"It didn't stick," she murmured.
"Avrillia! the suet!" cried Pirlaps, laying his hand on her arm and
shaking it ever so little. "The suet!"
He was not cross--he couldn't be cross with Avrillia--but Sara thought
he was for once almost half impatient. Avrillia's mind came back into
her beautiful eyes and she cried remorsefully,
"O Pirlaps, I forgot. Is it all gone? What will they think of me?"
"Every bit," said Pirlaps, relenting at once. "And Yassuh went to
sleep and burnt up a whole panful of crumbs."
"Oh, dear!" cried Avrillia, "how dreadful! The suet came quite a while
ago, but while I was slicing it I thought of a poem about snow; and
then I happened to think that maybe the air over the Verge might be a
little warmer than it is here, and so the poem might melt a little as
it fell, and, maybe, stick. But it didn't," she finished, growing
abstracted again.
"Too bad," said Pirlaps, peering down into Nothing with real sympathy
in his voice. Then, with a start, "But the suet, Avrillia?"
"Oh, let's go get it," cried Avrillia. "I laid it on my dressing-table
when I went to get a fresh handkerchief just before I sat down to
write."
So they flew to Avrillia's pink bed-room, and there was the suet, in
the midst of Avrillia's lacy pin-cushions and crystal toilet-bottles.
They gathered it up and hurried out to the Birds, who were now eating
crumbs and looking fairly good-natured; though you could tell by the
way Yassuh's knees trembled that he had found them in a dreadful
state.
Well, you can hardly imagine how busy they were kept, all that
afternoon--Sara and Yassuh and Pirlaps and Avrillia--supplying crumbs
and suet to those thankless Birds. The lovely Skybird did, toward
sundown, trill a beautiful little song of gratitude; but she addressed
it to nobody in particular, and looked all the time straight into a
fog-bush--because of course it would have been very bad manners, as
she thought, to pay any attention to her hosts. The little When cast a
bright look at Avrillia, who whispered, when no one was looking, "Next
year, dear--the first snow," and the Snicker, who was the most
reckless of all, nudged Sara with his elbow and said in a
stage-whisper, "Certainly did have a good time," and then snickered
loud and long. But the Popinjay and the Squawk and the Redpecker
departed without a word of thanks for all the food they had eaten and
all the trouble they had caused.
As soon as they were gone Pirlaps and Avrillia drew a long, relieved
breath; then Pirlaps tossed his step to Yassuh and seized Avrillia
about the waist, and whirled her up and down the silver paths in the
gayest, most fantastic little dance Sara had ever seen. Presently they
stopped before Sara.
"Now for the waffles, Sara," said Pirlaps; and Avrillia stooped and
kissed her and said, "Come, Sara, and see what I can cook!"
Sara thought the notion of Avrillia's cooking must be an odd and
pretty fancy, but she skipped back with them to their little house,
holding a hand of each. Through the windows she could see the fairy
lights gleaming, for it was growing late and cold. They led her again
down into the little shining, warm kitchen, where the lights from the
glowing stove danced upon the silver bowls, and the air was full of
delicious, spicy smells.
"Lie down, Yassuh, and go to sleep," cried Avrillia; and so saying she
took down her kitchen-apron from the gold-headed pin where it hung and
began to flit about the cook-table--measuring out snow-sugar and
breaking butterfly eggs into her shining cups and bowls. Then she got
out the silver waffle-irons (Sara wanted them for her toy stove) and
buttered them, and put them on the stove to heat while she beat up the
batter.
Meantime, Sara helped Pirlaps to set a dainty little round table (not
at all like a multiplication table) with pink shell dishes, and put on
a jar of honeysuckle honey and a pat of buttercup butter. Then
Avrillia baked the waffles and they sat down to eat.
Avrillia had hardly taken the first mouthful when she cried, "I forgot
the children!" and sprang up and flitted to the door.
As she opened the door Sara heard faint little cries and tinkling
laughter, drifting back from the hill where the children still played
and frolicked in the snow. Presently Avrillia shut the door and came
back to her place at the table.
"Bless their hearts!" she said, smiling, "I think I'll just let them
stay out and play all night--they're always begging me to let them.
And they're having such a good time I can't bear to vanish them. They
won't bother us," she added, daintily pouring honeysuckle syrup on her
waffle.
The waffles were so tiny and delicious that, every time she had
swallowed one, Sara almost thought she had dreamed it.
"I didn't know you could cook, Avrillia," she said, shyly and
admiringly.
Avrillia looked pleased. "Oh, anybody can cook!" she said, lightly.
Sara understood from her tone that not everybody could write poems on
rose-leaves.
"We do this every year, Sara," said Pirlaps, "the first time it snows.
It's our favorite philanthropy. It's a big undertaking, and rather too
much of a strain for Avrillia, but we can't make up our minds to give
it up."
"And then, when it's all over," continued Avrillia, "I make waffles
(aren't they good, Sara?) and we eat down here in the kitchen, and
relax, and have a lovely, cozy time. And it makes it doubly pleasant
when we have some congenial person to help us celebrate--like you,
Sara."
Sara's little heart swelled with love and pride. Her eyes traveled
once more over the shining little table, and the friendly faces of
Pirlaps and Avrillia, and the glowing little kitchen, and out through
the little window, where the fog-bushes were making long blue shadows,
and the fairy lights danced on the silver snow.
Never before had she stayed so late. But neither had she ever had such
a lovely time.