Tommy walked beside Muffs in order to give directions although that was
properly the work of the silent Guide. Mary trudged on behind as it
was her turn to carry the basket of lunch. They had passed the apple
orchard and were following the trail which might, if their play came
true, lead to the Bramble Bush Man’s house. There couldn’t be a real
Bramble Bush Man. At least the children couldn’t see exactly how a man
could scratch his eyes out and then scratch them in again and still be
wondrous wise. But they were looking for the impossible. The trail was
narrow and crooked and held no end of mystery.
“Anything might happen,” Muffs said in a whisper.
It did seem that way. First they were in a patch of woods so thick they
could hardly see the sunshine. Then there would be a grassy field; then
woods again. And sometimes a rock that they could hide behind. These
were the jolliest games of hide-and-seek that the children had ever
played.
They had been in the deep woods for quite some time when Tommy stopped
short.
“Whew!” he exclaimed. “This isn’t the path I found. See that hollow
stump. I never saw that before.”
“It’s beginning to go down hill again,” cried Mary after another five
minutes of tramping.
“Do you suppose,” questioned Muffins doubtfully, “that a wondrous wise
man would live in the woods as far away from other people as this?”
“Wise men like to be alone,” said Tommy knowingly.
“They like company,” contradicted Mary.
“I think you’re both right,” Muffins declared. “Sometimes they like to
be alone and sometimes they like company. I’m that way too,” she added,
seating herself on a stone to rest.
“Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,” sang out Tommy in his tuneless
voice.
“That stone is not a tuffet.”
But this time Tommy would not quarrel with Mary. It might spoil the
magic of their play. “Well,” he said slowly, “if it isn’t a tuffet,
then what is?”
None of them knew. Such a simple little word and yet they hadn’t an
idea in the world what it meant. They asked the Guide and he only
stared at them out of his sharp eyes and the tap-tapping of his feet on
the trail was their only answer. But the Bramble Bush Man would know.
“We’ll ask him, first thing,” agreed Muffins. “Then if he tells us the
answer to that we’ll start asking him other things.”
“What other things?”
“Oh, millions of ’em. How to make my mother happy and what people mean
by the ends of the earth.”
“I know what they mean by the _ends of the moon_,” Mary put in. “It
really does have ends sometimes, just like the two ends of a horn. We
could ask him why.”
“I know that,” said Tommy proudly. “That’s the earth’s shadow.”
“Is it?”
Miss Muffet gazed at him for a minute and then Mary said, “But you’re
not wondrous wise ’cause you don’t know what a tuffet is.”
Where the trail was steep the Guide helped Muffins climb. When she grew
tired she rested on his arms. She even shared her lunch with him. Soon
the basket was nearly empty.
“We’d better save the little that’s left,” Mary suggested, “and pick
berries if we’re hungry.”
There were plenty of berries along the path. In the cleared places
tall barberry bushes grew but their bright red fruit was too sour
and too filled with seeds. There were many kinds of berries that the
children didn’t dare eat for fear they might be poison--and there were
blackberries and tangles of brambles hanging over the trail.
“Now that we’ve discovered the brambles,” Tommy declared, “it will be
lots easier to find the Bramble Bush Man!”
Muffs and Mary agreed that his house would probably be covered with
blackberry vines. Half believing their play, they looked cautiously at
either side of any bushes before they dared pick berries from them. The
Bramble Bush Man might be cross if he caught them picking berries from
his own private bushes.
“I think a wise man would be cross,” Muffins said.
But Mary, as usual, was contrary and thought he would be kind. He would
have to be very old too and yet young enough to jump into brambles.
They would keep on talking like that until the whole thing got too
puzzling. Then they would have a game of hide-and-seek and forget it
until, suddenly, the question of the Bramble Bush Man’s wisdom would
bob up again.
They had come to a regular forest of blackberry briars and, once more,
were playing hide-and-seek. Tommy was “it.” He had borrowed the Guide
to help him hunt. They had already found Mary, and Muffs could hear
them trampling in among the brambles looking for her. She crouched
under a particularly tall and brambly bush and plopped a berry in her
mouth to keep herself quiet.
“All out’s in free!” she heard them calling.
She scrambled to her feet and then, all in a flash, she saw something
sparkling in the late afternoon sun. It made little flickers of light
dance across the bramble bushes. Could it be--someone’s eyes? The
Bramble Bush Man’s?
[Illustration]
Muffs called, “Mary! Tommy! Come here--QUICK!!!”
They came, pushing through the brush as fast as they could and then
they saw her pointing. There, with one bow looped over a bramble, were
the oddest looking pair of spectacles that they had ever seen.
“I--I thought they were eyes at first,” Miss Muffet stammered.
“They are eyes,” said Tommy solemnly as he unhooked the bow. “Great
Aunt Charlotte calls her glasses eyes and maybe the Bramble Bush Man
does too.”
“Then whoever puts them on will be wondrous wise,” Muffs said.
“Let’s put them on the Guide then,” Mary suggested. “If he’s wondrous
wise he can surely show us the way to the Bramble Bush Man’s house.”
“If he’s wondrous wise,” said Tommy, “then he is the Bramble Bush Man
and it’s his house we’re looking for.”