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.
[Illustration]
“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.”
[Illustration]
“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.
“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!”