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.”
[Illustration]
“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.
[Illustration: “ONE HARE IS AS GOOD AS ANOTHER,” THE MAGICIAN SAID.]
“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.”