WENDELL FINDS AN UNEXPECTED ALLY
The Pixie brightened a bit. “I have a poser this time,” he said. “You
must find an acorn on Acorn Street.”
It was Wendell’s turn to look crestfallen. As every Beacon Hill boy
knows, Acorn Street is only one block long, or rather one block short,
and there isn’t an oak on it. In fact, there isn’t a tree of any kind:
there isn’t room for one.
The Pixie looked delighted, but he tried to assume a nonchalant air to
hide his triumph. He swung one knee over the other carelessly and tilted
his chin.
“We-ell!” said Wendell, a bit discouraged. But the thought came to him
that in every fairy story the knight who passes the first of three tests
always squeaks through the other two also, so of course there must be
some way out.
“I’ll have to be going,” said the Pixie in an offhand way. “You’ll find
your arithmetic paper in the desk drawer. See you to-morrow night.”
“Hold on,” said Wendell. “You forgot the aeroplane.”
“Forgot it? How?”
“Aren’t you going to take it along?”
“Good gracious, no,” returned the Pixie peevishly. “I can’t take care of
all the truck I tell people to bring me. I don’t run a junk shop. Keep
it yourself. I don’t want it.”
Now that was great luck for Wendell. It brought a large amount of
pleasure into an existence which would otherwise have been most
cheerless; for the unsolved problem loomed before him of finding an
acorn on Acorn Street.
He chose to go through Willow Street on his way to school next morning,
which brought him of course to the head of Acorn Street. There was the
neat little sign fastened on the brick wall,--a bunch of three acorns
and the name in artistic lettering,--evidently the creation of an artist
brain and fashioned by a master hand. Wendell had an inspiration. He
would cut out one of those acorns and take it to the Pixie as a last
resort. Of course, he might be arrested and put in jail for mutilating a
street sign; and after all his trouble, the Pixie might not consider it
an adequate acorn; still the suggestion was something to fall back upon.
Standing at the top of the extremely steep slope which is Acorn Street,
Wendell surveyed the prospect doubtfully. He saw a narrow cobble-stoned
roadway; on his left, a trim row of doll houses, each with its
projecting doorstep and old-fashioned scraper, its spotless white door
and shining brass knocker, and a narrow brick sidewalk where two thin
people could just walk abreast; on his right, a long brick wall, broken
by neat back doors, and a still narrower brick sidewalk where only one
very thin person could walk abreast. Nowhere was there a tree, nor room
to plant a tree. There were a few straggling blades of grass between the
cobble-stones and between the bricks, but not a crevice large enough to
accommodate a single acorn.
A postman came along, whistling cheerily. Wendell stood off the brick
pavement to let him pass. Perhaps the postman could help.
“This is Acorn Street, isn’t it?” said Wendell.
“Some people call it that,” responded the postman jokingly.
“Millionaires’ Alley, _I_ call it.”
“Why, are they all millionaires here?” asked Wendell.
“Just about,” said the postman; “and I knew this street when there were
three families in every house, and the walls that black with dirt, you
could write your name on ’em in chalk. But these millionaire artists
discovered it. Nuts, I call ’em, with their glass studios on the roof
and their Packard cars that have to back out whenever the ice truck
comes through.”
Wendell felt that they were wandering from the point.
“But did you ever see an acorn here?” he asked.
“Nope,” said the postman. “No acorns here. They named it that, I guess,
because it isn’t big enough to be named for a full-grown tree like
Walnut or Chestnut. Peanut Street _I_’d call it.”
“Well, I’ve got to get to school,” said Wendell. He jogged down the
short but precipitous length of treeless Acorn Street, and so on to
school.
After school, as he started for home, the Public Garden tempted him, and
he turned in from Beacon Street. It was a warm October day, and the
Garden wore an air of resuscitated midsummer. He sat down on a bench on
the Charles Street side, facing the lake, which looked very attractive,
although it was no longer bright with the little boating parties and
slow-gliding swan-boats of summer. A flock of doves, seeing Wendell
settled to stay, fluttered down all around him for expected crumbs; and
some busy little sparrows, who are always more alert than the doves and
capture twice as much food, hopped along the path. Wendell felt in his
pockets for stray provender, but without results. A gray squirrel,
bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, loped through the rustling leaves, and ran
up the bench that Wendell occupied. He had a very busy air as of one who
stops for a moment only, in the midst of pressing engagements. A slight
inadvertent movement of Wendell’s sent him scurrying down again. He
frisked through the dead leaves, dug up something of interest from among
them and sat up on his hind legs to handle it. Wendell saw that it was
an acorn and noticed that he was sitting under a young oak. “Pity they
couldn’t plant a few of them where they belong,” he said bitterly.
After the squirrel’s desertion, he sat there a few minutes longer, but
the pigeons, too, soon found that he had no picnic to offer them and
flew off in a flock to a small girl with bare knees, accompanied by a
French-bonneted nurse, who had a whole bag of popcorn. He got up, then,
and, kicking the leaves before him, shuffled out to the wide entrance at
Charles and Beacon Streets.
A traffic policeman, very military-looking in trim khaki, was holding up
the Charles Street traffic while automobiles spun up and down Beacon
Street. Wendell, pausing on the curb, saw him suddenly check the Beacon
Street traffic, while still holding the Charles Street lines at bay. The
large square expanse was quite clear except for the khaki figure with
both arms uplifted. Charles Street truck-drivers prepared to speed up.
Beacon Street automobilists craned their heads out to see what was
delaying the long double lines. Foot passengers lining the curbstones
looked impatient and watched the traffic man for the signal that did not
come. Apparently he had forgotten what he was there for.
Then a smile spread along the curb-stone ranks,--a smile that merged
into a ripple of laughter quite unusual among self-contained Boston
pedestrians, as the impatient waiters saw that the majestic khaki
officer was holding up scores of important citizens to let one small
gray squirrel cross the street.
It was Wendell’s little friend of the Public Garden, still intent on
pressing business, who, unmindful of all safety-first rules, was taking
a diagonal cut from corner to corner across one of the busiest
thoroughfares of Boston.
“I know that squirrel. He lives in Louisburg Square,” Wendell heard a
man say. “I know him by the look in his eye.” Which shows how cocksure
of their own judgments some people are.
The squirrel made the farther corner in safety. The traffic man gave the
signal. The crowd surged forward, Wendell with them. He crossed by right
angles to the squirrel’s corner and saw that busy little beast frisking
along Charles Street, with the deliberate purpose of one who knows his
goal, and then turning up into quiet Chestnut Street.
Wendell followed him, as it was his direct route also; but it was not
until the squirrel turned from Chestnut Street into West Cedar Street
that Wendell saw with fast-beating heart that he carried in his mouth an
acorn for his winter storehouse. If the squirrel should--oh, if only he
should--! Yes, opposite Acorn Street he paused. It was evident that he
had intended to proceed along West Cedar Street to Mount Vernon Street,
which bounds Louisburg Square on the nearer side; but on the door-step
of a West Cedar Street house sat a cat, a sleek gray pussy, and when she
saw the squirrel, she grew tense all over and began to quiver,
commencing at the tip of her tail; and the squirrel saw her--_and turned
up into Acorn Street_.
Would he drop it? oh, would he? Would no yapping puppy come to the
rescue? Would no tidbit of garbage tempt him to investigation? No, Acorn
Street appeared deserted by man and beast. Its aristocratic spotlessness
offered no hope of a bread crust or even a banana peel.
But just then one of the spotless white doors opened. A baby girl
emerged right in the path of the squirrel. He was not alarmed: baby
girls had been a bountiful providence to him since his infancy. But this
baby was a determined little maiden whose brain and hand worked in
unison. Quick as thought she grabbed the squirrel’s beautiful bushy
tail, and quite as quickly she loosed it, for the little gray chap
dropped his acorn and turned his sharp teeth upon that plump little
hand. Then, as he felt himself free, he scurried up the hill without
stopping for anything, and turned westward toward Louisburg Square. When
Wendell passed through the Square, the acorn safe in his trousers
pocket, the squirrel was still chattering excitedly on the branch of a
tree, scolding every one in particular and in general for the loss of
his acorn.
“It’s a shame, old chap,” said Wendell, pausing to peer at him through
the iron railing. “But I’ll bring you a bag of peanuts to make up for
it, you old life-saver, you.”
The Pixie wore an air of quiet triumph when he appeared in Wendell’s
room that evening. So did Wendell.
“Well,” said the Pixie. “Do you give up this time?”
“Not this time,” said Wendell, quietly but with great enjoyment, and he
fished the acorn out of his pocket and laid it on the desk in front of
the Pixie, who glared at it savagely.
“Well,” said Wendell, “are you satisfied?”
“Oh, yes,” said the Pixie, ironically. “It’s an acorn. I know an acorn
when I see one, thank you. But there aren’t any oaks on Acorn Street.”
[Illustration: SHE GRABBED THE SQUIRREL’S BEAUTIFUL BUSHY TAIL]
“I know it. But a squirrel brought it all the way from the Public Garden
and dropped it there. I saw him.”
“A common or garden squirrel?” asked the Pixie incredulously.
“Garden--when I saw him,” said Wendell. “But he might live on the Common
for all I know.”
“Some nutty squirrel,” said the Pixie dejectedly, “to block my game that
way!” He sat fingering the acorn as if he hoped it would turn into
something else.
“Ah!” he said, brightening suddenly. “But I’ve thought of something for
the third test that’s a _sticker_.”
“What is it? A postage stamp?” asked Wendell.
“You won’t feel so funny, young man, when you know what it is,” said the
Pixie, glaring.