Chapter IV The Invaders
When Sara dropped the curtains behind her the next morning she paused in horror, with her hand poised above the dimple-holder. What had happened to her lovely Garden in the night?
It looked exactly as her own little garden was accustomed to look three days after a hard freeze. Blighted—that was the word: it was blighted. The leaves hung limp and brown from the trees; the blue plush grass, and even the blue bark of the Gugollaph-tree, had turned a most sickly green. The water was frozen in the pool; and, imprisoned below it, she could see the Echo of the Plynck, perfectly stiff, and looking as if she were in some sort of awful trance. The Plynck, on the other hand, drooped on her accustomed branch like the leaves on the trees, as if she hardly had strength to hold her loosened plumes together. The Snimmy’s wife sat on her own toadstool, rigid and angry-looking, with her tail wound tightly around the base, and with the half-hemmed doorknob forgotten in her lap; the Snimmy lay watchfully at the door of the prose-bush, with his long, debilitating nose on his paws, shivering terribly; and the Snoodle looked as if somebody had put salt on his mother. And the poor, timid Teacup looked like a gentle, fat little old lady who has just been shot out of a volcano.
Avrillia and Pirlaps were standing together in the little arch, looking with passionate and indignant eyes upon the general distress and havoc, and especially upon the insolent creatures who had caused it. For Sara saw, after a few minutes of bewilderment, that the beautiful place with its gentle inhabitants had been overrun in the night by a horde of Fractions.
For there they sat, grouped insolently around the fountain, drinking tears out of mugs of enormous sighs, and hammering with their fists upon the peculiarly disagreeable-looking tables at which they sat. These tables were of various sizes, but they were all very ponderous and slippery-looking; and observing them closely, Sara saw that her instinctive aversion was well founded—for they were multiplication tables. The Two-Times table was nearest to her, being placed just to the left of the dimple-holder; and they increased regularly in size up to the Twelve-Times table, at which the officers were sitting. The whole crowd of invaders were disgustingly haughty and self-important—worse even than the Strained Relations, Sara thought; but the officers were the worst of all. From the Least Common Multiple up to the Greatest Common Divisor, from the thin, poker-like Quotient with the fierce white moustache to the enormous, puffy Multiplicand, Sara thought they were the most pompous lot she had ever seen. However, since they were officers and units, she could imagine that they might have some excuse; but what possible excuse could there be for conceit in the Fractions, every one of whom had something missing about him? Some of them, of course, lacked only an ear or a little finger; but numbers of them had only one leg or one arm, and many of them were much worse off! Why, at the farthest side of the Three-Times table Sara saw a Fraction who consisted entirely of one eye!
There was one table, to be sure, the Eleven-Times, the noisiest of all, that was occupied entirely by Improper Fractions; but aside from their table-manners and general behavior, which were shocking, Sara thought they looked even worse than the proper ones. For one of them had two faces, another three feet, and a third one had as many arms as an octopus. Sara positively refused to look at them.
While Sara stood gazing in horror and dismay, and feeling so grieved for her friends that she could not bring herself to ask anybody what had happened or what could be done, she saw Schlorge coming at a run down the path from the Dimplesmithy. He looked as wild and distracted as any of them, but Sara felt a great relief when she saw him, because she knew he was so clever and practical. She felt, too, that she could ask him what the trouble was and he could bear it—better than the Teacup, for instance, who, she feared, would go all to pieces, or the Echo of the Plynck, who was clearly all in. So she ran up to him and touched his elbow and asked, almost crying, “What is it, Schlorge? How did it happen?”
Schlorge, even in his excitement, was comforted by her sympathy, and evidently very glad to see another ally. “Why—a—” he began, and then, remembering, he cried excitedly, “Where’s the stump—where’s the stump? I have to tell Sara about it!”
But alas, the invaders had razed the stump to the ground, apparently out of wanton malice, for they had made no use of it. All over and around it were strewn plus-signs, minus-signs, and other weapons; and Sara noticed that the dots from the divided-by signs were rolling about everywhere on the withered grass. Manifestly, Schlorge could not get upon the fallen stump, through such a thicket of debris, and he dared not move them nor step on them; besides, it is doubtful if he could have told Sara about it unless the stump were right side up.
At this juncture, however, Pirlaps stepped boldly forward and once more offered Schlorge his step. Schlorge sprang upon it without noticing the chocolate, but he was so agitated that he put his left hand into his bosom and his right behind his back, instead of the other way around. However, it was in a loud, firm voice, with fierce, defiant looks at the invaders, that he informed Sara:
“The Fractions came down like a wolf on the fold:
Their ears are acute but their noses are cold.
They know nothing of poetry, music or art—
So why in Sam Hill should they think they’re so smart?”
“Why in Zeelup?” corrected the Teacup, from above, in a tremulous, weeping voice; but even had it been louder it would have been drowned in the clamor that rose from the tables.
“Silence, impudent clown!” roared the fat, fierce-looking
Multiplicand. “Ignoramus! nothing of music! Why, you don’t know Common
Time!”
Sara quaked; only yesterday she had got all tangled up trying to tell the difference between three-four time and two-four time; and she knew Schlorge was wrong and the dreadful creature was right. But Schlorge was beside himself with fury and beyond the reach of fear or reason.
“Oh, go on!” he shouted fiercely. “You don’t know nothing about the insides of music—that’s only the outsides! Besides, what time does a bird sing by? That’s music, ain’t it?”
But before the Multiplicand could answer, his henchman, the Multiplier, called out, “And what do you know of art, Oaf? Don’t you know that modern art is colored geometry?”
“And poetry?” squeaked the Quotient, fiercely, “Don’t poets have to count their feet to write poems?”
But at that juncture they were all electrified to see Avrillia stepping forward, looking so beautiful and so queenly and so transfigured by righteous indignation that even the invaders merely blinked. “Not modern poets,” she said, with an icy authority that sent a hostile shiver up and down the multiplication tables. “They do not count anything—not even the cost.”
It was not so much what Avrillia said, as the way she said it, and the way she looked, that cowed even the all-powerful invaders for a moment. Pirlaps, at her side, said, “Good for you, Avrillia!” under his breath; and Schlorge glared at the Fractions with triumphant scorn and continued,
“Like leaves of the forest when summer is green
Our beautiful Garden at sunset was seen;
Like leaves of the forest when autumn is flown,
You see it this morning all withered and strown.”
As he finished this stanza Schlorge seemed to rise to twice his full height (indeed, he seemed to Sara for a moment almost half as tall as her waist) in his eloquent fury, as he continued:
“But we will lambast you, you straight-waisted pigs,
As sure as black’s yellow and thistles is figs!
Yea, surer than squashes our vengeance we’ll wreak;
If it isn’t today, why, we’ll do it next week!”
Sara had a distressed feeling that this was rather a weak ending, but nobody else seemed to notice it; indeed, several of the Fractions were so incensed at the bold threat that two or three of them called out, “Shoot him at sunrise!” The Greatest Common Divisor, however, merely gave him a savage and contemptuous glance over his tear-mug, as much as to say that he would annihilate him when it was quite convenient.
In a few moments they were again entirely absorbed in their drinking and carousing, and then Pirlaps cautiously touched Schlorge on the arm. “Let’s have a council of war,” he said, in a very low voice, drawing him a little to one side. “I have an idea. Where shall we go?”
“Better come down to the Smithy,” said Schlorge. “They haven’t discovered it yet.”
Very quietly then, while the Fractions were busy drinking, Schlorge and Pirlaps and Avrillia and Sara and the Snimmy and the Snimmy’s wife slipped out of the Garden and down the path to the Dimplesmithy. They didn’t think it necessary to tell the Plynck, who was too much crushed to be of use, or the Teacup, for whom they dreaded the slightest shock. The Echo of the Plynck might have been useful, only she was still frozen into the pool.
The farther they got from the Garden the less blighted and the more natural everything looked; and by the time they reached the road, they would not have suspected, from the look of the country, that destruction was lurking so near.
When they reached the Dimplesmithy, they sent the Snimmy to sniff out the neighborhood carefully with his debilitating nose, to see if there were any spies about; and when he returned, Pirlaps carefully unfolded his plan.
“I am convinced,” he said earnestly, “from what I have observed this morning, that Poetry will be absolutely fatal to these hateful intruders who have descended upon us. The only question in my mind is, How shall we apply it? After thinking about it most carefully, I have worked out a tentative plan. Avrillia, I am sure, can furnish us plenty of ammunition.” (Sara, glancing admiringly at Avrillia, saw the thrilling look of high resolve that shone in her face.) “And Schlorge will have to make us two or three more pairs of bellows. Are you strong enough to wield a pair, Sara?” he asked. Even in the stress of this dire moment he spoke so kindly that she loved him more than ever; and she told him proudly that she was sure she could. Schlorge had already dragged down from a shelf three extra pairs of bellows—one brand-new one and two old ones; and he was busy at his forge mending and putting them in order. All the while, however, he was listening anxiously to Pirlaps.
“The only part I haven’t been able to work out,” said Pirlaps, with a worried look, “is this: How can we reduce the Poetry to a powdered form fast enough to be effective?”
This was a problem indeed; and everybody thought deeply and desperately. Avrillia, Sara could see, was already so absorbed in making the poems that she didn’t even hear; but it was an agonizing moment for the rest of them. It did not last long, however; for the Snimmy’s wife stepped forward and said triumphantly, in her deep, cross voice, “My coffee-mill!”
“Ah, these practical people!” cried Pirlaps, rubbing his hands delightedly. “Now for our organization. Avrillia, have you plenty of rose-leaves?”
“An extra supply,” answered Avrillia, raptly. “Yassuh filled the leaf-closet only yesterday. How fortunate!”
“Then the problem of transportation,” said Pirlaps, greatly pleased. “There must be no break—”
“The Gunki will bring ’em,” said Schlorge, decisively. “Here, you!” he shouted; and a swarm of Gunki came tumbling out from under the adjacent bushes. “Bring your coal-scuttles!” he shouted; and each Gunkus scuttled back, reappearing in a moment with the desired receptacle.
“Good!” said Pirlaps. “Stand at attention until I give you further orders.” And each Gunkus stood perfectly still and straight, holding his coal-scuttle by the handle between his teeth, and dropping his eyes into it. They hit the bottom of the scuttle with a ringing, martial sound.
“Now,” said Pirlaps, “how many hands for the bellows? Avrillia will be busy writing poems; Mrs. Snimmy will be busy grinding them. That leaves Schlorge, Sara, Mr. Snimmy and myself. Four pairs of bellows—how fortunate!” He then explained to the Gunki that they were to march straight to Avrillia’s balcony and form an unbroken line from there to the Snimmy’s wife’s coffee-mill, on the front porch of the prose-bush; and that they were to pass the scuttles full of loaded rose-leaves in a steady stream, as fast as they could. The last Gunkus was to empty the scuttles into the coffee-mill.
In a very short time they had this plan in execution. When they slipped back into the Garden they found that the Fractions had been drinking so heavily that many of them were snoring loudly under the multiplication tables; and the rest were carousing so uproariously that they took no notice whatever of the preparations for their overthrow. The Snimmy’s wife took her station grimly at the coffee-mill; Pirlaps, Schlorge, Sara and the Snimmy grouped themselves about her, and in a very few minutes the first scuttleful of poems arrived. The first Gunkus emptied them into the mill; Mrs. Snimmy began to grind violently; the gunners, with hands trembling with excitement, loaded their bellows. Even in this terrible moment Sara could not help noticing what a lovely stuff the powder was—a blue and silver dust, with a delicate fragrance like sachet powder. Surely it could not harm anybody! She felt a sinking of the heart; but she kept her eyes on Pirlaps, and his splendid, confident bearing helped to reassure her. And when he said, “A—B—C!” they all fired simultaneously. And oh, glorious success! It was clear that the poem-dust was absolutely deadly to the enemy. At the first shot the Least Common Multiple and a number of privates fell out of their chairs, as dead as if they had been caught between the covers of an arithmetic! Moreover, the poem-dust that filled the air seemed to tend to stupefy the others; so that, though there was a terrible uproar and a desperate scramble for weapons, victory for the defenders was certain from the start. There was only one defect in the organization; one thing had escaped Pirlaps’ wonderful foresight. There was no efficient way to get the powder from the coffee-mill to the bellows; and in the loading much time was wasted and much ammunition spilled. While Pirlaps was looking about him with great anxiety, trying to think of some way to remedy the trouble, the little Teacup came fluttering tremulously down from above. “Let me do it!” she cried; and while they all looked on in admiration (though with only one eye apiece, since the other was busy aiming at the enemy) she proceeded to load one pair of bellows after another, with the utmost nicety and plenty of poetry-powder. A little was spilled, to be sure, because she trembled so terribly; still, it was an enormous improvement, and they all praised and congratulated the Teacup.
“Ah, these sheltered women!” said Pirlaps. “How an emergency does bring them out!”
The battle must have raged for nearly an hour; but at the end of that time there was not so much as a One-Twenty-Second left alive. The Greatest Common Divisor, as befitted his rank, was the last to succumb; and when he went down the defenders of the Garden threw down their weapons and began tossing their shoes into the air and shaking each others’ hands and talking all at once. The Gunki passed the word down the line to Avrillia, who presently came floating in, with her wild eyes shining and her pale-gold hair rumpled, and her golden swan’s-quill still in her hand; and everybody fell upon her with congratulations. But, indeed, everybody was congratulating everybody else, and calling him or her the hero or heroine of the day. Schlorge was doubly cordial to Avrillia because he felt that he had underestimated her; and for the same reason Pirlaps was particularly delighted with the Teacup and the Snimmy’s wife—whom, to tell the truth, he had always considered very ordinary women. The Teacup fluttered and laughed nervously, murmuring, whenever anybody praised her, “If my handle hadn’t been so consanguineous—” But the Snimmy’s wife merely smiled grimly, as much as to say that she had always thought they would all come to their senses sooner or later.
Presently the Snimmy, who had been sniffing about the fallen invaders, suggested, “What’s to be done with the remains, begging everybody’s pardon?”
“Don’t make such long speeches, Snimmy,” said his wife, “and don’t beg anything. Didn’t you blow as hard as any of ’em?”
But Schlorge was already deeply interested in the problem. He began walking around among them, now and then turning one over with his foot. Of course there had never been an ounce of flesh and blood among them; they were as dry as bones—which, indeed, they much resembled.
“I could make them into first-class rules,” he said, picking up the waist-line of an Improper Fraction and snapping it easily across his knee. “They’d keep the Plynck supplied a whole winter.”
The Plynck! In the excitement of victory they had all momentarily forgotten the Plynck, though, when the fight was hottest, it had been the sight of her tragic drooping plumes among the blighted leaves that had nerved them to redoubled effort. Now Avrillia stepped softly under the tree and called gently, “O Plynck, dear Plynck! They’re all dead, and Schlorge is going to make them into rules for you to break!”
A shiver ran through the soft, rosy plumes of the Plynck; she opened her terrified eyes, and when she saw that the good tidings was indeed true, she began to shine and smile down upon them again like a convalescent rainbow. The Gunki had already formed a line to Schlorge’s smithy, and were briskly sending scuttlefuls of the hateful fragments down the line.
“I—I’m sorry I was so useless,” apologized the Plynck with deep humility, looking down upon her faithful friends. But they one and all began to protest that she had not been needed in the least. “It was for you as we done it, ma’am,” Schlorge assured her, looking up into her tree with his shoe in his hand; and the poor Snimmy was so overcome by emotion that he was compelled to lie down at the foot of the Gugollaph-tree, with his debilitating nose on his little cold paws, and sniffle frankly.
“But how will they get back the lovely grass and flowers?” asked Sara of Pirlaps, softly. Her friends were saved; but her Garden still looked sadly afflicted.
“Well, perhaps it will snow,” said Pirlaps, hopefully.
“Snow?” asked Sara. “Will that bring the grass and leaves back?”
“Why, certainly, Sara,” said Pirlaps, looking down at her with his kind, amused smile. Pirlaps was often amused at her ignorance; but he was always so kind about it that Sara didn’t mind at all.
Chapter V 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.
Chapter VI The Little Lost Laugh
Sara had always intended to take her dolls with her to the Garden, but every morning before the sixth morning she forgot it. On the sixth morning, however, her arms were so full of dolls that she could not take off her dimples. She had not foreseen that difficulty.
She had not really intended to bring them all. But the Brown Teddy-Bear looked so fiercely sad that she decided at the very outset that she could not leave him. He was not really a doll, of course, but as Sara kept him dressed in a kerchief and full skirt, he had the effect of a doll—a sort of Wolf-Grandmother-of-Red-Ridinghood doll. And the Billiken looked so cheerful that Sara decided that she must surely take him along, to reward him for being so unfailingly pleasant. And the Japanese doll had to go, because he was the newest, and because he was the only one who was large enough to wear the pink tulle lady-doll’s hat Sara’s aunt had sent her on her birthday. His head was as bare as an egg, because the little rosette of black hair that distinguishes a Japanese doll had come unglued. This made the effect of the hat a little odd; still, he could wear it. The Kewpie was just too cunning to leave—that was all there was to that; and no right-minded mother ever left the baby. So that made it necessary to take the Baby doll with the long clothes. (That is, she should have been wearing long clothes, but Sara’s dolls never wore the clothes that belonged to them; and this morning the Baby was tastefully attired in a wide red sash, with the Japanese doll’s paper parasol stuck through it, like the dagger in a comic opera.)
So there was Sara, with five dolls in her arms, and the Snimmy shuddering deliciously from head to foot because he was beginning to smell dimples in his sleep.
“What in the world shall I do?” wondered Sara, half aloud.
“What in Zeelup, my dear,” corrected the Teacup, leaning out from her perch with sympathetic interest.
And then, what do you think the Teacup saw? She saw the Kewpie, who was always a friendly little soul, reach up and take off Sara’s dimples himself!
“I’ll do it for Sara,” he said, helpfully, as he dropped them safely upon the whipped cream cushion.
And then what do you think happened? Why, the daintiest little creature sprang right out from between Sara’s lips and went skipping and leaping and tumbling and running over the ice-cream bricks around the pool, across the blue plush grass, and, before you could tell it, disappeared around the turn of a little dim path Sara had never followed.
Sara stood gazing after him. She had never seen anything that looked like that before. Some of Avrillia’s children came nearest to looking like it: but not even they were so tinkly or so bubbly or so altogether gay-looking. And how nimble it was—disappearing like a drop of water trickling down a rock!
“What in the world?” breathed Sara again.
“—In Zeelup?” breathed the Teacup, quite as softly. But Sara hardly heard her: she was so astonished at the babel of small voices that started up about her feet. She had been so startled at the appearance and the disappearance of that strange little creature that she had not noticed that all the dolls were wriggling out of her arms and sliding down her skirts and legs like schoolboys escaping from a burning dormitory. Not that they were afraid of anything: it was only that they were so glad to be able at last to move and talk.
“There he goes!” cried the Japanese doll, pointing excitedly: and indeed they did catch one more glimpse of the fleeting sprite between the shrubs. “He was mighty jolly,” said the Brown Teddy-Bear enviously, in his deep, mournful voice; and “Let’s go catch him!” cried the Baby, where it sat flat on the bricks, crowing and clapping its hands.
“I’ll have to get off these togs, then,” said the Billiken, who was always fat and cheerful, but seldom spoke. He was driven to it this time by the fact that Sara had dressed him in the Baby’s long clothes.
“But what is it?” asked Sara, still bewildered.
“Why, it’s your laugh, child,” said the Echo of the Plynck, who, all this time, had been watching the scene with much amusement. “Don’t you know your own laugh when you see it?”
“I never saw it before,” said Sara with a wondering smile. “I guess I’ve heard it.”
“Now, isn’t that odd—and interesting!” said the Echo to the Plynck. “The child says she has heard it, but never seen it. Here,” she added, turning to Sara, and speaking in a louder tone, “we see a great deal of laughter—but we never hear it.”
“Well, and are you going to stand there all day staring?” suddenly put in the wife of the Snimmy from the prose-bush. “Ain’t you going to go after it and ketch it? What’ll your Maw say if you come home without your laugh? And your Paw?”
Sara had not thought of that. But when she did think, she realized that it would be dreadful. What would Father think when he told her his funniest story and she did not laugh?
“But—but what shall I do?” she wondered, half to herself.
The dolls at her feet set up a clamor of plans, but as they were all talking at once (except the Brown Teddy-Bear, who looked even more pessimistic than usual) their suggestions were not very helpful. Sara and her other friends stood knitting their brows in perplexity. (Sara was just learning to knit, so she had her needles and a ball of yarn sticking out of her apron pocket. She was delighted to find brows so much easier to knit than yarn.)
Suddenly the Snimmy’s wife spoke again. “Send for Schlorge,” she said. “He’ll know what to do.”
No sooner were the words out of her mouth than they saw a Gunkus running down the path toward the Dimplesmithy to tell Schlorge.
“In the meantime, Sara, you’d better dress me more suitably,” suggested the Billiken kindly. Sara had never heard him object before to wearing the Baby’s long dress; but he was evidently looking forward to a race and did not wish to be handicapped.
So Sara sat down on the blue plush grass, and undressed the Billiken while they waited for Schlorge. She had time now to notice that the snow had melted and left everything beautifully fresh and bright, just as Pirlaps had assured her it would do. She had never seen the Garden look so lovely and spring-like. She was glad, too, to see that the stump had grown back exactly as it was; they had even removed the ropes and scaffolding.
She took the Baby’s clothes off the Billiken, and left him all free and unimpeded in his own, fat, white, furry body. You see, she always called the Teddy-Bear the Brown Teddy-Bear because the Billiken was his first cousin, and had a white Teddy-Bear body; it was only their colors and their heads that were different. Oh, yes,—and their dispositions; for the Billiken was a supremely cheerful person, while the Brown Teddy-Bear was a misanthrope. Sara had always known that he had something very depressing on his mind; and she was planning, now that he had learned to talk, to ask him what it was at the first suitable opportunity.
When she had got the clothes off the Billiken, she started to put them on the Baby; but the Baby behaved as it had never done before. It had always been a good baby, adapting itself amiably to any schedule its mother saw fit to adopt. Sara saw at once that animated babies are not so easy to manage as inanimate ones; for the Baby kicked and cried and positively refused to be dressed. So Sara, who was really a very young mother, and had not yet trained herself to be firm and self-willed and contrary, put the Baby’s clothes in her pocket with the yarn and knitting needles and a ginger-snap she had brought, and set the stubborn Baby down on the blue plush grass, where it rolled around quite happily again in its red sash and parasol.
And just at that moment she saw good old Schlorge hurrying down the path from the Dimplesmithy with the Gunkus at his heels.
Of course they all had to tell Schlorge about it at once, even the dolls (all except the Brown Teddy-Bear), so that Schlorge looked quite wild, and scratched his head a good deal before he was finally quite clear what had happened. Then he turned and looked thoughtfully down the path they had pointed out to him, and scratched it some more. Finally he said slowly,
“I tell you what we’ll have to do,”—and then, looking about him all at once very wildly,—“where’s the stump—I’ll have to tell Sara! Where’s the—”
But this time he found it without loss of time; and scrambling upon it, he adjusted his hands and shouted loudly,
“Over hill, over dale,
Thorough bush, thorough briar,
Over park, over pale,
Thorough flood, thorough fire,
We’ll have to follow everywhere,
If Sara’s laughter we would snare.
I will go and lead the van,
You may follow if you can.
Sara’s would be an awful plight
To go home laughterless tonight.”
Then he sprang from the stump and went rushing straight down the little dim path, shouting back over his shoulder, “Come along, all of you! Sara, ask the Plynck to come, too!”
Down the path they went tumbling—the Snimmy, his wife, a crowd of Gunki, and all the dolls. Sara and the faithful little Teacup stayed behind to see if the Plynck would come, and the Snoodle was still asleep.
“Will you come with us, dear Madame Plynck?” asked Sara, softly, looking up into the tree; and “Do you think you could stand it?” fluttered the Teacup solicitously.
“It’s against my rules to leave the Garden,” said the Plynck, and Sara’s heart sank; for she really thought the search would be a sort of picnic, and she had hoped that the lovely Plynck would go, too. It sank clear to the bottom of the pool, and the Plynck’s Echo fished it up and handed it back to her, all wet and shiny, just as the Plynck finished her sentence, “So I think I’ll go.”
Sara clapped her hands, and to add to her pleasure she heard just then the most delicious crashing sound: the kind of sound she had imagined when she stood at the top of the basement steps at home with the glass pitcher in her hands, wishing she could hurl it down upon the cement because Mother would not let her wear her new short-sleeved dress. She saw at once that the Plynck had broken the largest rule she had, and dropped it upon the pile at the foot of the tree; and now she was moving her plumes softly for flight, so that the golden spice was falling in Sara’s hair. The Teacup was looking intensely pleased and flustered, and both of them had forgotten the poor Echo, who was scrambling about the rim of the pool like a swimmer trying to draw himself out of the water by a slippery bank. When she saw Sara looking at her, however, she stopped trying, and sat down stiffly in her usual place.
“I can’t go, of course,” she said with dignity, “but go ahead—don’t mind me.”
“Oh, my dear, I’m so sorry!” said the Plynck, hovering over her softly. “I wish you could!”
“Go ahead,” said the Echo, trying hard not to look sulky and virtuous; and so Sara ran down the path after the others, with the Plynck and the Teacup fluttering gracefully over her head. As she passed through the hedge she cast a backward look at the Garden, which was now so still that she thought it looked like a picture in a dream—shimmering and bright and clear, without a soul left at home but the Plynck’s cerulean Echo and the sleeping Snoodle.
As soon as they passed through the hedge they found themselves in a picturesque broken country, rather difficult to traverse, but very prettily decorated with rocks, streams, and waterfalls. Little groves of cedars, the exact size and shape of Christmas-trees, grew out of the rocks; the candles were already full-grown, but Schlorge sent the Japanese doll running back to tell Sara that she must not light them, as they would not be ripe till Christmas Eve. Sara had never seen a prettier place, but she was rather worried by a maternal anxiety about the dolls. For it was certainly not a very safe place for them. Of course the Brown Teddy-Bear and the Billiken were all right, though the latter might come to grief if he should fall on his head. The Japanese doll, who had lost a hand, was unbreakable; but unbreakable only means that you may be dropped from a reasonable height upon hard-wood floors, but not from a second-story window on concrete or asphalt. That was how the Japanese doll had lost his hand (it would have been his head, but for the fact that the accident happened while he was indisposed from neuralgia, and had his head pinned up in the Baby’s flannel petticoat). And these rocks certainly looked as hard as any pavement. And even as Sara worried, the worst happened: she heard a dreadful cracking sound, followed by a shrill clamor from the dolls and a hoarse cry from Schlorge, and the grim, excited voice of the Snimmy’s wife. It was by no means a pleasant sound, like the cracking of breaking rules: no, it was the familiar, heart-rending sound that makes the heart of any mother of dolls turn cold. Sara went leaping and scrambling down the rocks, with the Plynck and the Teacup hovering anxiously over her. In a few moments she reached the scene of the accident, and found them all gathered around the Kewpie, who lay in the lap of the Snimmy’s wife with both legs broken. Sara ran and knelt beside her.
“Now, here, don’t you go and burst into tears,” said Schlorge, speaking in the gruff tone an anxious doctor uses toward an excitable patient. “I’ll have my hands full mending your baby here, without having to mend you. He has no internal injuries,” he added, turning the Kewpie upside down and peering down the stumps of his legs (which were hollow) into a perfectly pink and smooth and healthy-looking interior, “and you might have. Besides, we’ll fix it up all right.”
“Can you really, Schlorge?” asked Sara. There were tears in her voice, but, by trying very hard, she did keep from bursting into them.
“Of course I can!” said Schlorge, speaking quite crossly to conceal his sympathy. “Here—you Gunki! A stretcher!”
So the Gunki came running with a stretcher made out of a large mullein-leaf, and they put the Kewpie and his legs tenderly upon it. He was a trifle pale, but still smiling, and insisted that he did not suffer at all.
“Only it’s inconvenient, you know, not to be able to walk,” he explained, “and I didn’t want to miss the fun. Would it be too much trouble—could you take me this way? These gentlemen, now—”
“Sure!” said the four Gunki at once, in tenor, baritone, bass, and second bass. Sara, even in her distress, was charmed; for that was the first time she had heard a Gunkus speak.
“Are you sure you won’t faint from loss of air?” asked Schlorge looking at the patient anxiously; and indeed the air was pouring in a steady stream out of the Kewpie’s inside.
“I’ll be all right—only take me along,” maintained the Kewpie, valiantly.
So they all started on again across the rough, uncharted country.
Now, all this time they had not had so much as a glimpse of Sara’s laugh. The Snimmy ran along ahead with his long, quivering, debilitating nose to the ground; and two or three times he raised it, and said in an excited undertone, to Schlorge, “It touched here.” And then they would all look anxiously about, under every rock, and behind every stump, without finding a trace of it.
But after they had gone a long way, and were all getting tired and thirsty (not to say hungry) they came to a most inviting little grove around a spring; and here, with one accord, they all threw themselves down to rest. The Teacup, with an arch look, dropped down to the spring, filled herself with water, and fluttered up to Sara’s lips, saying softly, “Allow me, my dear!” Sara drank, in delight and wonder, and found that the spring was not made of water, but of a sort of super-lemonade, the most delicious beverage she had ever tasted. After she had drunk, the Teacup took a drink to the Plynck, explaining to her with an apologetic smile, “I served her first, my dear, because she was the guest of honor—so to speak,” and the Plynck assented most graciously. Then the kind-hearted and democratic little Teacup performed the same gracious office for the whole company, one after the other—even the Baby doll and the Gunki who bore the stretcher. But the Billiken did look very funny drinking out of the Teacup; and it was just at that moment that they were startled by a little gurgling sound in the tree above them (as if a Brownie had overturned a blue honey-pitcher, and the little drops were tumbling over each other upon a silver floor) and Sara’s lost laugh sprang from the top of the tree to the ground, and went tinkling off again among the rocks. They all looked after it with their mouths open, as a fisherman gazes at the hook from which he has just lost the largest fish that ever was on sea or land.
“There, now! If we had only been more watchful!” exclaimed the Japanese doll. The pink tulle lady-doll hat had slipped far back on his perspiring head; he looked as if he had come a long way.
“I thought I saw something moving up in the tree—I was just going to speak about it,” said the plucky little Kewpie, who, being compelled to lie on his back, had been gazing straight up into the branches.
“Well!” said Schlorge grimly. “It won’t do that again.”
They all saw that Schlorge had something on his mind, and began to watch him as he took his gimlet out of his pocket and began to cut a small willow wand.
“What are you going to do, Schlorge?” asked the Japanese doll, who was a good sort of a person, but a little lacking in tact.
“Never mind me,” said Schlorge, “the rest of you take a nap!”
Sara saw that his professional pride, as the leader and practical man of the party, had been hurt by the escape of her laugh; and he spoke so crossly that they all turned around and began to try to make conversation to cover their embarrassment. But they didn’t succeed very well; and presently the Baby spoke the thought that was uppermost in everybody’s mind.
“I’m hungry!” he said.
Alas, so were they all! It was no use trying to disguise it! So the Snimmy said, almost tearfully, “Why didn’t we think to bring some lunch?”
“Humph!” retorted his wife. “You’d never think of anything—except dimples!”
So saying, she took down a large hamper which she had been carrying on her head, and removed the cloth which was tucked neatly over it. They had all noticed the hamper, but supposed it was Avrillia’s wash, which the Snimmy’s wife always took home on Poppyday.
Now it proved to be packed full of a rich and varied picnic luncheon, the sight and aroma of which made even the Brown Teddy-Bear look eager. The Snimmy’s wife set all the viands out on the grass, and the Plynck graciously drifted down and took her place at the head of the table. There was a trifle too much sand in the sandwiches, but everything else was perfect; and they all ate as immoderately as people do at picnics.
Sara found herself seated next to the Brown Teddy-Bear. After he had eaten a pickle or two and begun to look cheerful, she asked him, tactfully, what he had had so long on his mind.
“I’ll tell you, Sara,” said the Brown Teddy-Bear candidly and mournfully. “I’m so ephemeral.”
Sara opened her eyes, and looked at him carefully. What new affliction was this? “Do you mean you’re sick?” she asked, after a while.
“No, Sara,” said the Teddy-Bear, smiling sadly. “You don’t understand. What I mean is, I’m already old-fashioned; I’ve had my day. Twenty years from now, nobody will know what you mean when you speak of a Teddy-Bear.”
“I will,” said Sara, squeezing his paw affectionately.
“Well, perhaps you will, Sara,” admitted the Teddy-Bear, “because you’ll remember. But the children won’t, and they’re the only ones that matter.”
“I’ll tell mine,” insisted Sara stoutly.
“Ah, yes, Sara,” said the Teddy-Bear, still more sadly, “but such loyalty as yours is rare. I have but a frail hold upon posterity. The same is true of many of my colleagues—the Billiken, for instance, and the Kewp. But the Billiken is a philosopher, and doesn’t care; and the Kewp is a careless child. But I feel it, Sara; I have to confess to you that I am a prey to the ‘last infirmity of noble minds.’” After a moment he added, less sadly but more irritably, “That creature, now, brainless as it is, is just a doll. And dolls are immortal.”
“It’s a Baby doll,” said Sara, wishing to offer consolation, but really not knowing what to say.
“Humph,” said the Brown Teddy-Bear disgustedly. “Babies are as universal as dolls.”
Sara was still trying to think of something pleasant to say to him, when she noticed that the Plynck, having finished her luncheon, had flown up to a bough of the tree just over the spring; and suddenly she heard her speak.
“Well!” she said in astonishment. “Where did you come from?”
And looking down, Sara saw the Echo of the Plynck in the water. She looked quite imperturbable again, and quite cerulean. “Oh, I have ways of doing things,” she answered, preening her feathers. And the Plynck was so mystified that she did not say another word.
Really, she didn’t have time, for Schlorge strolled back into their midst at that moment, carrying a butterfly net he had just finished. The stick was made of the willow wand Sara had seen him cut; and the bag was made of two thicknesses of spider’s web. “Now I’ll get him,” said Schlorge grimly. “Pack up now, and let’s start out again.”
So all together they started out, climbing hills, and jumping across tumbling streams, and scrambling over rocks. It was quite hard for the stretcher-bearers, but they bore up manfully; and the Kewpie never lost his arch, heroic smile.
Suddenly Schlorge, who was ahead, came stealing back to them. “Hist!” he cried, and all the Gunki hissed venomously. “I saw it light in an am-bush just to the left of that big rock. Now, I want you all to spread out and form a large circle, with the bush in the centre; then, if I miss it, everybody must try to shoo it back toward the middle. Don’t let it pass over you.”
So they all stole to the places Schlorge indicated, and then waited breathlessly while he stealthily approached the am-bush. The little laugh, feeling over-confident, must have been dozing; for it did not see him until he was within a few feet. Then it flew out wildly, with a sound like that made by the wings of a mother bird who leaves her nest at the last moment. But it was caught at last. With one skilful, triumphant swoop Schlorge had it.
And then how it did titter and twitter and giggle and struggle! It fanned its wings as furiously as a Zizz; it was as wild as a moon-moth in a net, or a bird you hold in your hand. And all the time, it was about to die with amusement.
They all gathered around to see what a darling little thing it was. Even Schlorge admired it openly; and the Snimmy’s wife said grudgingly, “It sure is pretty.” As for the Snimmy, he buried his face in his hands. “I can’t stand it!” he groaned, and the gum-drops began to squeeze through his fingers. “It makes him think of dimples,” his wife explained, in a low tone, to Sara.
“‘So near and yet so far,’ you know,” fluttered the Teacup, sympathetically.
The next thing was to decide how to get their captive home. Schlorge was quite sure it couldn’t break the net; still, he thought it best to accept the Brown Teddy-Bear’s suggestion that they put it, net and all, into the Snimmy’s wife’s basket, and tie the lid securely.
“‘Specially since we have to go around by the Smithy,” he added, “and patch up our brittle friend, here.”
So they made the little laugh secure in the basket, and went on toward the Smithy. It kept them all amused by the happy, ridiculous little sounds it made, giggling and scuttling and fluttering about in the basket. Even the Brown Teddy-Bear smiled once or twice.
Toward sundown they reached the Smithy, and Schlorge had soon turned his anvil into an operating table, on which they laid the uncomplaining little sufferer. The Snimmy’s wife said there were plenty of onions at home in the sugar-bowl, and Schlorge offered to send a Gunkus after them; but the Kewpie would not hear of it, so Schlorge mended him quite quickly and neatly without an anaesthetic at all. He declared himself able to walk, at once, but they persuaded him to let the Gunki carry him to the gate on the stretcher. And so they all escorted Sara and her dolls back to the dimple-holder in state.
The Snoodle was awake, and howling lonesomely; but he was soon frisking happily about their feet. The Plynck flew at once to her branch and looked into the pool, and there sat her Echo.
“Have a pleasant day?” the latter asked, inscrutably.
But the Plynck was so puzzled that she said nothing at all. However, when she was leaving the Garden, Sara heard her say to the Teacup, as she slipped on an iris-colored kimono and shook down her back plumes,
“I think I won’t break any rules tomorrow. I think I’ll just rest.”