The Garden of the Plynck Part 8

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! Ya.s.suh 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 ravis.h.i.+ng place she had ever seen; at least she though so until Pirlaps distractedly led her down into the bas.e.m.e.nt 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 Ya.s.suh, 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 ma.s.sive and efficient-looking. On the table, looking so delicious that they made your mouth water, were the ingredients with which Ya.s.suh had been working: a bubble-pitcher of milk-weed cream, a bowl of b.u.t.terfly 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.

"Ya.s.suh!" 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 Ya.s.suh 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 Ya.s.suh, 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 Ya.s.suh.

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 m.u.f.fin-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 m.u.f.fins (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, Ya.s.suh!" 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!"

Ya.s.suh, 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 bal.u.s.trade, 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 Ya.s.suh 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-cus.h.i.+ons 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 Ya.s.suh'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 Ya.s.suh and Pirlaps and Avrillia--supplying crumbs and suet to those thankless Birds. The lovely Skybird did, toward sundown, trill a beautiful little song of grat.i.tude; but she addressed it to n.o.body 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 Redp.e.c.k.e.r 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 Ya.s.suh 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 s.h.i.+ning, 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, Ya.s.suh, and go to sleep," cried Avrillia; and so saying she took down her kitchen-ap.r.o.n from the gold-headed pin where it hung and began to flit about the cook-table--measuring out snow-sugar and breaking b.u.t.terfly eggs into her s.h.i.+ning cups and bowls. Then she got out the silver waffle-irons (Sara wanted them for her toy stove) and b.u.t.tered 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 sh.e.l.l dishes, and put on a jar of honeysuckle honey and a pat of b.u.t.tercup b.u.t.ter. 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 s.h.i.+ning 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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!