The Garden of the Plynck Part 9

"I'll do it for Sara," he said, helpfully, as he dropped them safely upon the whipped cream cus.h.i.+on.

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 gra.s.s, 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 j.a.panese 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 amus.e.m.e.nt. "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 ap.r.o.n 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 gra.s.s, 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 a.s.sured 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 gra.s.s, 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 rus.h.i.+ng 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 s.h.i.+ny, 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 cras.h.i.+ng sound: the kind of sound she had imagined when she stood at the top of the bas.e.m.e.nt steps at home with the gla.s.s pitcher in her hands, wis.h.i.+ng 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 fl.u.s.tered, 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 pa.s.sed 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--s.h.i.+mmering and bright and clear, without a soul left at home but the Plynck's cerulean Echo and the sleeping Snoodle.

As soon as they pa.s.sed 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 j.a.panese 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 hoa.r.s.e 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, ba.s.s, and second ba.s.s. 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.