The Garden of the Plynck Part 2

Sara was very proud of herself after she had said that. She had never called anybody "Madame" before, but she had read it in books, and it seemed just the t.i.tle for a creature so beautiful and gentle and stately as the Plynck. It seemed so suitable that it gave her courage to repeat, "If I could only see you fly!"

"But I don't do it often, you see," answered the Plynck, quietly.

"Why--!" exclaimed Sara. "I thought you just said--" Not for worlds would she have seemed rude or impolite to the Plynck, but she was completely puzzled.

The Plynck looked very kind. "I said I make it a rule," she said, gently. "I didn't say--you explain it to her," she said suddenly to her Echo in the pool, who had been looking on with rather an amused expression.

The Echo fluffed out her deep blue plumes a little and took up the task. "What are rules for, my dear?" she began.

"Why--to keep, I guess," ventured Sara, a little fl.u.s.tered. "Aren't they?"

The Echo glanced up at the Plynck with a twinkling smile. "Do you hear that?" she asked. "Bless the child! She says rules are made to keep!"

She laughed to herself a little longer, then she turned to Sara more soberly. "As far as your country is concerned, my dear, you are doubtless right, and I suppose it's important for you to keep that fact in mind. But here it's very different. Our rules are made to break. Don't you hear the Plynck breaking them?"

So that was what she was doing! For the first time, Sara understood why she had so enjoyed the delightful little snapping sounds, which made her think of corn dancing against the lid of a corn-popper--or of the snapping of little dry twigs under the pointed shoes of a brownie, slipping through the woods alone on Christmas Eve. She thought it was the most completely satisfying sound she had ever heard. She thought, too, that the broken rules under the tree made a charming litter, and wished that the Gunki who were raking them up would leave them there instead. But they went on piling them into wheelbarrows and trundling them down the road toward the smithy.

"They are taking them to be mended," said the Echo of the Plynck, who had been watching her. "We believe in conservation, you see. Schlorge mends them one day, and she breaks them the next, and so we usually have plenty."

Sara was charmed. But as she stood gazing at the Plynck she remembered what she had heard her say as she came in. "Will--will she fly?" she whispered to the Echo.

"Well, I don't know," said the Echo of the Plynck. "There's a rule that she must, and so it's quite an effort. And there's a rule that she must not sit on that particular branch of the Gugollaph-tree. So of course she usually sits there. You wouldn't think, yourself, that she'd want to sit there, day after day, if there wasn't--would you?"

Sara was speechless; she was wondering why anything that seemed so reasonable and familiar should sound so strange. But it was a blissful wonder, and she stood spellbound, while the sound of breaking rules continued to fall with an enchanting effect upon the still air of the Garden. All at once she was startled nearly out of her wits by the Plynck, who dropped an unbroken rule and shrieked,

"Look! Be careful! Oh, dear, oh, dear, it's in!"

"Oh, what is it?" cried Sara, afraid to move, yet longing to clap her hand to her cheek; for she knew by a sudden terrible tickling there that something had happened to her southwest dimple--and she had meant to be so careful! And yet she had allowed herself to get so interested in the talk of the Plynck and her Echo that she had walked right past Schlorge's beautiful dimple-holder. "What is it?" she cried, jumping up and down. "Oh, what is it?"

"It's one of the Zizzes!" cried the Plynck. "Where are the forceps?

Run for Schlorge--won't somebody please run for Schlorge?"

She sat fluttering her lovely pink plumes and gazing around with her sweet, wild, golden eyes in such acute distress that the sight of her grieved and terrified Sara even more than the awful tickling. "I'll go--" she began, desperately.

But that seemed to frighten the Plynck more than ever. "Oh, don't you go," she cried, more wildly than before. "You stay right here where I can watch it! Oh, somebody--"

"I can't come out of the pool," panted her Echo, fluttering around the rim distressfully.

"I know I could never in Zeelup get there, with this consanguineous handle," hesitated the Teacup, in tears.

And just then they saw one of the Gunki rushing off down the road as fast as his feet could carry him.

The Plynck drew a sobbing breath of relief. "Don't cry, dear--stand still," she said, finding time at last to feel sorry for Sara. "We'll soon have it out now, when Schlorge gets here."

Sara stood as still as she could, for the tickling. "What is it?" she ventured to ask, tremulously.

"It's a Zizz, dear," said the Plynck, soothingly. "He flew into your dimple and got stuck in the sugar left there from your last smile. You should have wiped it off," she added, very gently. "Standing so close to the pool has made it sticky, and now the poor little Zizz--"

"I meant to take off my dimples entirely," said Sara, her lip beginning to tremble again.

"Never mind, dear," said the Plynck. "It will be all right now. I see Schlorge coming with his forceps."

And sure enough, in a moment Schlorge came panting up, with his forceps in his hair, as usual. Very deftly he extricated the poor little Zizz, and held it out for Sara to see, still buzzing its wings as furiously as it could, with so much syrup on them.

The Teacup fluttered down, and they all looked at it with mingled sympathy and curiosity. The mixture seemed to agree with it, too, for the familiar faint, pale-blue "zizzing" sound began to come from its wings.

"Poor little thing!" said the Echo of the Plynck. "Why will they persist in doing it? Flying right into the syrup like that!"

"It's on account of the bitterness of their tails," explained Schlorge absently, without looking up from his work.

"Oh, yes," said Sara, though she didn't quite understand. "Will it ever be able to fly again?"

"Well," answered Schlorge, "I'm afraid you'll have to dry it." He looked about him. "Where's the stump?"

He found it presently, and led Sara to its mossy base; then he gently pressed one of her shoe-b.u.t.tons, and she was lifted upon it in safety.

"Now," he explained, "you got it all sticky with your smile, and you'll have to frown on it to dry it. I know it's hard to do, here, but if you keep your mind on it, you can. I'll hold the Zizz's wings out, and it won't take long. Think of something very unpleasant--something you came here to escape. Come, what shall it be?"

"Fractions," said Sara.

"All right," said Schlorge. "Now think hard. And frown."

So Sara sucked in the corners of her mouth to keep from smiling, and tried hard to feel very cross indeed. But, as you will imagine, it was not easy to do in that place. As you have already guessed, the place into which Sara went when she shut the ivory doors was a sort of garden, but not an ordinary one. To be sure, it had the pool, and the fountain in the middle, and the moon-dial, like most gardens, and the Gugollaph-tree where the Plynck sat, and a good many prose-bushes besides the one with the hemmed doork.n.o.b where the Snimmy lived with his wife. But not many gardens have such charming little openings in the flowery hedges that shut them in, through which little paths run out as if they were escaping through sheer mischief, and on purpose to lead you on. And not many are placed, as this one seemed to be, in the middle of a sort of amphitheatre, with distant mountains rising like walls about it, golden and pansy-colored, a million miles away. The s.p.a.ce that lay between the hedge and the mountain-walls seemed to be filled with sunrises and sunsets, like the Grand Canyon. I said, all around; but, really, the walls of the amphitheatre didn't quite meet.

On one side, over the hedge, Sara could see a marble balcony, with box-trees in vases on the bal.u.s.trades; and beyond and beneath it there was Nothing--Nothing-at-All. Sometimes, as Sara afterward learned, the sun came to that place to set; but usually it was too lonesome, and he set nearer the Garden.

You may well imagine that it was not easy for Sara to look cross in such a strange, delicious place. But she knew she owed it to the poor little Zizz, so she tried with all her might to think only of fractions and asparagus. (Her mother had an obstinate conviction that that, too, was good for children.)

They were all so interested in listening to the deepening blueness of the sound the Zizz made that they kept quite still. Suddenly Schlorge thought of something.

"Where's the Snimmy?" he asked, sharply.

"He's gone with his wife to bathe the Snoodle," answered the Echo of the Plynck. "They have to bathe it every three days, you know, in castor oil. That's what keeps it white. And there isn't any here."

"Thank goodness!" thought Sara, who had nearly jumped off the stump at the sound of those baleful syllables. It would be good to think of, anyhow, she decided; and as she thought of it, the wings of the Zizz began to dry so fast that they fairly sang. And suddenly it zizzed right out of Schlorge's forceps and went buzzing straight off to the flowery hedge.

"Well!" said Schlorge, with much satisfaction, "that's over." Then, as Sara's face twinkled into smiles, he added, excitedly, "Bless my bellows! She's still got on her dimples! Won't you learn, Sara? Course I didn't notice 'em while you frowned. Come, now--"

"And it's time for the Snimmy to be back," interrupted the Teacup, who had fluttered down and perched on the edge of the moon-dial to see what time it was. "They said they'd only be gone two hours."

"Then there's no time to lose," said Schlorge. He pressed Sara's shoe-b.u.t.ton decidedly and she floated softly down upon the blue plush, like a milk-weed seed in the fall. And then Schlorge deftly took off her dimples--it felt very funny to have them removed with the forceps--and put them in the dimple-holder where they belonged. Then, drawing a deep breath, he rubbed his hands and smiled at her, saying, "What's the next thing you'd like to do?"

Sara saw that, though he was still rather bashful, Schlorge had taken a great fancy to her. It pleased her very much; he was such a useful and accommodating person. While she was trying to decide which one of several places she would ask him to show to her, the Plynck remarked, gently,

"Avrillia's at home."

Avrillia--that was it! Sara clapped her hands again, and this time no harm was done; for her cheek-dimples were safe in the dimple-holder, and her hand-dimples were on the outside, so that the clapping only jarred them a little. It was funny, she thought, that Schlorge scorned to work on hand-dimples, and even the Snimmy scarcely noticed them.

But it didn't worry her. Avrillia--that was it. She had come this time especially to see Avrillia.

"Do you know where she lives?" she asked Schlorge.