"Oh, tell me where is my fath-er!"
"Why, of course. They say he's—"
He did not finish; or if he did she heard no end to the sentence. Of a sudden her face had grown almost painfully hot—as a great yellow light flamed against it, a light that shimmered up dazzlingly from the surface of a broad treeless field. This field was like none that she had ever imagined. For its acres were neatly sodded with mirrors.
The little company was on the beveled edge of the field. To halt them, and conspicuously displayed, was a sign. It read—
Keep off The Glass.
"'Keep off the glass,'" read Gwendolyn. "And I don't wonder. 'Cause we'd crack it."
"We don't crack it, we cross it," reminded the Man-Who-Makes-Faces. And stepped boldly upon the gleaming plate.
"My! My!" exclaimed the Piper. "Ain't there a fine crop this year!"
A fine crop? Gwendolyn glanced down. And saw for the first time that the mirrored acres were studded, flower-like, with countless silk-shaded candles!
What curious candles they were! They did not grow horizontally, as she had imagined they must, but upright and candle-like. Above their sticks, which were of brass, silver and decorated porcelain, was a flame, ruddy of tip, sharply pointed, but fat and yellow at the base, where the soft white wax fed the fire; at the other end of the sticks, as like the top light as if it were a perfect reflection, was a second flame. These were candles that burned at both ends.