Wendell remembered how his nature study teacher had told the class that even the smallest and humblest of creatures has undoubtedly some place in the scheme of things. Even Cousin Virginia had a use in the world, it would seem.
After a long while, Wendell’s father laid down the page, and Wendell picked it up inconspicuously. But not too inconspicuously for Cousin Virginia’s keen laughing eyes.
“Nice little Boston, Wendell,” she whispered to him. “The family picture is complete.”
Wendell read the page through carefully, every word,—the weather, the leaders, the paragraphs, the Nomad, Letters to the Editor, Facts and Fancies, the deaths, and the advertisements. Not one word that gave light on the definition of Boston. Wendell sat in a brown study. Presently, he went up to his room, hoping the Pixie would be there, and sure enough, he was.
“Sounds very probable,” was the Pixie’s comment, after Wendell had laid the facts before him. “Of course it doesn’t have to be to-night’s Transcript. In fact it couldn’t be. It must have been before he put the riddle to you, anyway. I shouldn’t be surprised if you’d hit the bull’s-eye this time. That’s just the kind of riddle he’d propose—something he read in the paper! That’s just the kind of mind he has. There are some people like that, you know, who think if they see it ‘in the paper,’ it must be true.”
“Then,” said Wendell, “you’d advise looking through the old Transcripts till I find it. I could do that, I guess, at the Transcript office.”
He had to wait till Monday, of course. Monday afternoon, he went down directly from school to the Transcript building, which, fitly enough, occupies the historic site of the birthplace of Benjamin Franklin, the great journalist. The Transcript people were most courteous and put their files at Wendell’s disposal. Through editorial page after page floundered Wendell, and if only he could have understood and remembered half that he read, he would have emerged from the newspaper office a complete specimen of the well-read Boston boy, such as his Cousin Virginia pretended to believe he already was. It was nearly dusk before his heart was lightened by a definition of Boston, this one from the pen of Oliver Herford, whom of course Wendell recognized as a delightful contributor to St. Nicholas. Mr. Herford, it seemed, was originally a Boston man, though now dwelling in the outlands, and, said Mr. Herford, “Boston is a center of gravity almost entirely surrounded by Newtons.”
It sounded like sense, though naturally Wendell didn’t quite understand it at first. After he had read it several times, he began to see the point. Encouraged by the views the Pixie had expressed, Wendell decided to stop right in at the Kobold’s on the way home. If he wasn’t on the slope of the hill, or if he remained invisible there, doubtless the spell that worked before would bring him to light again.
But Wendell found no need to use the spell, for the little old Kobold was out in plain sight, at least in plain sight of Wendell, though no one else appeared to notice him in the dusk of evening.
His eye lit up mockingly as Wendell approached.