“It’s beginning to go down hill again,” cried Mary after another five minutes of tramping.
“Do you suppose,” questioned Muffins doubtfully, “that a wondrous wise man would live in the woods as far away from other people as this?”
“Wise men like to be alone,” said Tommy knowingly.
“They like company,” contradicted Mary.
“I think you’re both right,” Muffins declared. “Sometimes they like to be alone and sometimes they like company. I’m that way too,” she added, seating herself on a stone to rest.
“Little Miss Muffet sat on a tuffet,” sang out Tommy in his tuneless voice.
“That stone is not a tuffet.”
But this time Tommy would not quarrel with Mary. It might spoil the magic of their play. “Well,” he said slowly, “if it isn’t a tuffet, then what is?”
None of them knew. Such a simple little word and yet they hadn’t an idea in the world what it meant. They asked the Guide and he only stared at them out of his sharp eyes and the tap-tapping of his feet on the trail was their only answer. But the Bramble Bush Man would know.
“We’ll ask him, first thing,” agreed Muffins. “Then if he tells us the answer to that we’ll start asking him other things.”