“You should have left them in the Bramble Bush Man’s house.”
“But, Mary, we couldn’t leave anything in the ghost of a house,” said Tommy with a shiver. “I s’pose the Guide’s a ghost by now and we’d have been ghosts too if we hadn’t run away.” Then he turned to his new little playmate. “Muffs, you’re from the city and know a lot. Why don’t you think of something?”
So Muffs sat down on a curb stone, still holding the rabbit carefully in the Guide’s tall hat. But all she could think of was how angry the Bramble Bush Man would be when he found the broken vase and missed his rabbit. Then she thought of Mr. and Mrs. Lippett and how they would scold her and wished she were home in her own little bed instead of sitting on a cold stone trying to think. Her bed was so warm and cozy and safe behind the green and gold screen. Then the screen made her think of her mother’s paintings and the paintings, strangely enough, reminded her of signs. The rest was easy.
“We might put up a Public Notice,” she announced.
“But where?”
“I know where!” Tommy cried excitedly. “On the walls of the Post Office. Everybody comes in there after mail.”
Muffs thought she ought to hide the rabbit and stroked its ears so that they would lay flat and not show over the brim of the tall hat. People didn’t carry rabbits in hats when they went to the Post Office.
The big doors were hard to swing open and Tommy was just tall enough to reach the desk. He found a pen and first he tried to write the Public Notice on one side of a blotter. The ink all soaked in and it looked like shadow writing. Then he tried the other side and wrote this:
WE FOUND A PARE
OF EYEZ IN A
BRAMBLE BUSH
IF YOUR WONDROUS
WIZE PLEAZE CUM
AND GET THEM