Muffs tried to remember something about the Public Notice. It was something important that she should have remembered before. Tommy had told her. He had told her in the middle of the night when she was too sleepy to listen. Now, after she had mixed things up and frightened everybody, she remembered all about it. She had told Mrs. Tyler that Tommy went to see a fire when it wasn’t a fire at all but only his lantern shining in her face. He had really gone to the Post Office to fix up the Public Notice before people came for their mail. He hadn’t hurried right back the way he said he would and, with things appearing and disappearing the way they did, something terrible might have happened to him.
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” thought Muffs. “What a perfectly awful mess! What am I going to do?”
She looked at the side of Mrs. Tyler’s face and wished that she would smile. Maybe she’d dare tell her then. She looked at Mary, walking along on the other side of her mother, and knew she couldn’t tell her either. Mary would argue and Mrs. Tyler would never believe that she had forgotten. It would be like her story about the rabbit. She guessed nobody ever would believe what she said any more. After that queer expedition to the ends of the earth she and Mary and Tommy (if they found him) would be like three children in a fairy tale. Only it was easier for Mary because she wasn’t afraid to argue with grown-ups.
New York and her own mother seemed very far away to Muffs as she hurried along the road, trying to match her small steps to Mary’s and Mrs. Tyler’s. She felt the way she had done when she broke the vase and when Mr. and Mrs. Lippett scolded her for having Bunny Bright Eyes in her hat. Little girls were supposed to know so much when they were away from home. And it was hard to tell dreams from real things, especially when the real things were stranger than the dreams.
“We might—we might just look for Tommy in the Post Office,” Muffs suggested timidly as they turned onto the big road.
“Why the Post Office?” Mrs. Tyler asked.
“Maybe—there wasn’t a fire. Maybe he really went to the Post Office to fix up the Public Notice.”
“But you said he went to see a fire.”
“I thought he did—and then I remembered he didn’t.”
“You mean you made up what you told me about the fire?” demanded Mrs. Tyler.