“I wrote it,” Tommy explained with pride. “Did you read it?”
“I tried to, but it didn’t make sense. Where did you find the glasses?”
“’Way up in the woods. We were following a trail to the ends of the earth. We found the glasses in a bramble bush so we called them eyes and said they belonged to a wondrous wise man. That was because we found them in a bramble bush. You know the rhyme?”
“What rhyme?”
“Why, the one about the man from our town,” Tommy answered. “Say it for him, Muffs, won’t you?”
So Muffs made a curtsey and recited the nursery rhyme. She was surprised that the headless man had never heard it.
“Everyone knows it,” she said. “It’s just one of those rhymes that you hear everywhere.”
“Perhaps,” said the headless man thoughtfully, “I don’t go to the right places to hear such rhymes.”
“He is nice,” thought Muffs. “He’s just as nice as he can be when he isn’t angry.” Aloud she said, “You can come here and I’ll say them for you. I think I like you.”
“But I’m not a very wise man, am I?” he asked.