The boy nodded and Muffs, with a happy sigh, went on reading her letter.
Now I have something important to tell you. Summer school will be over in just one more week and I am coming to take you home. I don’t know whether you will be glad or sorry but, till then—
Goodbye, and all my love, Mother.
“Which will you be,” Tommy asked, “glad or sorry?”
“A little bit of both. Glad to see Mother and sorry not to have you and Mary to play with any more. I’ll miss Donald and baby Ellen too and your mother and father and Great Aunt Charlotte—and the headless man. He’s getting sort of—sort of mysterious, don’t you think?”
“And he promised to help find the Bramble Bush Man. Gee! You’ll miss him too,” Tommy said. “Couldn’t you coax your mother to let you stay?”
Muffs shook her head. “My school begins in a week. But I do like it here,” she added wistfully.
She and Tommy were sitting on the Way of Peril and everything around them had grown dear to Muffs. She looked out across the swamp to the trees and little stream beyond and thought how different the city was—just hard pavement and children who had never learned how to play. She tried to think of all the nice things she used to do in New York but none of them were very exciting. They weren’t a bit like the expedition or the burned tailor shop or painting the house for Bunny Bright Eyes. There was no Way of Peril to walk, no make-believe creatures and no children half as nice as Mary and Tommy. Donald and Mr. Tyler were always doing wonderfully interesting things too and Mrs. Tyler was a dear. So was Great Aunt Charlotte bedtimes when she passed out pink peppermint candy pillows. Muffs’ little dream fairies slept on them. And it was nice to have a baby in the house to pet and play with. Even the cats were comforting when they sat in anyone’s lap and purred. Thomas Junior wasn’t much given to sitting in laps but Tabby often sat with Muffs. Her fur was soft and white and made the little girl think of Bunny Bright Eyes, the only pet she had ever had.
“If only Mother would stay here,” she thought, “and I had Bunny Bright Eyes again, everything would be just perfect and I wouldn’t care if we never went back to the studio in New York.”
Then she saw Mary coming up the road, wheeling Ellen in her carriage. She had just put her to sleep and now she was ready to play.