“Sure! The Bramble Bush Man lives with him. This is the Bramble Bush Man.”
Muffs looked long and hard at the stick creature and then opened her mouth as wide as she could and let out one scream after another.
“I don’t want it to be the Bramble Bush Man! I don’t want it to be the Bramble Bush Man!” she screamed. “I want the Bramble Bush Man to be real and tell me where my daddy went.”
Tommy stood helpless, holding his beloved stick. It suited him all right. It was real enough for him.
Then the headless man appeared and Muffs stopped a scream right in the middle of it. The headless man would be as angry as he was that day the children chased him.
But stranger things were happening by the minute. The headless man wasn’t angry at all.
“There! There!” he said. “Stop this screaming and we’ll find the Bramble Bush Man at once.”
“He isn’t—he isn’t a stick?” gasped Muffs, still sobbing a little.
“Tommy’s Bramble Bush Man may be a stick, but yours isn’t. He’ll find your daddy for you if he has to go to the ends of the earth. Now dry your tears and have breakfast with the lonesome old headless man.”
“Are you really so lonesome?” asked Muffs when they were seated around the breakfast table. They had gone down two long flights of stairs and into a spacious dining room.