madeline moffet stood on the corner beside the big sign that said use dragon motor oil. she liked to think of the sign as a warning, beware of dragons and the dragons as mr. and mrs. lippett who lived in the farm house beside the sign. muffs boarded with them. she had been told to go out and play but there was no one to play with except the chickens. they made little friendly noises and tilted their heads.
“talk! talk!” they said and flocked after her.
muffs wanted to talk with somebody. the dragons had an idea that children should be seen and not heard and so she had kept everything she wanted to say all bottled up inside herself. she thought the chickens felt differently about it until she tried to catch one. its squawking frightened her and she dropped all of it but one long tail feather which came out and was left waving in her hand.
“i’ll make b’lieve i’m an indian,” she said to herself and stuck the feather in her yellow hair.
indians were supposed to follow trails. muffs looked up the big road with its little stores and shops and farm houses scattered in between and decided at once that wouldn’t do for a trail. then she looked down the little road that went through4 the woods to the house where the tylers lived. overhanging trees made it seem like a long tunnel. it reminded her of the subway and shopping trips at home with her mother. she walked slowly, thinking of her mother and their little apartment in new york. they called it “the studio” and it was a tiny place with paintings hanging all about and muffs’ own little bed hidden behind a green and gold screen. last night her bed had been hidden behind a curtain on the train. the curtain was green, like those overhanging trees. suddenly muffs began to feel very sad and homesick. then she heard something. it was the strangest sort of thing she had ever heard:
gilly gilly galoo-oo,
i wonder who are you-oo!
it sounded like a song and it came from a tree almost above her head. she looked up. there, in the branches of the tree, was a little boy about her own age. he was looking down at her with a friendly sort of grin as he kept on chanting the song.
“i wonder who you are too-oo!” muffs sang back to him.
“i’m a great discoverer,” he said, sliding out of the tree and leaning against its trunk. “my name’s tommy tyler.”
“and i’m miss muffet. i’m staying with the dragons who live at the end of this road. didn’t you see the big sign, beware of dragons? that means mr. and mrs. lippett.”
“i live at the other end,” said tommy, “with mom and daddy and great aunt charlotte and donald and mary and the baby.”
“my! what a lot of people!” muffs exclaimed. “in my family there’s only mother and me. daddy went off and left5 us when i was just three years old. i touched some of his things and he went to the ends of the earth because there aren’t any children there.”
“did he say that?” questioned tommy, coming closer to muffs. he liked this strange little girl from somewhere else. she was so different from his sister, mary, and all the children he knew at school.
“i don’t exactly remember what he said,” muffs admitted, “but i do know he stomped out of the room and pushed the elevator button so hard he caught his finger——”
“what’s an alligator button?”
“elevator button,” said muffs. “it’s to call the elevators. in new york you go up and down in elevators like little moving houses. the stairs go up and down sometimes too and the subways go right under the river.”
“ooo! don’t you get all wet?”
muffs laughed. “’course not. it’s a tunnel. it goes under where the water is.”
“i’ve got a tunnel,” tommy said importantly. “i discovered it. it goes under the floor in the workshop.”
now it was muffs’ turn to question and tommy’s to answer.
“can you go in it?”
“yes, but you have to crawl and you’re all dressed up. i made a house in there for the gilly galoo bird and thomas junior. they like it but you wouldn’t. the dust makes you sneeze.”
“don’t the gilly galoo bird and thomas junior sneeze?”
“thomas junior’s too busy catching rats and the gilly galoo bird can’t sneeze ’’cause he’s made of iron. he’s a magic6 bird and lives in daddy’s carpenter shop. want to see him?”
muffs did want to see him. the carpenter shop sounded as new and strange to her as her elevators and subways did to tommy. each felt that the other was a little unreal. afraid to take each other’s hands, they started up the road side by side. a big black cat darted out from somewhere in the bushes and began following them.
“that’s thomas junior,” tommy explained. “he likes to go places with me ’cause i’m his master. there’s the house,” he added, pointing to it as they turned the bend in the road.
muffs saw two houses, like twin shadows, against the white sky. a walk connected them and at the far end of the walk on a little flight of steps, sat a girl whom she knew must be mary. she was rocking a baby carriage gently back and forth and singing a lullaby that fitted the tune of rock-a-bye baby, and went like this:
go to sleep, baby. you are so dear.
go to sleep, baby. sister is near.
go to sleep, baby. mother will come.
go to sleep, baby and sister will hum
mmmmm, mmmmm, mmmmm, mmmmm ...
but while she was humming, tommy and muffs came into the wood yard.
“it’s plain as plain,” tommy announced. “we’re not real people at all. ellen is the baby in the tree-top, i’m tommy tucker and you’re the contrary mary who had the garden. and this,” he added, making a low bow and waving one hand toward muffs, “is little miss muffet who sat on a tuffet only she’s frightened away by dragons instead of spiders.”
7 mary stopped humming and looked up in surprise.
“is your real name little miss muffet?” she asked.
“it’s madeline moffet,” the little girl explained, “but mother’s name is madeline too so people call me miss muffet or muffins or just plain muffs.”
“she’s from new york,” said tommy. “she rides in alligators under the river. i wanted to show her balo.”
“what’s balo?” asked muffs.
“it’s what i call the workshop when i’m playing,” tommy explained. “all of daddy’s tools come to life and talk and walk an’ everything. the hammer is a snake, the monkey wrench a gilly galoo bird and daddy’s old broom is a tailor with a funny face.”
“are they alive now?” asked muffs as she stood on tiptoe and peered into the shop window.
“no, because we’re not playing balo. we’re being make-believe people out of books.”
“i’m being myself,” said mary, “and i don’t want to play.”
“you are playing! you are playing!” muffs and tommy both shouted. “you’re being contrary and that makes you contrary mary.”
“i am not contrary and you don’t sing for your supper either, tommy tyler, because you can’t carry a tune.”
“i can sing-song,” said tommy, “and it sounds magic. muffs can sing-song too because she sing-songed back at me when i was calling gilly-galoo out of the tree. that makes us not real and everything we do all day magic.”
“what’s that feather in your hair?” asked mary eyeing the new girl doubtfully.
8she jumped over the one way steps and
almost spilled the basket
“i was playing indian,” muffs explained. “i was following a trail.”
“it was just our road,” tommy put in. “that’s too wide for a trail. but i know where there’s a real trail we could follow. it’s somewhere over in those woods.” he pointed to the hillside beyond the apple orchard. “remember, mary, we started to follow it once——”
“oh, yes!” mary exclaimed. “i remember. but it’s a long trail. it would take all day.”
“we could pack some lunch,” tommy suggested.
“i’ll go in and pack some now!”
so mary, as eager for a picnic as the two younger children, wheeled the baby around to the front porch and left great aunt charlotte minding her. then she ran into the kitchen and asked mrs. tyler if she might have a basket. together9 they filled it with bread and cookies as well as a big jar of strawberry jam.
“here we are,” said mary, opening the kitchen door and running along the narrow walk that the children had named the way of peril. she jumped over the one way steps and almost spilled the basket. “here we are! all ready to start on the expedition.”
tommy had whittled out a whistle from an elderberry branch while she was packing the lunch.
“i’ll be the leader!” he cried, blowing the whistle.
“no, i will,” cried contrary mary.
“but i thought of it,” tommy insisted. “i should be the leader.”
“no, i should!”
it began to sound like a quarrel and, as the day was much too fine for quarreling, muffs sat down on the one way steps to think of a way out. it had been a quarrel that had sent her father to the ends of the earth and she didn’t want anything to spoil this expedition.
“i’ll tell you what,” she exclaimed. “we’re supposed to be story book people so let’s all say mother goose rhymes and the one who thinks of the most can take the lead.”
mary and tommy looked at each other doubtfully, but both of them loved a game and so it was agreed that they should begin by saying the rhymes that fitted their own names. more and more followed until mary could not think of another one and had to drop out. tommy thought of three rhymes after that but muffs knew at least a dozen more.
“i’ll say a beautiful one this time,” she said with a toss of her yellow curls.
10 “no, an ugly one,” said contrary mary.
“i like the funny ones best,” declared tommy. “then we could start off laughing.”
miss muffet scratched her curly head a minute and then her eyes began to dance as they always did whenever she thought of something clever.
“i’ll tell you what,” she cried. “i’ll say a rhyme that’s the prettiest and the ugliest and the funniest all together!”
“you couldn’t!”
“oh, yes, i could,” and to prove it she began reciting:
there was a man in our town and he was wondrous wise.
he jumped into a bramble bush and scratched out both his eyes.
then when he saw his eyes were out, with all his might and main
he jumped into another bush and scratched them in again.
“what’s beautiful about that?” asked mary when she had finished.
“the two words ‘wondrous wise’,” she replied. “and the ugly part is where he scratched his eyes out and the funny part is where he scratched them in again.”
“yes,” said tommy thoughtfully. “there can be a real miss muffet and a real tommy tucker and a real contrary mary, but there couldn’t be a really-and-truly bramble bush man.”
“i think there could,” said contrary mary. “let’s play he lives at the end of the trail.”
“oh, let’s!” cried muffs, clapping her hands. “won’t it be the most fun? only i can’t be the leader,” she added a minute afterwards, “’cause i don’t know the way.”
“we’ll get you a guide then. here’s a hat for him,”11 said tommy handing her his own tall straw hat. muffs stuck her feather in to make the guide look more like an indian.
“but where is the guide?” she asked presently.
mary pointed to a clump of bushes where tommy was busily whittling away at something.
“i think he’s making him,” she whispered.
and, sure enough, when tommy returned he had the guide by the hand. he was very thin and very tall and his hands had leafy fingers. his twig nose pointed straight ahead of him and his eyes were very sharp. tommy’s sharp jack-knife had cut them deep into his head and the gash that served as a mouth was wide and smiling. muffs slipped the hat over his head and it fitted exactly. holding the guide ahead of them, the children started off.
