the burned tailor shop had stopped smoking but there was still a crowd around the ruins and the queer little tailor was still hopping about and talking of his loss. he was a thin man with big glasses and very bushy hair. it stood straight up under his hat and looked almost like the splints on the broom that tommy had made into a make-believe tailor. tommy and muffs and mary edged closer to hear what he was saying.
“twenty pair of pants!” he said sorrowfully.
“what’s he talking about?” tommy asked an older boy.
the boy grinned. “twenty pair of pants.”
“we heard that. but what about them?”
“he burned them up,” answered the boy. then he looked at tommy. “sa-ay! aren’t you the fellow who turned in the alarm? come and i’ll show you.”
so the big boy led the way through the ruins of the tailor shop. it wasn’t very safe but nobody was paying any attention to that. muffs touched the blackened wood as they passed and thought of the charcoal that her mother used to draw pictures with. she broke off a piece and drew a picture on the back of the big boy’s white shirt.
“what’s this?” asked mary. she kicked something hard that lay on the burned place where the floor boards used to be.
45 “it’s his iron!” exclaimed tommy. “i’d like to bet that’s what started the fire.”
she kicked something hard
that lay on the burned place where the floor boards used to be.
he picked it up and ran outside to show the tailor but the tailor had gone. everybody had gone except a few children who took turns holding the iron to see how heavy it was. it was pretty heavy for any of them to carry but muffs had an idea. she took off the hair ribbon that she was wearing alice-in-wonderland style about her head and tied one end of it through the holes in the iron where the handle, if it hadn’t burned up, was supposed to go.
“now it’s a duck,” she said. “it’s fannie flatbreast.”
she pulled the duck about the ruins of the tailor shop and its flat breast sounded clank! clank! whenever they went over a crack.
the next discovery was an old broom. it was made of fibre and only a part of it had burned. the red strings that46 bound the fibres together looked even more like a mouth than the strings on tommy’s broom in the workshop. the bramble bush man’s glasses provided eyes and made the creature look wondrous wise as well. tommy hid himself behind the broom and made believe it was the tailor. he was hopping around, nodding his head and explaining the fire to a group of play customers when along came a real customer. he stood still for a moment, then muttered something to himself and turned to go away.
“look at him!” called all the children. several of them pointed their fingers at his back with oh’s and ah’s of surprise. muffs skated to the burned door of the shop with fannie flatbreast and what she saw was the strangest sight on earth.
“why, he hasn’t any head,” she squealed. “he hasn’t any, any, any, any head!”
“look at him!” called all the children.
47 the other children laughed and squealed too and before long they had all caught up her song and were calling at the top of their voices: “he hasn’t any, any, any, any head! he must be a ghost! he must be a giant! he must be the headless horseman of sleepy hollow! he hasn’t any, any, any, any head!”
“he has so!” cried mary. “he’s only covering it up with that coat on a hanger!”
“he’s a fake!” shouted tommy and started running after him, waving the scary-looking broom-tailor. the other children followed. they were all laughing and shouting. none of them stopped to think how they would feel if they came with a coat to be cleaned or mended and found the tailor shop burned down. they didn’t know how heavy the coat was or how far the man had carried it held above his shoulders on a hanger. of course they knew it was only a coat on a hanger and that he was holding48 it above his shoulders. but it looked so queer! and it was such fun to chase him and play he was a headless man.
other children joined the chase until there were more than a dozen. older people looked out of windows and stopped in the road wondering what the noise was all about. a dog set up a furious barking. but still the children kept on running.
“who are you?” called muffs and mary and tommy.
the headless man did not answer. he ran and ran and ran until at last he turned in at the millionaire’s house. he slammed the door shut and left the children still singing outside.
“he hasn’t any, any, any, any head! he must be the headless horseman——”
“he must be somebody important to live in a house like that,” muffs interrupted them in a loud voice.
then they all stood still and looked up at the house. it was the same one that used to belong to old mr. pendleton and he had sold it. nobody knew who lived there now but, whoever it was, he must be another millionaire. on the top floor of his house was one room all of glass and filled with flowers.
“maybe he got rich selling flowers for funerals,” muffs suggested.
“i think he’s a miser,” said mary. “he probably sits upstairs all day counting his money.”
“i wish we knew what his face looks like,” tommy put in. “muffs, i dare you to walk up on his front porch and ring the doorbell.”
“i dare you! i dare you!” shouted all the other children, jumping up and down and clapping their hands.
so muffs marched straight up to the door and rang the bell. she was laughing and panting because she was out of breath.49 but she stopped laughing when the headless man opened the door and she saw his face. he was very, very angry.
“what do you mean by ringing my bell?” he demanded.
“i—i just wanted to see what you looked like——”
“well, you’ve seen,” he said and was about to slam the door when tommy darted in and planted his sturdy little body between muffs and the headless man.
“she’s not used to having doors slammed in her face,” he said. “besides, she’s really a princess doomed to live with a couple of dragons who are mean to her and i think it’s about time someone treated her like royalty.”
the man looked surprised for a moment. his face was a nice face and his eyes looked as if they might twinkle when he wasn’t so angry.
“princesses don’t chase strangers through the public highways,” he said. “princes don’t either. so get out!” and the door closed with a bang.
“aw, heck!” muttered the older boy with the picture on the back of his shirt, “he would have to be a sore head and spoil all the fun.”
“he can’t be a sore head,” sang out contrary mary, “if he hasn’t any, any, any, any head!”
other voices joined her and the children were singing again. tommy waved the tailor, and muffs swung fannie flatbreast on her ribbon. the others took hold of hands and paraded back and forth across the grass on the man’s neatly trimmed lawn. they jumped over his hedge and broke off pieces of shrubbery to wave like flags as they sang:
“headless man! headless man!
come and catch us if you can!”
50 the boy who had made up this new and still more tantalizing song banged on the door with a piece of primrose tree.
“you’ll break the glass!” cried muffs in a fright. “come away and leave him alone. maybe he’s got a headache.”
“he can’t have a headache! he hasn’t any, any, any, any head!” called all the children. “headless man! headless man! come and catch us——”
“i’ll catch you and wring your necks,” he cried, bursting open the door. he had a stick in his hand and shook it at them as he shouted, “get out of here! i’ve had enough of children. it’s a pity a man can’t have peace in his own house what with children banging on doors and breaking in windows——”
“did someone break in his window?” asked one of the older boys, looking a little frightened.
“he’ll get us in trouble yet,” said another as the group scattered.
“go on home!” the headless man was shouting. “go on home to your mothers, every last one of you!”
“i can’t go home to mine,” muffs said sadly.
“why not?” the man demanded. he came right down the steps to look at her as if he had seen her somewhere before and wanted to remember.
“i can’t go home because my mother’s in new york and i’m here,” the child replied. “that’s why.”
“she ought to take better care of you,” snapped the headless man as muffs turned and ran with the others. tommy was ahead. he was still waving the broom and shouting but muffs’ flat-iron duck had grown heavy and hard to pull.
“tommy! tommy!” she called after him. “don’t run so fast! i can’t keep up with you.”
51 so tommy turned around and the tailor turned around and, for the first time, the headless man saw that he was wearing glasses. the bows were hooked securely to his fibre ears, giving him the appearance of a creature half-man, half-cat.
“wait a minute!” he shouted. “whose glasses are you carrying around on that ridiculous-looking broom?”
“whose glasses!” gasped tommy, stopping for breath.
“oh, mister,” muffs put in, “i’m sure they’re not yours. they belong to a wondrous wise man and we’re keeping them until he comes for them.”
“so!” snorted the headless man and looked angrier than ever. “i’m sure no wondrous wise man would trust his glasses to a gang of reckless children.”
“i don’t see why he shouldn’t,” muffs replied.
“humph! wise men have more to do than chase around after children.”
“just what do you know about wise men?” mary asked. she had a way of making people feel uncomfortable and the headless man must have felt very uncomfortable then. he pulled his coat collar up around his neck and walked away.
“headless man!” said tommy under his breath. “gee! he looks like a headless man with that collar turned up.”
“anyway,” said mary, “he lost his head. that’s what great aunt charlotte tells me i do when i’m angry.”
muffs’ face clouded. “i guess that’s what mrs. lippett will do when she hears about this. she’s sure to hear ’cause everybody saw us running with the tailor and i’d rather go right into a dragon’s cave than go back there alone.”
“we’ll go with you,” tommy offered.
mary thought it wouldn’t be wise to take the tailor and52 fannie flatbreast so, after many fond goodbyes, they were left in the ruins of the tailor shop. muffs’ ribbon was left there too, but all the children carried home tell-tale smudges on their hands and faces.
when they neared the corner house they saw there was reason for going in together for mrs. tyler and donald were both standing on the porch talking with mrs. lippett.
“well, it’s about time—” mrs. lippett began but, because of something that was felt rather than said, she waited and let the children explain. their reasons for chasing the headless man sounded funny to donald. he had seen them running with the scary-looking broom and had, though he did not confess it until later, cheered them and whistled. mrs. tyler, however, was grave and mrs. lippett red-faced and angry. she scolded. she complained because the check muffs’ mother had sent for her board was smaller than she thought it ought to be.
“with all this trouble,” she declared, “it’s worth twice what mrs. moffet gives me.”
“perhaps you don’t understand children,” mrs. tyler suggested.
“i don’t understand this one. the lord knows i’d be grateful if someone would take her off my hands.”
“couldn’t we?” mary whispered.
mrs. tyler looked very stern. “do you really think, mary, that you and muffs and tommy should be rewarded for acting like little hoodlums instead of well-behaved children?”
“but, mom—” donald began. “you told mrs. lippett——”
“never mind what i told her,” mrs. tyler stopped him. “the fact remains that the children have been very thoughtless53 and very unkind. they must be made to realize that such a thing must never happen again.”
“i’m sure we’d never chase the headless man again, would we?” mary asked and muffs and tommy agreed that they never would.
“anyway,” tommy said grandly, “we left the broom and the flat-iron in the tailor shop and it’s a buried city as far as we’re concerned.”
“let’s bury the whole thing and go home,” donald suggested.
so they went home together—mrs. tyler, donald, mary, tommy and muffs who knew for sure now that she wouldn’t have to go back to lippetts and face the dragons alone. when mr. tyler heard about it he only laughed and said, “children will be children.” baby ellen waved her arms about and called “how-do” to muffins. even great aunt charlotte gave her pink peppermints and the sun came out and shone all afternoon.
