The Garden of the Plynck | Page 3

tremulously, "Do you suppose I could go after the onions?"
The Plynck looked at her in surprise. "Why, didn't you bring them with you?" she said. Then, suddenly, she noticed how threateningly the Snimmy was dancing and squeaking around Sara's feet, and how Sara was shrinking away from him.
"He won't hurt you," she began. "He's perfectly kind and harmless, aside from his mania for dimples. He still smells the piece under the Teacup." Then, all at once, she grew rigid, and her golden eyes began to leap up and down like frightened flames.
"It's the ones in your hand!" she shrieked. "In your hand! Sit down for your life!"
Sara at first thought she had said, "Run for your life," and had indeed taken two-elevenths of a step; but when she realized that the Plynck had said, "Sit down for your life," she sat down precisely where she was, as if Jimmy had pulled a chair out from under her, on the very ice-cream brick her feet stood on. She realized that in a crisis like this obedience was the only safe thing. And the instant she touched the pavement, the Snimmy gave a great gulping sob and hid his face in his hands; and small, grainy tears the size of gum-drops began to trickle through them and fall into his vest-pocket.
The Echo of the Plynck in the water gave a rippling laugh of relief. "Well," she said, "it's a mercy you remembered that. Perhaps you don't know, my dear," she said, turning to Sara, "that no Snimmy can endure to see a mortal sit down. It simply breaks their hearts. See, he's even forgotten about the dimples."
And indeed, the Snimmy was standing before her, overcome by remorse. He was holding his shoe in his hand in the most gentlemanly manner, and Sara forgave him at once when she saw how sorry and ashamed he was.
"I--hope you'll try to--to--to excuse me, Miss," he sobbed, humbly offering her a handful of gum-drops. "Them dimples--" here, for a moment, his nose began to wink and his feet pranced a little, but he looked closely to see that she was still sitting down, and controlled himself. "Them dimples--" he began again; but he could say no more. The gum-drops began falling all around like hail-stones, so fast that Sara felt that she ought to help him all she could--without getting up--to get them into his vest-pocket.
The clatter of the gum-drops again attracted the attention of the Plynck's Echo, who said, kindly, "Go and take a nap, now, Snimmy, and you'll feel better."
The Snimmy lifted his shoe and tried to reply, but he only gave a respectful sob. So he turned away and crept back to his home in the prose-bush--where, all this time, his wife had been sitting in plain sight on her own toadstool, grimly hemming the doorknob. At her feet lay her faithful Snoodle.
Up to this time, Sara had not ventured to address the Teacup. But, as she looked around and saw her still sitting there, so pleasant and bland and fragile, and with such a consanguineous handle, she felt a sudden certainty that the Teacup would always be kind and helpful; so she suggested timidly,
"Then we shan't need the onions?"
"Oh, dear, yes," answered the Teacup, in a soft, wrinkled voice. "We'd never in Zeelup be able to get the pieces of the dimple to Schlorge without first anaesthetizing the Snimmy."
Sara jumpled: that awful word again! Her head reeled (exactly as heads do in grown-up stories) as she realized how many things there were in this strange place that she didn't know. Who was Schlorge, for example? And how was she to get anything to anybody without getting up? And "anaesthetize"?
She hated to disturb the Teacup; she was knitting so placidly, and murmuring over and over to herself, "Never in Zeelup." She looked up into the tree; the Plynck, too, had fallen asleep, worn out by the unwonted excitement of the morning; and her lovely Echo also slept in the amber pool. Sara now noticed that, though the Plynck was rose-colored, her Echo was cerulean.
The great, soft, curled plumes of the Plynck and her Echo rippled as they breathed and slept, rather like water or fire in a little wind; and with every ripple they seemed to shake out a faint perfume that drifted across Sara's face in waves. And they both looked so lovely that she could not think of disturbing them, either. So she looked about to see if there might be any one else who could enlighten her.
And there at her elbow, as luck would have it, stood a Koopf. Up to this time, Sara had not been able to tell a Koopf from a Gunkus. To be sure, there isn't any difference, really; but you would think that any fairly