The Garden of the Plynck | Page 7

Plynck. "Where are the forceps? Run for Schlorge--won't somebody please run for Schlorge?"
She sat fluttering her lovely pink plumes and gazing around with her sweet, wild, golden eyes in such acute distress that the sight of her grieved and terrified Sara even more than the awful tickling. "I'll go--" she began, desperately.
But that seemed to frighten the Plynck more than ever. "Oh, don't you go," she cried, more wildly than before. "You stay right here where I can watch it! Oh, somebody--"
"I can't come out of the pool," panted her Echo, fluttering around the rim distressfully.
"I know I could never in Zeelup get there, with this consanguineous handle," hesitated the Teacup, in tears.
And just then they saw one of the Gunki rushing off down the road as fast as his feet could carry him.
The Plynck drew a sobbing breath of relief. "Don't cry, dear--stand still," she said, finding time at last to feel sorry for Sara. "We'll soon have it out now, when Schlorge gets here."
Sara stood as still as she could, for the tickling. "What is it?" she ventured to ask, tremulously.
"It's a Zizz, dear," said the Plynck, soothingly. "He flew into your dimple and got stuck in the sugar left there from your last smile. You should have wiped it off," she added, very gently. "Standing so close to the pool has made it sticky, and now the poor little Zizz--"
"I meant to take off my dimples entirely," said Sara, her lip beginning to tremble again.
"Never mind, dear," said the Plynck. "It will be all right now. I see Schlorge coming with his forceps."
And sure enough, in a moment Schlorge came panting up, with his forceps in his hair, as usual. Very deftly he extricated the poor little Zizz, and held it out for Sara to see, still buzzing its wings as furiously as it could, with so much syrup on them.
The Teacup fluttered down, and they all looked at it with mingled sympathy and curiosity. The mixture seemed to agree with it, too, for the familiar faint, pale-blue "zizzing" sound began to come from its wings.
"Poor little thing!" said the Echo of the Plynck. "Why will they persist in doing it? Flying right into the syrup like that!"
"It's on account of the bitterness of their tails," explained Schlorge absently, without looking up from his work.
"Oh, yes," said Sara, though she didn't quite understand. "Will it ever be able to fly again?"
"Well," answered Schlorge, "I'm afraid you'll have to dry it." He looked about him. "Where's the stump?"
He found it presently, and led Sara to its mossy base; then he gently pressed one of her shoe-buttons, and she was lifted upon it in safety.
"Now," he explained, "you got it all sticky with your smile, and you'll have to frown on it to dry it. I know it's hard to do, here, but if you keep your mind on it, you can. I'll hold the Zizz's wings out, and it won't take long. Think of something very unpleasant--something you came here to escape. Come, what shall it be?"
"Fractions," said Sara.
"All right," said Schlorge. "Now think hard. And frown."
So Sara sucked in the corners of her mouth to keep from smiling, and tried hard to feel very cross indeed. But, as you will imagine, it was not easy to do in that place. As you have already guessed, the place into which Sara went when she shut the ivory doors was a sort of garden, but not an ordinary one. To be sure, it had the pool, and the fountain in the middle, and the moon-dial, like most gardens, and the Gugollaph-tree where the Plynck sat, and a good many prose-bushes besides the one with the hemmed doorknob where the Snimmy lived with his wife. But not many gardens have such charming little openings in the flowery hedges that shut them in, through which little paths run out as if they were escaping through sheer mischief, and on purpose to lead you on. And not many are placed, as this one seemed to be, in the middle of a sort of amphitheatre, with distant mountains rising like walls about it, golden and pansy-colored, a million miles away. The space that lay between the hedge and the mountain-walls seemed to be filled with sunrises and sunsets, like the Grand Canyon. I said, all around; but, really, the walls of the amphitheatre didn't quite meet. On one side, over the hedge, Sara could see a marble balcony, with box-trees in vases on the balustrades; and beyond and beneath it there was Nothing--Nothing-at-All. Sometimes, as Sara afterward learned, the sun came to that place to set; but usually it was too lonesome, and he set nearer the Garden.
You may well imagine that it was not easy for Sara to look cross in such