The Garden of the Plynck | Page 9

had the marble balcony, with the box-trees in urns. For, without knowing it, it was Avrillia's balcony that Sara had seen from the stump.
"Well, there's Pirlaps," said Schlorge, lifting his shoe politely and turning back toward the Dimplesmithy. "He'll tell you where to find Avrillia."
Sara was left looking at a middle-aged fairy-gentleman with a little pointed beard, who was sitting on a sort of stool or box before an easel, hard at work. He had on white tennis-flannels, and an odd but becoming sort of cap. Usually Sara was very shy of strangers; but this gentleman looked so pleasant that she had almost made up her mind to speak to him when she saw Schlorge running wildly back up the path. "Where's a stump?" he panted. "I forgot--where's a stump?"
He spoke so loudly that the gentleman in tennis-flannels heard him and looked around. "Oh, it's you, Schlorge," he said. "Why, there isn't any stump here, you know--but you may use my step, if you like."
He had lovely manners, even with a plain dimplesmith like Schlorge; and he rose as he spoke, with his palette in his hand, and made a pleasant gesture to indicate that Schlorge was quite welcome to it. But Schlorge looked at it doubtfully; and, indeed, Sara saw that it was of chocolate, and rather soft where the gentleman had been sitting on it. "I don't want to soil my soul," mumbled Schlorge, standing on one foot and looking down at the sole of the other, very much agitated and embarrassed.
"That's true," said the gentleman politely; "I never stand on it." At that Sara could not help showing that she noticed the large black spot left by the chocolate on the seat of his trousers. He saw her look at it, and spoke to her kindly.
"That's all right, little girl," he said. "Avrillia will have me change them in a minute."
Then he noticed Schlorge's dreadful impatience for something to stand on, and rang a little bell in his left ear.
Immediately a small servant, also of chocolate, came tumbling out of the house. He was the most attractive-looking person you can imagine. His eyes and teeth were exactly like the filling in a chocolate cream, and how his eyes rolled and his teeth twinkled! But it was the inside of his mouth that fascinated Sara most. It was of the lovely, violent red of certain jelly-beans she had known, and she caught the most tantalizing, cavernous glimpses whenever he grinned.
"Yassuh," said his master, "go at once and get a piece of plain white satin for Mr. Schlorge to stand on. You'll find a bolt in the tool-box."
Yassuh scrambled off down the path. (He was very bow-legged, because his mother had allowed him to go out in the sun too much, when he was a baby, and, being of chocolate, his legs had softened into that shape.) Almost immediately he came rolling back with the white satin, which he spread on the box.
All this time Schlorge had been in an agony of impatience. Almost stepping on Yassuh in his eagerness, he jumped upon the box, and, arranging his hands as before, shouted loudly, "Pirlaps, this is Sara, a little girl! Sara, this is Pirlaps, Avrillia's step-husband!" Then he sprang down and went running down the path again, shouting excitedly, "See you again, Sara! See you again!"
"Well, Sara," said the pleasant fairy-gentleman, taking her hand, "how are you? Did you come to see Avrillia?"
"Yes, sir," said Sara, looking up at him from under her lashes and thinking she had never see a shaving-person, except her own father, so delightful.
"I think you'll find her on her balcony," said Pirlaps, kindly. "I just heard a poem drop over the Verge. Here, Yassuh," he said, "take this little girl to your mistress."
Sara followed Yassuh along the path of silver gravel that led around the house, and then up a little outside staircase of marble to the balcony; and there, on the third step from the top, she paused.
Has any mortal but Sara ever seen Avrillia? Certainly there never was another fairy so wan and wild and beautiful. When Sara caught sight of her she was leaning over the marble balustrade, looking down into Nothing, and one hand was still stretched out as if it had just let something fall. She seemed to be still watching its descent. Her body, as she leaned, was like a reed, and her hair was pale-gold and cloudy. But all that was nothing beside Avrillia's eyes.
For she turned around after a while and saw Sara, and smiled at her without surprise, though she looked absent-minded and wistful.
"It didn't stick," she said.
"What didn't?" asked Sara. Her words may not sound very polite; but if you could have heard the awe and wonder in her little voice you would have