THE Pixie brightened a bit. “I have a poser this time,” he said. “You must find an acorn on Acorn Street.”
It was Wendell’s turn to look crestfallen. As every Beacon Hill boy knows, Acorn Street is only one block long, or rather one block short, and there isn’t an oak on it. In fact, there isn’t a tree of any kind: there isn’t room for one.
The Pixie looked delighted, but he tried to assume a nonchalant air to hide his triumph. He swung one knee over the other carelessly and tilted his chin.
“We-ell!” said Wendell, a bit discouraged. But the thought came to him that in every fairy story the knight who passes the first of three tests always squeaks through the other two also, so of course there must be some way out.
“I’ll have to be going,” said the Pixie in an offhand way. “You’ll find your arithmetic paper in the desk drawer. See you to-morrow night.{23}”
“Hold on,” said Wendell. “You forgot the aeroplane.”
“Forgot it? How?”
“Aren’t you going to take it along?”
“Good gracious, no,” returned the Pixie peevishly. “I can’t take care of all the truck I tell people to bring me. I don’t run a junk shop. Keep it yourself. I don’t want it.”
Now that was great luck for Wendell. It brought a large amount of pleasure into an existence which would otherwise have been most cheerless; for the unsolved problem loomed before him of finding an acorn on Acorn Street.
He chose to go through Willow Street on his way to school next morning, which brought him of course to the head of Acorn Street. There was the neat little sign fastened on the brick wall,—a bunch of three acorns and the name in artistic lettering,—evidently the creation of an artist brain and fashioned by a master hand. Wendell had an inspiration. He would cut out one of those acorns and take it to the Pixie as a last resort. Of course, he might be arrested and put in jail for mutilating a street sign; and after all his trouble, the Pixie might not consider it an adequate acorn; still the suggestion was something to fall back upon.
Standing at the top of the extremely steep slope which is Acorn Street, Wendell surveyed the prospect doubtfully. He saw a narrow cobble-stoned roadway; on his left, a trim row of doll houses, each with its projecting doorstep and old-fashioned scraper, its spotless white door and shining brass knocker, and{24} a narrow brick sidewalk where two thin people could just walk abreast; on his right, a long brick wall, broken by neat back doors, and a still narrower brick sidewalk where only one very thin person could walk abreast. Nowhere was there a tree, nor room to plant a tree. There were a few straggling blades of grass between the cobble-stones and between the bricks, but not a crevice large enough to accommodate a single acorn.
A postman came along, whistling cheerily. Wendell stood off the brick pavement to let him pass. Perhaps the postman could help.
“This is Acorn Street, isn’t it?” said Wendell.
“Some people call it that,” responded the postman jokingly. “Millionaires’ Alley, I call it.”
“Why, are they all millionaires here?” asked Wendell.
“Just about,” said the postman; “and I knew this street when there were three families in every house, and the walls that black with dirt, you could write your name on ’em in chalk. But these millionaire artists discovered it. Nuts, I call ’em, with their glass studios on the roof and their Packard cars that have to back out whenever the ice truck comes through.”
Wendell felt that they were wandering from the point.
“But did you ever see an acorn here?” he asked.
“Nope,” said the postman. “No acorns here. They named it that, I guess, because it isn’t big enough to be named for a full-grown tree like Walnut or Chestnut. Peanut Street I’d call it.{25}”
“Well, I’ve got to get to school,” said Wendell. He jogged down the short but precipitous length of treeless Acorn Street, and so on to school.
After school, as he started for home, the Public Garden tempted him, and he turned in from Beacon Street. It was a warm October day, and the Garden wore an air of resuscitated midsummer. He sat down on a bench on the Charles Street side, facing the lake, which looked very attractive, although it was no longer bright with the little boating parties and slow-gliding swan-boats of summer. A flock of doves, seeing Wendell settled to stay, fluttered down all around him for expected crumbs; and some busy little sparrows, who are always more alert than the doves and capture twice as much food, hopped along the path. Wendell felt in his pockets for stray provender, but without results. A gray squirrel, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, loped through the rustling leaves, and ran up the bench that Wendell occupied. He had a very busy air as of one who stops for a moment only, in the midst of pressing engagements. A slight inadvertent movement of Wendell’s sent him scurrying down again. He frisked through the dead leaves, dug up something of interest from among them and sat up on his hind legs to handle it. Wendell saw that it was an acorn and noticed that he was sitting under a young oak. “Pity they couldn’t plant a few of them where they belong,” he said bitterly.
After the squirrel’s desertion, he sat there a few minutes longer, but the pigeons, too, soon found that he had no picnic to offer them and flew off in a flock{26} to a small girl with bare knees, accompanied by a French-bonneted nurse, who had a whole bag of popcorn. He got up, then, and, kicking the leaves before him, shuffled out to the wide entrance at Charles and Beacon Streets.
A traffic policeman, very military-looking in trim khaki, was holding up the Charles Street traffic while automobiles spun up and down Beacon Street. Wendell, pausing on the curb, saw him suddenly check the Beacon Street traffic, while still holding the Charles Street lines at bay. The large square expanse was quite clear except for the khaki figure with both arms uplifted. Charles Street truck-drivers prepared to speed up. Beacon Street automobilists craned their heads out to see what was delaying the long double lines. Foot passengers lining the curbstones looked impatient and watched the traffic man for the signal that did not come. Apparently he had forgotten what he was there for.
Then a smile spread along the curb-stone ranks,—a smile that merged into a ripple of laughter quite unusual among self-contained Boston pedestrians, as the impatient waiters saw that the majestic khaki officer was holding up scores of important citizens to let one small gray squirrel cross the street.
It was Wendell’s little friend of the Public Garden, still intent on pressing business, who, unmindful of all safety-first rules, was taking a diagonal cut from corner to corner across one of the busiest thoroughfares of Boston.
“I know that squirrel. He lives in Louisburg Square,” Wendell heard a man say. “I know him by{27} the look in his eye.” Which shows how cocksure of their own judgments some people are.
The squirrel made the farther corner in safety. The traffic man gave the signal. The crowd surged forward, Wendell with them. He crossed by right angles to the squirrel’s corner and saw that busy little beast frisking along Charles Street, with the deliberate purpose of one who knows his goal, and then turning up into quiet Chestnut Street.
Wendell followed him, as it was his direct route also; but it was not until the squirrel turned from Chestnut Street into West Cedar Street that Wendell saw with fast-beating heart that he carried in his mouth an acorn for his winter storehouse. If the squirrel should—oh, if only he should—! Yes, opposite Acorn Street he paused. It was evident that he had intended to proceed along West Cedar Street to Mount Vernon Street, which bounds Louisburg Square on the nearer side; but on the door-step of a West Cedar Street house sat a cat, a sleek gray pussy, and when she saw the squirrel, she grew tense all over and began to quiver, commencing at the tip of her tail; and the squirrel saw her—and turned up into Acorn Street.
Would he drop it? oh, would he? Would no yapping puppy come to the rescue? Would no tidbit of garbage tempt him to investigation? No, Acorn Street appeared deserted by man and beast. Its aristocratic spotlessness offered no hope of a bread crust or even a banana peel.
But just then one of the spotless white doors opened. A baby girl emerged right in the path of{28} the squirrel. He was not alarmed: baby girls had been a bountiful providence to him since his infancy. But this baby was a determined little maiden whose brain and hand worked in unison. Quick as thought she grabbed the squirrel’s beautiful bushy tail, and quite as quickly she loosed it, for the little gray chap dropped his acorn and turned his sharp teeth upon that plump little hand. Then, as he felt himself free, he scurried up the hill without stopping for anything, and turned westward toward Louisburg Square. When Wendell passed through the Square, the acorn safe in his trousers pocket, the squirrel was still chattering excitedly on the branch of a tree, scolding every one in particular and in general for the loss of his acorn.
“It’s a shame, old chap,” said Wendell, pausing to peer at him through the iron railing. “But I’ll bring you a bag of peanuts to make up for it, you old life-saver, you.”
The Pixie wore an air of quiet triumph when he appeared in Wendell’s room that evening. So did Wendell.
“Well,” said the Pixie. “Do you give up this time?”
“Not this time,” said Wendell, quietly but with great enjoyment, and he fished the acorn out of his pocket and laid it on the desk in front of the Pixie, who glared at it savagely.
“Well,” said Wendell, “are you satisfied?”
“Oh, yes,” said the Pixie, ironically. “It’s an acorn. I know an acorn when I see one, thank you. But there aren’t any oaks on Acorn Street.”
[Image unavailable.]
SHE GRABBED THE SQUIRREL’S BEAUTIFUL BUSHY TAIL
{29}
“I know it. But a squirrel brought it all the way from the Public Garden and dropped it there. I saw him.”
“A common or garden squirrel?” asked the Pixie incredulously.
“Garden—when I saw him,” said Wendell. “But he might live on the Common for all I know.”
“Some nutty squirrel,” said the Pixie dejectedly, “to block my game that way!” He sat fingering the acorn as if he hoped it would turn into something else.
“Ah!” he said, brightening suddenly. “But I’ve thought of something for the third test that’s a sticker.”
“What is it? A postage stamp?” asked Wendell.
“You won’t feel so funny, young man, when you know what it is,” said the Pixie, glaring.