Zodiac Town Part 8

The young woman rose and came smilingly to the door. A clock somewhere inside struck nine, with quick, sharp strokes.

It sounded so familiar, somehow, that the children cried in alarm, "Oh, it's time for school!"

[Ill.u.s.tration]

"Not quite, for you scholars," the teacher said. "But folks and things in there"--she nodded toward the schoolroom--"are ready and waiting."

Amos and Ann peered past her through the door, but they could see nothing except desks and seats.

"I suppose Columbus has sailed, by this time," remarked the Journeying Man.

"Oh, yes," the young woman replied. "Furthermore, the Mississippi is flowing into the Gulf of Mexico as hard as it can, and rice is growing in j.a.pan."

The children understood, now, and they were both laughing. "Are the prepositions and adverbs in their places?" they asked.

"Multiplication tables set, I suppose?" said J. M.

"Certainly," the teacher answered. "And the tables of weights and measures, too. And many things are here in addition."

"How," asked little Ann, "do the children in Zodiac Town know when it's time for school to open?"

"Just the way the children in any other town know," the teacher replied.

"When bees and birds and b.u.t.terflies Have grown a little lazy; When flowers are rare, with here and there A late rose or a daisy; When streams are slow, and water's low Down in the swimming-pool, And gra.s.s burns brown along the lane, And goldenrod is bright again-- There's something tells you just as plain, 'Time for school!'

"When apples in the orchard lot And pears come thumping, falling; When sweet and clear, far off and near, The bobwhite's voice is calling; When crickets trill out on the hill, And dusk comes quick and cool; When all at once, in midst of play, You can't remember what's the way To multiply--you stop and say, 'Time for school!'"

A clock boomed ten with a familiar sound, and Ann and Amos jumped.

"I almost thought we were an hour late for school," Ann said.

"September's a rather funny month," Amos remarked. "It ends so many things and it begins so many things."

"I like to come home at the end of summer," little Ann said. Then, without waiting at all for a clock to strike she swung into a poem:--

"When we travel back in summer to the old house by the sea, Where long ago my mother lived, a little girl like me, I have the strangest notion that she still is waiting there, A small child in a pinafore with ribbon on her hair.

I hear her in the garden when I go to pick a rose; She follows me along the path on dancing tipsy-toes; I hear her in the hayloft when the hay is slippery-sweet-- A rustle and a scurry and a sound of scampering feet; Yet though I sit as still as still, she never comes to me, The funny little laughing girl my mother used to be.

"Sometimes I nearly catch her as she dodges here and there, Her white dress flutters round a tree and flashes up a stair; Sometimes I almost put my hand upon her ap.r.o.n strings-- Then, just before my fingers close, she's gone again like wings.

A sudden laugh, a sc.r.a.p of song, a footfall on the lawn, And yet, no matter how I run, forever up and gone!

A fairy or a firefly could hardly flit so fast.

When we come home in summer, I have given up at last.

I lay my cheek on mother's. If there's only one for me, I'd rather have her, anyway, than the girl she used to be!"

"That's pretty good," said Amos critically. "I like--"

Before he could go on, a little crystal clock struck four. So Amos had to fall a-rhyming again. He stood on his head and ill.u.s.trated the last two lines of the rhyme.

"I like to have vacation, I like to camp and roam; But mostly, in a curious way, I like the coming home.

"Our old house looks so solid, So settled and arranged; The front gate creaks the same old creak, The chimneys haven't changed.

"Those weeks of sea and mountain Had many valued points; But oh, this loosening of my bones, This limbering of my joints!

"Our old dog comes to meet me With something of a smile-- I wheel right over on my head And wave my legs a while."

OCTOBER

_X_

_OCTOBER_

[Ill.u.s.tration: _Scorpio_]

It was a queer October place-- No house, you'd say, at all!

A wide brown wood with leaves for a floor, And timbers straight and tall.

The little creatures that lived in there-- Fairies and furry things-- Scurried away when the children came, With bashful scamperings.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _It was a queer October place_]

As the travelers entered the woods, they heard funny little clicking sounds everywhere.

"It's the sound a watch makes when you shut it," Ann said.

"Maybe they have watches here instead of clocks," remarked Amos.

"Not at all," said a voice behind them. The voice came from a fat Brownie, who was sitting on a stone with his legs dangling. "They have clocks everywhere in Zodiac Town," the Brownie resumed, "even out here in the suburbs. That noise is the Chestnut Chaps unbuckling their belts and throwing off their overcoats."

The children looked as if they did not know whether he was serious or joking.

"It's the honest truth," said the Brownie. "Listen.

"Every little wing of wind, Every tilt of breeze, Stirs a sound of frolicking In the tallest trees: Scuffling, shuffling, shouldering, Nudges, nips, and taps, Watch and wait a moment, child-- It's the Chestnut Chaps!

"Elbow crowding elbow hard In their breeches brown, If one comrade takes a leap, Ten come bouncing down; When the crackle of a leaf Shakes one lad to laughter, Till he tumbles from his perch, Twenty tumble after.

"Frisky with the silver frost, Wild with windy weather, Half the autumn-tide they spend Giggling all together.

Rough of coat but sweet of heart, Jolly, glad--perhaps Never finer fellows lived Than the Chestnut Chaps!"

As he finished, there came a series of clicks overhead, and seven Chestnut Chaps landed suddenly at the travelers' very feet. As they fell, two gray squirrels darted out to the end of a limb, their tails jerking with excitement; but the Brownie waved them back.

"In this wood," he said, "squirrels are not allowed to feed on chestnuts."

He turned to the squirrels, who were scowling at him from a high branch.

"And you know that very well," he added.