The Unspeakable Perk Part 4

A long patient sigh exhaled from below.

"Do you want me to guide you?"

"No," she retorted, and was instantly panic-stricken, for the monosyllable was of that accent which sets fire to bridges and burns them beyond hope of return.

Slowly she got to her feet. Perhaps she would have dared and gone; perhaps she would have swallowed pride and her negative, and made one more appeal. She turned hesitantly and saw the devil.

It was a small devil on stilts, not more than three or four inches tall, but there was no mistaking his ident.i.ty. No other living thing could possess such demoniac little red-hot pin points of eyes, or be so bristly and grisly and vicious. The stilts suddenly folded flat, and the devil rushed upon his prey. The girl stepped back; her foot turned and caught, and--

"Of course," the patient voice below was saying, "if you really think that you couldn't find the road, I could draw you a map and send it up by the hair route. But I really think--"

"BLUMP!"

The rock had turned over on his unprotected head and flattened him out forever. Such was his first thought. When he finally collected himself, his eyegla.s.ses, and his senses, he sustained a second shock more violent than the first.

Two paces away, the Voice, duly and most appropriately embodied, sat half-facing him. The Voice's eyes confirmed his worst suspicions, and, dazed though they were at the moment, there were deep lights in them that wholly disordered his mental mechanism. Nor were her first words such as to restore his deranged faculties.

"Oh-h! Aren't you GOGGLESOME!" she cried dizzily.

He raised his hands to the huge brown spectacles.

"Wh--wh--what did you come down for?" he babbled. There was a distinct note of accusation in the query.

"COME down! I fell!"

"Yes, yes; that may be true--"

"MAY be!"

"Of course, it is true. I--I--I see it's true. I'm awfully sorry."

"Sorry? What for?"

"That you came. That you fell, I mean to say. I--I--I don't really know what I mean to say."

"No wonder, poor boy! I landed right on you, didn't I?"

"Did you? Something did. I thought it was the mountain."

"You aren't very complimentary," she pouted. "But there! I dare say I knocked your thoughts all to bits."

"No; not at all. Certainly, I mean. It doesn't matter. See here," he said, with an injured sharpness of inquiry born of his own exasperation at his verbal fumbling, "you said you wouldn't, and here you are. I ask you, is that fair and honorable?"

"Well, if it comes to that," she countered, "you promised that you'd never speak to me if you saw me, and here you are telling me that you don't want me around the place at all. It's very rude and inhospitable, I consider."

"I can't help it," he said miserably. "I'm afraid."

"You don't look it. You look disagreeable."

"As long as you stayed where you belonged--Excuse me--I don't mean to be impolite--but I--I--You see--as long as you were just a voice, I could manage all right, but now that you are--er--er--you--" His speech trailed off lamentably into meaningless stutterings.

The girl turned amazed and amused eyes upon him.

"What on earth ails the poor man?" she inquired of all creation.

"I told you. I--I'm shy."

"Not really! I thought it was a joke."

"Qu'est-ce qu'il dit? Qu'est-ce qu'il dit?" demanded the yellow-breasted inquisitor, from his flowery perch.

"What does he say? He says he's shy. Poor poo--er young, helpless thing!" And her laughter put to shame a palm thrush who was giving what he had up to that moment considered a highly creditable musical performance.

"All right!" he retorted warmly. "Laugh if you want to! But after stipulating that we should be strangers, to--to act this way--well, I think it's--it's--forward. That's what I think it is."

"Do you, indeed? Perhaps you think it's pleasant for me, after I've opened my heart to a stranger, to have him forced on me as an acquaintance!"

From the depths of those limpid eyes welled up a little film of vexation.

"O Lord! Don't do that!" he implored. "I didn't mean--I'm a bear--a pig--a--a--a scarab--I'm anything you choose. Only don't do that!"

"I'm not doing anything."

"Of course you're not. That's fine! As for your secrets, I dare say I wouldn't know you again if I saw you."

"Oh, wouldn't you?" she cried in quite another tone.

"Quite likely not. These gla.s.ses, you see. They make things look quite queer."

"Or if you heard me?" she challenged.

"Ah, well, that's different. But I forget quite easily--even things like voices."

She leaned forward, her hands in her lap, her eyes upon the goggled face before her.

"Then take them off."

"What? My gla.s.ses?"

"Take them off!"

"Wh--wh--why should I?"

"So that you can see me better."

"I don't want to see you better."

"Yes, you do. I'm much more interesting than a scarab."