Argosy, Vol. 118, No. 4 — page 35: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

THE LITTLE GIRL WHO NEVER saw against the glass a child’s form robed in white. The great ray was inexorable in its searching there. The loft was filled with silvery light; dusty beams and boxes, walls, and cobwebbed corners; but before them a strange misshapen object—a tower, a pyramid, perhaps—that gleamed darkly, even as the child’s form shimmered with radiance. The girl gasped at the apparition. Then the search-light vanished to the sky; she was staring at blank, dreary windows where presently a little candle shone and moved. ‘What was that? What are they doing there?” she whispered. And the next morning, when she came upon Carlotta Labat and Mr. Peretti in the square, she looked sharply at the child who never saw a hill. She was reproving Mr. Peretti because he had spilled some hot pipe ashes on a purple mountain. Men are so careless about some things, and yet it’s hard to ruin a good mountain. The tall girl was going to ask Carlotta a wondering question, but the child seized Mr. Peretti’s mountain and ran off home and up the stairs and the ladder to the trap-door to the lodgings’ attic. Papa Louis was away all day, and snored all night—a perfectly fine papa, who never interfered, and even helped wash dishes at night. Carlotta climbed through the hole in the brick wall to the attic next door. “T’ Frere, he gave us another moun- tain—a purple one with a tobacco hole burned in it!” ‘‘ Aw, we don’t care about Peretti’s ol’ mountains! I been tryin’ to pry open the winder! It’s all rusty, and there’s wasps in it.” ! And they heaved and heaved again against the frames of the heavy French windows whose immense drop-bolts were forged, doubtless in the slave-smithy that Jean Lafitte had maintained a century ago around the corner, and then gave it up. It would take:a strong man to make the sun- shine. The little girl stood ankle-deep in stuff that no vain queen would have flung about unheeded. Dragged from a slit bale was a breadth of azure silk, and with this in her hands she looked up at the dirty rafters. SAW A HILL. - “Tf we had a ladder and some tacks,” she went on, ‘‘ we could make sky.” “A feller can’t do everything. I built a river around the mountain, and a cave for robbers. You got to play you was a prin- cess, and robbers chased you around the mountain. You got silk enough for forty princesses.” | ‘“'T’ Frere!” she cried joyously. ‘‘ We’re the richest people in the world! But some- body’s got to make sunshine!” | It was true. The loft was a darkly coruscating cavern. From wall to wall it was carpeted with silks, but in the shad- ows it was hard to distinguish a sapphire castle from a robber’s roost of garnet; and a river of tangerine is much like a corn- flower meadow. Yes, a practical handy Olympian god with a stepladder could as- sist a lot. He might even put up a starry firmament to cover the cobwebbed rafters. But the magic makers stood in a world of softly darkling colors. ‘ There’s lots and lots, but we can’t hang up any more,” mused Carlotta. ‘“ And when it’s all done we can play. But there must be sunshine; if you were only big enough, T’ Frere, to open the windows.” “We could get Mr. Peretti, but he couldn’t climb that ladder.” ‘“No. And maybe he’d laugh. And other people ’d want to tear it down and sell it to the stores where they only give you such a little bit for a dollar.” She thought of all the people she knew, but there are so few with whom one can trust a mountain. Even the philosophers will persist in tinkering with the universe, when—as every one should know—a good mountain cannot be improved upon; nor stars, nor the sea; or sunshine, or a child’s dream, or anything worth while. So the girl who had never seen a hill went out in the plaza looking curiously at the people, wondering if any one of them was good at keeping secrets. She trusted sailors more than other people because of Mr. Peretti, who loved mountains, She had gone around the bronze general in the middle of the plaza before she dis- covered Mr. Peretti. He was not on his accustomed bench, but coming along the walk from the French market, and with him 505 mn (S| QO) NOOK