Page:St. Nicholas - Volume 41, Part 1.djvu/434

388 table, and in every bookcase. In one corner there ’s a wooden door sunk under an arch, and if you open it unexpectedly, you may find yourself looking over the world in sudden light, on a giddy little platform with a spiral stair running down as fast as it can into the garden. In another corner of the room, almost as far away as possible from the daylight door, the Wizard keeps a second door, up a dark stair. I have n’t had the courage to mount that stair and discover the mystery behind that door, that, as behind the first door the Wizard keeps his brightest spells, so behind the second he keeps his blackest.

Luckily for mes he was in a harmless mood enough the last time I saw him. I had almost said that, for o wizard, he was in a helpless mood. He was looking for a letter, in much the same way as my mother looks for her house-keeping bag seven times a day. We were chatting about odds and ends as he hovered vaguely among the furniture.

“You see,” he was saving, “so-and-so, and so- and-so, and so-and-so but [ must read you that letter  and then such-and-such, and such-and-such—where is that letter? did I leave it in Barbara’s room?” (Here he vanished without so much as hey presto! and reappeared as rapidly.) “No, I can’t find it—and so etc., etc., etc.,—you really should hear the letter, but it is n’t here, or here—let me look once more.” (Again he vanished, and again came empty-handed.) “Of course,” he reflected, picking up some kind of a portfolio in a discouraged way, “this is where it ought to be.” He opened the portiolio, and that was where it was, Then, looking at me warningly through the Spectacles of Cunning, he observed: “Ah! now you see the mistake of putting things in their proper places!” St Nicholas-V41-P1-416.jpg

It is one of his peculiarities that, like his own house, Arthur Rackham steps back a little in the corner off 1he highway the moment you try to come and find him. I don’t mean by this that he literally shuts his mouth and runs away. On the contrary, his instincts are social. He likes company, and he likes fun. And he is far from locking himself up in his studio. He is to be found almost as often in the garden, where, in his own words, he is “continually moving paths and flower beds”—a process that entails long