The Mystery of the Blinking Eye

acres,” Mart answered quickly.
    “That’s not much bigger than your Uncle Andrew’s farm and ours put together,” Ned said.
    Bob and Barbara and Ned—in fact, everyone in the two cabs—were fascinated with the park and their two drivers... everyone, that is, except Trixie. Her mind seemed miles away.
    Honey nudged her. “What’s the matter? You look so serious,” she whispered.
    “I can’t help it. I keep thinking about that Mexican woman and what she wrote. Honey, it’s coming true!”
    “You’re fooling. What are you talking about?”
    “ ‘Great-headed man,’ ” Trixie quoted. “It really means ‘big-headed,’ as we first thought. If I’ve ever heard a big-headed man talk, it’s that driver with all his boasting.”
    Honey burst out laughing. Everyone looked at her inquiringly, and she clapped her hand over her mouth. “It’s a private joke,” she said hastily.
    “It sounded funny enough to share,” suggested Mart.
    “You wouldn’t think it funny at all,” Trixie said. Then she added to Honey under her breath, “Laugh if you want to, but you’ll find out I’m right.”
    Clop. Clop. Clop. Clop.
    “Just look at those boats!” Bob cried. His eyes almost stood out from his head. “Over on that little pond!”
    “That’s Conservatory Pond,” Brian told him. “Do you think we could leave the cabs here, driver, and go over to the pond to look at the boats? I’ve only been there once before, Bob.”
    “Let’s,” Mart said. “The boats are really neat. They’re all scale models. Men over there at the Kerbs Memorial Boathouse help boys, and grown-ups, too, to make model boats.”
    “Gosh!” Bob scrambled out.
    Conservatory Pond was a clear mirror set in a green frame of fresh-cut grass. Scale model boats of all kinds and sizes dotted its waters. Their white sails were reflected in the clear water, which rippled gently, stirred by a gentle breeze that sent boats to windward, each with its own self-steering rig.
    They all settled themselves on the bank to watch. “Uncle Andrew gave you a sailboat when we came here before,” Trixie said to Brian. “It was becalmed, and you were furious. Do you remember?”
    “I was furious because I sat here for hours waiting for it to come to shore.” Brian laughed, remembering. “Then I had to leave. I don’t know what ever became of it.”
    “The men at the boathouse over there probably hauled it in and, when no one claimed it, gave it to some boy—maybe like that one over there.” Trixie pointed to a boy lying prone on the bank, his eyes never leaving his boat, just launched.
    “He makes me think of Stuart Little in E. B. White’s book,” Honey said. “Remember how he sailed the schooner Wasp to beat the big racing sloop?”
    “He sailed ‘straight and true,’ ” Trixie quoted, “and sent the sloop yawing all over the water.”
    “Everyone was so surprised to see a mouse at the helm,” Honey said, laughing. “They kept yelling, ‘Atta mouse! Atta mouse!’ ”
    “He had a terrible time before he ever made port,” Mart remembered. “The water was rough; the wind was blowing up a gale.”
    “I wish the wind were blowing today,” Bob said, looking around him. “We’d see some action with those sails all filled. Gosh, do we have to leave?”
    “I’m afraid we do,” Trixie told him. “We have miles to go and many, many other things to see.”
    Reluctantly they went back to the carriages, where they found both cabbies "relaxing while the horses chomped at the feed bags.
    “I never saw a park so full of statues,” Barbara said as the older cabbie sat up and rubbed his eyes. “There’s one of Hans Christian Andersen, of the Ugly Duckling, the Mad Hatter, and Alice in Wonderland, and—”
    “Statues?” the driver repeated. “Yes, statues. It’s a queer thing, though. You’ll not see a sign of a statue of William Cullen Bryant, him that thought up the whole idea of Central Park.”
    “William Cullen Bryant?” Trixie remembered her English class at Sleepyside. “He was a Massachusetts poet.”
    “He was born there,” the cab driver corrected her. “But for fifty years he lived right here in New York. He edited the best newspaper New York ever had, the Post. In an editorial, way back in the eighties, he spoke out for a city park where people could breathe clean air. The idea caught on, and all this land was bought piece by piece. It cost a fabulous sum... about seven million dollars. Today this very