go on, then I proceeded advancing at great speed, as the clear, odorless air offered little resistance to my blue outline, I was so etherealized that, had it not been for my rigid identity, I might have doubted my own existence.
Then I came all of a sudden into the country of unassembled girls. At first I could scarcely believe my own ghostly eyes. All about me, on the green lawns, among the pleasant trees, were faultless ankles and busts, and girlish heads, and hands, and arms, and feet, and shoulders, and all that goes to make beautiful girls, except the assembly. All these girlish installments were alive, attired in exquisite silks and laces, and all were smiling, or dancing, or swaying, or moving about or faintly stirring. All young and glowing, and fresh and sweet. All maddening dear.
I must have lost my head for a time, for when I came to a more coherent mind I found I had gathered together a considerable quantity of the unassembled girl parts without any definite object in view. I presume my first glowing idea had been to get plenty of parts together, then assemble of the fairest segments ten or twelve complete and perfect maidens.
On examination I found that I had more than sufficient parts for such an undertaking, and selecting the two fairest ankles I proceeded to assemble them with two dainty feet, but alas! there was no coherency between them, and they would not assemble and remain assembled. Again and again I tried, each time failing lamentably. It was the saddest moment of my young ghost life when I realized that while I had every girlish segment in the greatest superfluity and perfection, I yet could not assemble even a single maiden, and keep her assembled till she should take one step, or as much as stand alone.
I would but get a luscious girl assembled on the grass, and then as I sought to rise her to her feet, she would tumble apart like a girl of sand, or cards, or quicksilver, and the parts would move away from one another. If this was the work of old King Chaos, I asked just one whack at old King Chaos.
I worked all that day and night, and well into the next day, trying to get just one girl together for just five minutes, but unsuccessfully. I had all the materials a husky young ghost could desire, and every charming variety of that dear material, but the precious magnetism to bind the lovely parts together was wholly lacking.
I all but wept as I kissed a rosy mouth, then gently lay the girlish head down on the green grass. I couldn't use that girlish petal without the whole blossom. It smiled at me and I turned away and, putting one sad foot before another, passed out of that land of unassembled and unassembable girls.
I had gone an hour's journey when I came to a large rock, and hearing someone conversing behind it I peered around and saw Ben's ghost seated near his ghost bicycle.
"Just my blame blue luck," he was conversing with himself. "After getting her this far, to find I have lost one of her ankles on the way! And the sweetest little ankle this side of poetry! Now I'll have to ride back and hunt for it, and I suppose somebody else will have found it and gone off with it, and I'll have to take an ankle that doesn't match, or do without entirely!"
I saw that there was a nice clean plump sack lying by Ben's bicycle and I judged that the unassembled girl was in this sack, perhaps with a number of duplicate parts.
I came from behind the rock and offered to help Ben hunt for the missing ankle, yet I questioned the wisdom of the whole affair, for should he find the ankle he would still be unable to assemble the girl.
"Go to grass!" he growled. "What are you doing, anyway, this far from your last unpaid bill?"
I told him of my journey and spoke of the country of the Great Smell, but he had never heard of it.
"Must have been all in your own mind," he said. "But I never discuss smells in the hearing of a bad odor."
I looked and saw that neither of his hands was missing.
"How about it?" I asked. "I thought you lost your hand, and it hung on to me. Your right hand."
"I was with you all the time," he replied, "till you met Genevieve Actum, and then I walked away. I wasn't blown up or melted down, but I merely sublimated all of my ghost person, except my right hand, till it was so fine you couldn't see it. You're young yet: when you're as old as I am you'll know half as many ghostly tricks as I do, and I'll be older and know twice as many more."
I saw that he desired to be left alone with his bike and the unassembled girl, and wishing him good luck, I went on my way. My young ghost had fully recovered from the depressing effects of the country of the Great Smell, and as I proceeded I began to feel more fit and sound than a new drum. I soon commenced to shout and sing and beat a great tattoo on my well-stretched spirit, in pure excess of energy. I had a sudden expansion of power and largeness, like a stick of dynamite at the instant of concussion, I wanted to go back and bite a large piece out of the rock that had concealed Ben, and then wipe his blue ghost off the ghostly map.
I was fairly bursting with the pride of my own remarkable identity. Was I not the astonishing Robert Jay Tuffley, of whom there was no duplicate or even imitation in the whole ghostly universe! I was beyond duplication, I was beyond imitation, I was beyond description itself! There was none like me, there had never been another like me, there could never be another like me! I was the first, last, intermediate, and only Robert Jay Tuffley, unique, unapproachable, with a perfectly rigid identity supporting a rip-saw personality! I had been some man, and now I was some blue ghost! I would no longer be a blue ghost! I would aspire higher in the spectrum of ghostliness! I would be a green ghost!
I expanded with pride, I dilated with ambition; I whoofed; I burst into vivid green!
