Books: The Story of a Lamb on Wheels
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Laura Lee Hope >> The Story of a Lamb on Wheels
And then the white, woolly Lamb on Wheels rolled across the sidewalk,
and disappeared down into the dark coal hole!
CHAPTER VII
THE LAMB CARRIED AWAY
Mirabell and Arnold were so surprised for a moment at what had happened
that they could only stand, looking at the hole in the sidewalk down
which the Lamb on Wheels had fallen. Carlo, the fuzzy little dog, seemed
to know he had done something wrong in getting tangled in the string,
breaking it off, and so sending the Lamb wheeling along until she slid
into the coal hole. And the dog gave a howl and ran back toward the
house, having finally managed to get his legs loose from the cord.
"Bow-wow!" barked Carlo, as he ran.
Perhaps he feared that he, too, might slip down that black, dark hole
which led into the coal bin of Dorothy's house. Then as Mirabell and
Arnold stood, looking with wide-opened eyes at the place where they had
last seen the Lamb, the man on the wagon threw another shovelful of coal
down the hole.
"Wait a minute! Stop! Oh, please stop!" begged Mirabell.
"Whut's dat? Whut's de mattah?" asked the coal-wagon driver.
He was a colored man, and that was the very best shade for him, I think.
No matter how much coal dust got on his face and hands it never showed.
"Her little Lamb fell down the coal hole," explained Arnold. "Carlo got
tangled in the string, it broke and she fell down the hole. Don't throw
any more coal on her until we get her out."
"Does you-all mean dat Carlo fell down de hole?" asked the colored coal-
wagon driver.
"No, Carlo is a dog," explained Mirabell. "He got tangled up in my
Lamb's string, and she fell down the hole. I haven't named my Lamb yet.
She's on wheels."
"On wheels?" cried the man. "A Lamb on Wheels? Well, I 'clar to goodness
dat's de fustest time I ebber done heah ob a t'ing laikdat!"
"Oh, she isn't a real, live lamb," explained Mirabell. "She's a toy,
woolly one from the store, and my Uncle Tim, who's a sailor, gave her to
me."
"Well now, honey, I suah is sorry to heah dat!" said the colored man.
"Your toy Lamb down de coal hole! Dat is too bad!"
"Can we get her out?" asked Arnold. "I'll crawl down the hole and get
the Lamb if you won't throw any more coal."
"Oh, I won't frow any mo' coal--not fo' a while--not when I knows whut
de trouble is," said the kind-hearted driver. "But I doan believe, mah
li'l man, dat you'd better go down de coal hole."
At that moment the door of Dorothy's house opened, and her mother came
out on the porch.
"What is it, Mirabell?" she asked. "What has happened?" She saw the
children from next door talking to the coal driver, and she wondered at
it.
"Oh, my Lamb is down the coal hole!" said Mirabell.
"Oh, that's too bad!" exclaimed Dorothy's mother. "I saw you holding a
toy Lamb up to the window, before Dorothy was taken ill. How did your
toy get down the coal hole?"
Mirabell and Arnold told by turns, and the driver said:
"I suah is sorry, lady. But it w'an't mahfaulta-tall!"
"I know it wasn't," said Dorothy's mother. "But do you think you could
get the little girl's Lamb's back?"
"Well, dat coal hole isn't so very big," was the answer, as the driver
scratched his kinky head. "But I might squeeze mahse'f down in it."
"Oh, I think a better way would be to go down in our cellar, crawl over
the bin, and get the Lamb that way," Dorothy's mother said.
"Yes-sum, I could do it dat way!" the colored man said. "I'se been down
in yo' cellar befo'. I'll get de Lamb on Wheels."
Dorothy's mother waited on the front porch, and Mirabell and Arnold
waited on the sidewalk near the coal hole. A little while after the
colored man had gone in the side entrance, through the cellar and into
the coal bin, the two children heard him calling, as if from the ground
beneath them.
"I got de Lamb!" said the driver, in a voice that sounded far-off and
rumbly. "Watch out, now! I'se gwine to frow it up de hole!"
"All right!" said Arnold. "I'll catch her!"
"No, don't throw my Lamb!" objected Mirabell. "She might fall on the
sidewalk and break."
"All right--den I'll HAND her up out ob de hole," called the colored
man, who was now in the partly filled bin under the sidewalk. "Watch out
fo' her!"
Mirabell and Arnold could hear him walking around on the coal under the
sidewalk. In another half minute a black hand was thrust up through the
hole, and in the hand was a white, woolly Lamb on Wheels. Wait a minute!
Did I say white? Well, I meant to have said a BLACK Lamb.
For Mirabell's white, clean Lamb on Wheels was now covered with black
coal dust.
"Oh, that isn't my Lamb on Wheels at all!" cried Mirabell, and there
were real tears in her eyes as her brother took the coal-dust covered
toy from the colored man's hand. "That isn't my Lamb at all!"
"Oh, yes, it must be, Mirabell," said Dorothy's mother. "No other Lamb
has fallen down the coal hole."
"But my Lamb was WHITE, and this one is BLACK," sobbed the little girl.
"Well, bring her in here and we'll wash her nice and clean and white
again," said Dorothy's mother. "Bring your Lamb in, Mirabell. Dorothy is
better now, though she cannot be out yet, and she will be glad to see
you. Come in and I'll wash your Lamb!"
"And I certainly do need a bath!" thought the Lamb to herself, when she
heard this talk. She could look down at her legs and see how black they
were. "Oh, what a terrible adventure it is to fall into a coal hole! I
wonder what will happen next!"
And she soon found out. For when the colored man had come out of the
cellar, and was again shoveling the coal down the hole, Mirabell and
Arnold took the black Lamb on Wheels into Dorothy's house. Dorothy and
her brother Dick were glad to see the children from next door.
"Now to give Mirabell's Lamb a bath," said Dorothy's mother.
"I wonder if I'll be put in the bathtub, as the Wooden Lion was,"
thought the Lamb.
And she was, though she was not dipped all the way in, for fear of
spoiling the wooden, wheeled platform on which she stood. With a nail
brush and some soap and water, Dorothy's mother scrubbed the coal dust
out of the Lamb's wool.
"There, she is nice and clean again," said Dorothy's mother, as she held
the Lamb on Wheels up for the four children to see.
"But she is all wet!" cried Mirabell.
"I'll set her down by the warm stove in the kitchen, and she will soon
dry," said the mother of Dick and Dorothy.
"And I'll put my Sawdust Doll down there with the Lamb so she won't be
lonesome," said Dorothy.
And then the four children played games in the sitting room, while
waiting for the Lamb to dry. And as Mary, the cook, was not in the
kitchen just then, the Lamb and the Sawdust Doll were left alone
together for a time.
"Oh, my dear, how glad I am to see you again!" exclaimed the Sawdust
Doll when they were alone. "But, tell me! what happened? You are soaking
wet!"
"Yes, it's very terrible!" bleated the Lamb. "I fell down a coal hole
and had a bath!"
Then she told her different adventures, and the Sawdust Doll told hers,
so the two toys had a nice time together. Soon the warm fire made the
Lamb nice and dry and fluffy again. And she was as clean as when jolly
Uncle Tim, the sailor, had bought her in the store.
"How is the White Booking Horse?" asked the Lamb of the Doll, when they
had finished telling each other their adventures.
"Oh, he's just fine!" exclaimed the Sawdust Doll. "Did you hear about
his broken leg, how he went to the Toy Hospital, and how he scared away
some burglars by kicking one downstairs?"
"No, I never heard all that news," said the Lamb. "Please tell me," and
the Sawdust Doll did. Then the two toys had to stop talking together as
Mirabell, Arnold, Dorothy and Dick came into the kitchen.
"Oh, now my Lamb is all nice again!" cried Mirabell, when she saw her
toy. "Oh, I am so glad."
"So am I," said Dorothy.
For many days Mirabell had jolly good times with her Lamb on Wheels.
Sometimes the Lamb was taken to Dorothy's house, and then there was a
chance for the woolly toy to talk to the Sawdust Doll and the White
Rocking Horse.
And one day the Lamb had another strange adventure.
Mirabell had been out in the street near Dorothy's house drawing her
Lamb up and down by means of a string. And Mirabell kept watch to see
that Carlo did not run along and get tangled in the string. The little
girl also made sure that no sidewalk coal holes were open. She did not
want the Lamb to fall into another one.
"Oh, Mirabell, come over here a minute!" called Dorothy to her friend.
"Mother got me a new trunk for my Sawdust Doll's things."
"Oh, I want to see it!" cried Mirabell, and she was in such a hurry that
she let go of the string by which she had been by herself on the
sidewalk for a little way, and finally rolled out toward the gutter. For
once in her life Mirabell forgot all about her toy. pulling her Lamb.
The Lamb rolled along
[Illustration: Lamb On Wheels Tells Sawdust Doll of Her Troubles]
And while Mirabell was looking at the new trunk for the Sawdust Doll's
clothes, a big dog came running along the street. He saw the white,
woolly Lamb near the curbstone.
"Oh, ho! Maybe that is good to eat!" thought the dog. And before the
Lamb on Wheels could say a word, that dog just picked her up in his
mouth and carried her away as a mother cat carries her little ones. Yes,
the big dog carried away the Lamb on Wheels!
CHAPTER VIII
SAILING DOWN THE BROOK
The Lamb on Wheels was so frightened when the dog took her up in his
mouth that she did not know what to do. If she could, she would have
rolled away as fast as a toy railroad train, such a train as Arnold and
Dick played with. But the dog had the Lamb in his mouth before she knew
what was happening.
Besides, across the street was a man, and, as he happened to be looking
at the Lamb, of course she dared not make believe come to life and
trundle along as she sometimes did in the toy store. It was against the
rules, you know, for any of the toys to do anything by themselves when
any human eyes saw them. And so the Lamb had to let herself be carried
away by the dog.
Now you might think that when the man saw the dog run away with the Lamb
on Wheels in his mouth the man would have stopped the dog. But the man
was thinking of something else. He was looking for a certain house, and
he had forgotten the number, and he was thinking so much about that, and
other things, that he never gave the Lamb a second thought.
He did see the dog take her away, but maybe he imagined it was only some
game the children were playing with the toy and the dog, for Mirabell
and Dorothy were there on the street, in plain sight.
But as the two little girls were just then thinking of the new trunk for
the Sawdust Doll, neither of them thought of the Lamb, and they did not
see the dog take her.
"Oh, what a nice trunk!" said Mirabell to Dorothy.
"I'm glad you like it," said Dorothy. She had her Sawdust Doll in her
arms, and, as it happened, the Doll saw the dog running away with the
Lamb on Wheels in his mouth.
"Oh! Oh! Oh, dear me! That is dreadful!" said the Sawdust Doll to
herself. "Oh, the poor Lamb! What will happen to her?"
Away ran the dog with the Lamb on Wheels in his mouth down the street,
over a low fence, and soon he was in the vacant lots where the weeds
grew high. And then, as there were no human eyes in the vacant lots to
see her, the Lamb thought it time to do something. She began to wiggle
her legs, though she could not get them loose from the platform with
wheels on, and she cried out:
"Baa! Baa! Baa!"
"Hello there! what's the matter?" barked the dog, and it made his nose
tickle to have the Lamb, whom he was carrying in his teeth, give that
funny Baa! sound in his mouth.
"Matter? Matter enough I should say!" exclaimed the Lamb on Wheels. "Why
are you carrying me away like this, you very bad dog?"
For, being a toy, she could talk animal language as well as her own, and
the dog could understand and talk it, too.
"Why am I carrying you away?" asked the dog. "Because I am hungry, of
course."
"But I am not good to eat," bleated the Lamb. "I am mostly made of wood,
though my wheels are of iron. Of course I have real wool on outside, but
inside I am only stuffed."
"Dear me! is that so?" asked the dog, opening his mouth and putting the
Lamb down amid a clump of weeds in the vacant lot.
"Yes, it's just as true as I'm telling you," went on the Lamb. "I am
only a toy, though when no human eyes look at me I can move around and
talk, as can all of us toys. But I am not good to eat."
"No, I think you're right about that," said the dog, after smelling of
the Lamb. For that is how dogs tell whether or not a thing is good to
eat--by smelling it.
"You looked so natural," went on the dog, "that I thought you were a
real little Lamb. That's why I carried you off when that little girl
left you and ran away. I'm sorry if I hurt you."
"No, you didn't hurt me, but you have carried me a long way from my
home," the Lamb said. "I don't know how I am ever going to get back to
Mirabell."
"Can't you roll along to her on your wheels?" asked the dog. "I haven't
time now to carry you back."
"Not very well," the Lamb answered. "It is very rough going in this lot,
full of weeds and stones. I can easily roll myself along on a smooth
floor, in the toy shop or at Mirabell's home. But it is too hard here."
"Ill leave you here now," barked the dog, "and when it gets dark I'll
come and get you. I'll carry you back to the porch of the house, from in
front of which I carried you off. Then you can roll in and get back to
Mirabell, as you call her. Shall I do that?"
"Well, I suppose that would be a good plan," the Lamb said. "I don't
exactly like being carried in your teeth, but there is no help for it."
"Then I'll do that," promised the dog. "I'll come back here and get you
after dark. You'll be all right here in the tall weeds."
"I suppose so," replied the Lamb. "Though I shall be lonesome."
"Please forgive me for causing you all this trouble," went on the dog.
"I never would have done it if I had known you were a toy. And now I'll
run along and come back to-night. I hear a dog friend of mine calling
me."
Another dog, at the farther end of the lot, was barking, and the Lamb
crouched deeper down in the weeds.
"Dear me! this surely is an adventure," said the Lamb on Wheels to
herself, as she was left alone. "Being taken away in a rag bag, as the
Sawdust Doll was, couldn't be any worse than this. And though none of my
legs is broken, as was one of the White Rocking Horse's, still I am
almost as badly off, for I dare not move. I wonder what will happen to
me next!"
It was not long before something did happen. As the Lamb stood on her
wheels and wooden platform among the weeds, all at once two boys came
along. They were looking for some fun.
"Oh, look!" cried a big boy. "There's a little white poodle dog over in
the weeds!" and he pointed to the Lamb, whose white coat was easily seen
amid the green leaves.
"Oh, we can have some fun with it!" said the little boy. "Let's call
it."
So they whistled and called to the white object they thought was a dog,
but the Lamb did not move. Of course she couldn't, while the boys were
looking at her.
"That's funny!" said the big boy. "What do you think is the matter with
that dog? It doesn't come to us."
"Let's go up and see," said the smaller lad.
Together they tramped through the weeds until they were close to the
toy. Then the big boy cried out:
"Why, it isn't a dog at all! It's a Lamb on Wheels!"
"So it is!" said the little boy. "But I know how we can have some fun
with it, just the same!"
"How?" asked the big boy.
"We can play Noah's Ark over in the brook," explained the small boy.
"There are some boards over there. I was making a raft of them the other
day. We can make another raft now, and we can get on and sail down the
brook. And we can take the Lamb on board with us and make believe we're
in a Noah's Ark and that there's a flood and all like that! Won't that
be fun?"
"Yes, I guess it will," said the big boy. "Come on! I'll carry the
Lamb."
So, picking up the toy and tucking it under his arm, he led the way to
the brook, which ran through the vacant lots. It was a nice brook, not
too deep, and wide enough to sail boats on.
"Now we'll make the raft," said the smaller boy, as they came to a place
on the bank of the brook where there were some boards and planks.
The big boy set the Lamb down near the water and then the two lads began
to make a raft. A raft is like the big, wide, flat boat, without any
house or cabin on it. It did not take long to make it.
"All aboard!" cried the big boy, when the raft had been finished. "All
aboard! Come on!" He picked up the Lamb again, and walked out on the
raft. The smaller boy went with his chum. With long poles, cut from a
near-by tree, the boys shoved the raft out into the middle of the brook.
"Now we're a Noah's Ark!" laughed the small boy, "and we have one animal
with us--a woolly Lamb on Wheels!"
And down the brook Mirabell's toy went sailing with the two boys on the
raft.
"This is certainly surprising!" thought the Lamb. "I was bought by a
sailor, and here I am making a voyage! I hope I shall not be seasick!"
CHAPTER IX
ON A LOAD OF WOOD
Now while the Lamb on Wheels was being carried away by the dog, and
after she had been dropped in the lot, where she was picked up by the
boys and put on a Noah's Ark raft--while all this was happening to the
toy, Mirabell, the little girl who owned the Lamb, was almost heart-
broken. After she had admired the trunk Dorothy had had given to her for
the Sawdust Doll, Mirabell ran back to get her pet toy.
"Oh, where is my Lamb on Wheels?" cried Mirabell, looking up and down
the street. "Where is she?"
"Where did you leave her?" asked Dorothy, who had gone back with her
friend.
"I left the Lamb right here by the fence," answered Mirabell. "She had a
string on. I was pulling her along the sidewalk, and when you called me
I let go the string and ran. Oh, where is my nice Lamb?"
"Maybe Dick took the Lamb," suggested Dorothy to Mirabell, when they had
looked up and down the street, in front of and behind the fence, and
even in the yard, and had not found the toy. "Dick sometimes takes my
things and hides them just for fun," Dorothy said.
"Or Arnold, maybe," added Mirabell.
Just then Dick and Arnold came out of Mirabell's house, each with a
slice of bread and jam, and there was some jam around their mouths, too,
showing that they had each taken a bite from their slices of bread.
"Oh, Arnold, did you take my Lamb!" cried Mirabell.
"Or did you take it, Dick?" asked his sister.
"Nope!" answered both boys, speaking at the same time.
"But where is she?" asked the little girl over and over again. "Where is
my Lamb on Wheels?"
"Oh, I know!" suddenly cried Dick.
"I thought you said you didn't!" exclaimed his sister. "You said you and
Arnold didn't hide her away."
"Neither did we," went on Dick. "But I think I know where she is, just
the same."
"Where?" asked Arnold, as he finished the last of his bread and jam,
having given his sister a bite, while Dick gave Dorothy some. "Where is
the Lamb on Wheels?" asked Arnold.
"Down in our cellar!" went on Dick. "Don't you remember how she rolled
down there once, when the man was putting in coal? Maybe she's there
again."
"Oh, let's look!" cried Mirabell.
So the children ran to Dorothy's mother, who said she would have
Patrick, the gardener, look down in the coal bin for the lost Lamb on
Wheels.
But of course the Lamb on Wheels was not in Dorothy's cellar, and
Mirabell felt worse than ever.
"I guess some one must have come along the street when you weren't
looking, Mirabell," said Dorothy's mother, "and carried your Lamb away."
"I--I guess so," sobbed Mirabell. "Oh, but I wish I had her back. Uncle
Tim gave her to me, and now he is away far out on the ocean! Oh, dear!"
and the little girl felt very bad indeed.
She did not give up the search, and Dorothy, Dick and Arnold also
helped. They looked in the two yards, across the street, and in other
places, but the Lamb could not be found.
[Illustration: The Boys Leave Lamb on Wheels on the Raft]
The reason Mirabell could not find her toy, as you and I know very well,
was because the Lamb on Wheels was riding down the brook on a raft with
the two boys.
At first the Lamb was much frightened when she looked over the edge of
the flat boat of planks and boards, and saw water on all sides of her.
"I really must be at sea, as that jolly sailor was," thought the Lamb.
"I am on a voyage at last! Oh, I hope I shall not be seasick! Oh, how
wet the ocean is!" she thought, as some water splashed up near her, when
the little boy shoved the raft along with his pole.
The Lamb, not knowing any better, thought the brook was the big ocean.
But as the raft sailed on down and down and did not upset and as the
Lamb grew less frightened and was not made ill, she began to feel better
about it.
"Perhaps I am more of a sailor than I thought," she said to herself. "I
never knew I would be brave enough to go to sea. I wish the Bold Tin
Soldier and the Calico Clown could see me now. I'm sure they never had
an adventure like this!"
So the Lamb on Wheels stood on her wooden platform in the middle of the
raft and looked at the water of the brook. Now and then little waves
splashed over the edge of the raft, but only a little water got on the
toy, and that did not harm her.
"Isn't this fun!" cried the little boy who had first thought of playing
Noah's Ark with the raft.
"It is packs of fun!" agreed the older boy. "Let's make believe we are
going on a long voyage."
So the raft went on and on down the brook, and the Lamb on Wheels was
having a fine ride.
"Though I wish some of the toys were here with me," she thought to
herself. "I wonder if the Sawdust Doll would get seasick if she were on
board here. I don't believe the Bold Tin Soldier would, and the Calico
Clown would be trying to think of new jokes and riddles, so I don't
believe he would be ill. But I wonder what is going to happen to me?
What will be the end of this adventure?"
The two boys poled their raft down to a broader part of the brook, where
it flowed at the bottom of a garden. At the upper end of the garden was
a large house, and not far away was another house. The Lamb on Wheels
could see the houses from where she stood on the raft, and she wondered
if any little boys or girls lived in them.
"Having adventures is all right," thought the Lamb, "but one can have
too many of them. I have been on a voyage long enough, I believe. I wish
I could get back home to Mirabell."
A few minutes after that the big boy cried:
"Oh, come on, Jimmie! There's Tom and Harry! We can have a game of
ball," and he pointed to some boys who were running around the lots,
through which the brook was now flowing.
"What shall we do with the Lamb?" asked the small boy.
"Leave it here on the raft," answered the older boy. "Maybe we'll want
to play Noah's Ark again, and we can find the raft here. Now we'll go
and play ball!"
They shoved the raft over toward the shore of the brook, and then the
two boys jumped off. They left the Lamb behind them.
"Dear me! how fast things do happen," said the Lamb, speaking out loud
to herself, as there was no one near just then. "A little while ago
Mirabell was pulling me along the sidewalk with a string. Then she left
me and the dog ran off with me. Then he left me, and the boys carried me
off on the raft. Now they have left me. I wonder who will take me next?"
The raft was smooth in places, and the Lamb was just going to start to
roll along a board toward shore when, all at once, she heard a noise,
and a voice cried:
"Whoa!"
"My goodness!" thought the Lamb, coming to a stop almost as soon as she
had started along on her wheels, "what's that? I wonder if some one is
driving the White Rocking Horse along here!"
She looked through the weeds growing on the edge of the brook and saw a
real horse and wagon and a real man driving down to the water through
the vacant lot. And as the man was real the Lamb dared not move while he
was in sight.
"Whoa!" called the real man, and it was to his real horse he was
speaking, and not to the White Rocking Horse. "Whoa now, Dobbin!" went
on the man, "and I'll let you have a drink here if the water is clean. I
know you are thirsty, and there is a brook here somewhere."
So that is why the man was driving his horse down through the lot--to
give his horse a drink. The man climbed down off his wagon and walked
toward the brook, right at the place where the raft had gone ashore with
the Lamb on board.
"I wonder if this can be the junkman who carried the Sawdust Doll away
in his wagon," thought the Lamb. "If it is I am in for another
adventure!"
As the man came to look at the brook, to see if the water was clean
enough for his horse to drink, the man saw the raft.
"Oh, ho! There are some good boards and planks I can carry home to break
up for kindling wood," said the man. "That's what I'll do. I'll have
some good firewood from these boards! Or maybe I can sell some." Then he
came nearer and saw the Lamb.