The Curlytops and Their Pets | Page 3

will blow your ship out of the water, and I'll have a black flag on it and everything! Whoop!"
"I'm not going to play if you upset my ship, now there!" and Janet pouted her lips and ceased loading pebbles aboard her craft.
Teddy, who was cutting a flagstaff with his knife, stopped to look at her. If Janet was going to act this way, and not send out her ship, there was no use in being a pirate. What fun could even a make-believe pirate have if there were no ships to sink?
Teddy thought of this, and then he said:
"All right, Jan, I won't be a pirate if you don't want me to. But I'll have a black flag, anyhow, and maybe I'll be a pirate some other time. Let's have a race with our ships--see which one gets to the water-wheel first."
"Yes, I'll do that," agreed Janet.
At the lower end of the brook she and Teddy had built a little dam, and where the water flowed over the top, like a tiny Niagara Falls, Teddy had fastened a wooden paddle wheel which turned as the water flowed on it.
"Me want a s'ip!" wailed Trouble, as he saw his brother and sister getting their vessels ready for the race.
"Can't you give him a piece of board for his ship, Ted?" asked Janet. "If we don't he'll get in our way and spoil the race."
"Here, Trouble, take this," and Teddy paused long enough in his work of loading pebbles on his ship to toss his little brother a small chip he picked up off the shore.
"Hu! I want bigger s'ip 'n' him!" declared Trouble, with a grunt. Then he arose and toddled off through the bushes. Teddy and Janet were so busy getting their own vessels ready for the coming race that they paid no more attention to their small brother. And Trouble was going to get into trouble--you may be sure of that.
"Don't put too many stones on your ship, Jan," called Ted to his sister, as he saw that she was piling on the pebbles.
"Why not?" she asked.
"'Cause you'll make it so heavy that it won't sail fast. Course I want to beat you," Ted went on, "but I want to beat you fair."
"Oh, thank you," Janet answered. "But these aren't stones I'm loading on my ship this time."
"What are they?" asked Ted.
"Feathers," his sister answered. "I'm making believe the stones are feathers, and I'm going to sell them to make pillows for dolls. My ship won't be too heavy!"
"Hu!" grunted Ted, as he placed the pebbles carefully on the middle of his ship, so it would not turn over. "Stones are heavy, whether you make believe they're feathers or not. Don't put too many on, I'm telling you!"
"All right, I won't," agreed Janet.
The boy and the girl went on with their game, and they were almost ready to start their ships off on the race when there was a racket in the bushes back of them. It was a bumping, banging sound that Ted and Janet heard, then followed the bark of a dog.
"That's Skyrocket!" said Ted.
A moment later came a voice, calling:
"Whoa-up! Don't go so fas'! You is spillin' me!"
"That's Trouble!" declared Janet.
They were both right. A moment later there burst through the bushes the little boy and the dog. The dog was Skyrocket, and he was made fast to a box which he was dragging along by a rope tied around his neck. Trouble was holding to the rear of the box, and in his eagerness to pull it along Skyrocket was also dragging Trouble, "spillin'" him, in fact--that is, pulling Trouble off his feet every now and then.
"Why, William! what are you doing?" asked Janet. Trouble was hardly ever called by his right name of William unless he had done something wrong.
"Were you trying to have Skyrocket ride you in that box?" asked Teddy. "If you were, he can't. Sky can't pull you in that box unless it has wheels on it. Then it's a wagon."
"Don't want wagon--dis my s'ip!" announced the little fellow, as he began to loosen the rope from the dog's neck. But as soon as Trouble started to do this, Skyrocket, who loved the children, began to lick William's face with a red tongue.
"'Top it! 'Top it!" commanded Trouble, but Skyrocket only licked the more.
"Oh, Ted, unfasten Sky, or he'll eat Trouble up!" laughed Janet.
"Are you going to sail that big box for your ship, Trouble?" asked Ted, as he loosed the dog.
"Yep! Dis box my s'ip," announced the small boy. "I sail it!"
"Well, don't sail it near ours or you'll upset our ships--yours is so much larger, dear," begged Janet.
"I be ca'eful!" Trouble promised. "I find this big box for my s'ip in kitchen, an' Sky drag it here for me!"
"Yes,