The Curlytops and Their Pets | Page 8

see if Uncle Toby is going to leave any guns."
"And I want a spinning wheel," Janet murmured. "But you can't take it to play steamboat with," she told her brother.
"I shan't want it if I have a gun!" retorted Ted.
"Now, children, be nice," begged their mother.
Daddy Martin started the automobile again, first getting out to look at the four tires, to make sure none was flat, punctured or burst. They were all round, plump and as fat as big bologna sausages.
"Now we go to Uncle Toby. Maybe I get a kittie cat!" said Trouble, when he decided to smile after feeling so bad about his burst balloon.
"A kittie cat!" exclaimed Janet. "Why, we have a lovely cat, Trouble. Don't you like Turnover?"
"Yep! But I 'ikes a kittie cat, too. Maybe Uncle Toby hab one for me!"
"Probably Uncle Toby is too old a man to bother with pet cats," said Mrs. Martin.
But it only goes to show that you never know what is going to happen in this world--sometimes you don't even know what you are going to have for dinner.
Along rolled the automobile, taking the Curlytops nearer and nearer to the city of Pocono, where Uncle Toby lived with his housekeeper, Mrs. Watson. But it was rather a long ride, and, about half way, the party stopped in a little village for lunch.
"Did we bring any lunch with us, or are we going in a place to eat?" asked Ted.
"Oh, I hope we go in a place to eat!" exclaimed Janet. "I like a restaurant, don't you, Ted?"
"Sure!" answered the Curlytop boy.
"Yes, we are going to a restaurant," his mother told them. "Daddy wants to get some oil and gasoline for the auto, too."
"It's sort of feeding the auto, isn't it, Mother?" asked Janet, as they alighted.
"In a way, yes," admitted Mrs. Martin.
A little later the Curlytops were having a fine meal, and when I say the Curlytops I mean also Daddy and Mother Martin, and Trouble. The hair of Mr. and Mrs. Martin did not curl, though it must have done so when they were younger; or else how would Ted and Janet have had such beautiful ringlets? Nor did Trouble's hair curl, though when he was smaller his mother used to wind little ringlets around her finger, hoping he would have locks as pretty as those of Janet and Ted. But, really, the older boy and girl were the only ones who could, truly, be called Curlytops, though I sometimes speak of the "Curlytop family."
So you know, when I say that the "Curlytops" were eating lunch, that all five of them were enjoying their meal. There were several things that Janet, Teddy and Trouble liked to eat, and toward the end of the meal there was a piece of pie for each of them. And it was toward the end of the meal that something happened, and Trouble, as usual, was the cause of it.
Just before the waiter had brought the pie there had sounded, out in the street, the music of a hand organ. No sooner had he heard this than Trouble slipped from his chair (where he had been sitting on a hassock to make him higher) and ran to the window.
"No monkey!" called out the little fellow, after he had stood for a moment with his nose pressed against the pane of glass, making his "smeller," as he sometimes called it, quite flat. "Hand-organ grinder got no monkey!"
Trouble was disappointed. He had hoped to see a little monkey scrambling around to gather pennies in his cap. But this hand-organ player did not have any. And there was nothing much for Trouble to see. So the little fellow came back to the table, but not before he had stopped at the big water-cooler in one corner of the dining room. Trouble paused to watch a waiter turn the shiny little faucet and draw a glass of water for a customer.
"Come and get your pie, William," his mother called to him. She very seldom mentioned him as "Trouble," before strangers. So this time Mrs. Martin called her little boy by his right name.
"Do you want me to eat your pie?" teased Ted.
"No! I eat my own pie!" Trouble exclaimed, and he climbed up into his chair, being helped by his father, next to whom he sat.
The meal was almost over, and Daddy Martin was wondering what his Uncle Toby could want him to take charge of, when Mrs. Martin gave a sudden start, a sort of shiver, and said:
"Why, my feet are getting wet!"
"Your feet wet!" exclaimed her husband. "Surely it isn't raining in here! It isn't even raining outside!" he laughed, as he looked from a window.
"But my feet are damp," went on Mrs. Martin. Then she raised the cloth, which hung down rather low on