The Curlytops and Their Pets | Page 6

beyond even the
reach of her long stick.
"If we were on the other side you could reach him and pull him to shore,
Mother!" called Janet.
"Oh, I must get over on the other side--but the brook is deep here!" said
Mrs. Martin. She was going to forget that, however, and splash in,
when the box, by some twist of the current, suddenly floated near the
bank along which she was running.
"Grab it--quick!" cried Janet.
"Let me get it--I'm coming!" shouted Teddy, and, indeed, he was
splashing his way down the brook, but some distance behind his little
brother.
"Oh, det me out! My hoots is awful wet!" wailed the small chap in the
packing-box boat.
And just then Mrs. Martin was able to reach out her stick, hook one end
of it over the edge of the box and pull it to shore.
"You poor little fellow! Was mother's Trouble frightened to pieces?"
murmured Mrs. Martin as she lifted her youngest out of the box, and,
never minding his wet feet, hugged him tightly. The packing box
drifted off downstream, Skyrocket racing after it and barking as though
it was the best joke in the world. "Were you frightened, William?"
murmured his mother.
Trouble looked at her, and then at the floating box.
"I had a nice wide, but my hoots is all wet," he announced.

"I should say they were!" laughed Janet, feeling them. "They're soaking
wet! But you're all right now, Trouble!"
"And I'm wet, too," said Teddy, coming along just then.
Together they walked back along the edge of the brook, Skyrocket
following when he found that no one was going to help him play with
the empty box, which floated ashore near the dam Teddy had made.
As she passed the place where she had dropped Uncle Toby's letter Mrs.
Martin picked up the fluttering paper.
"I nearly forgot all about this," she said. "Your father will want to know
about it. I never heard anything so strange in all my life."
"What is it?" asked Teddy.
"I'll tell you when you have dry clothes on, and we can sit down and
talk it over," his mother promised.
And when Trouble, smiling and happy, with a picture book in his hands
and dry shoes and stockings on his feet, was safe in a chair, and when
Janet and Teddy sat near her, Mrs. Martin read the letter again.
"It is from Uncle Toby Bardeen of Pocono," said the mother of the
Curlytops. "At least he is your father's uncle, but that doesn't matter. He
is an old bachelor, and lives with a distant relative, a Mrs. Watson, in
an old, rambling house."
"Does he want us to come there for the summer vacation?" asked Janet.
It was time, so she and Ted thought, to begin thinking of the summer
fun.
"No, Uncle Toby doesn't say that," went on Mother Martin, as she
glanced over the pages of the letter. "What he wants is for your father
to go and take charge of everything that is in the old house--everything,
that is, except the housekeeper, Mrs. Watson. She is going off by
herself, Uncle Toby says."

"Is Uncle Toby--is he--dead, that he wants daddy to take everything in
his house?" asked Janet.
"Course not! How could he be dead and write this letter?" asked Ted.
"Well, maybe he wrote it before he died," Janet suggested.
"No, Uncle Toby isn't dead, I'm glad to say," remarked Mrs. Martin.
"But he is going away on a long voyage for his health, he writes, and he
wants daddy to come and take charge of everything in the old
mansion."
"Do you s'pose there's a gun there I could have?" asked Teddy
hopefully.
"I'd like an old-fashioned spinning wheel," said Janet. "Is there one of
those, Mother?"
"I wants suffin' to eat!" announced Trouble suddenly, but whether he
thought it was to be had at Uncle Toby's house or not, it is hard to say.
Teddy and Janet laughed, and Trouble looked at them with wondering
eyes.
"You shall have something to eat, love!" his mother murmured. "I
guess your voyage in the packing-box ship made you hungry."
"Do you s'pose Uncle Toby would have a gun?" asked Ted again.
"If there is one in his house you can't have it, my dear," objected Mrs.
Martin.
"But I could have the spinning wheel, couldn't I?" asked Janet.
"Yes, I suppose so. But maybe there isn't one," her mother answered.
"If there is we can play steamboat!" cried Ted, getting quickly over his
disappointment about a possible gun. "A spinning wheel is just the
thing to steer a make-believe steamer with!"

"You're not going to have my spinning wheel for your old steamboat!"
declared Janet.
"Hush, children!" their mother warned them. "I