The Story of a Lamb on Wheels | Page 6

of an ocean trip; how beautiful the sunset was, and how there was never any dust at sea.
Then the sailor came back from having looked at the velocipedes, and the girl clerk brought a large sheet of paper. In this the Lamb was wrapped. She had a last look at her friends of the toy shelves and counters, and then she felt herself being lifted up by the sailor.
Out of the store the sailor carried the Lamb on Wheels. She wished she had had time to say good-bye to her friends, but she had not, and she must make the best of it.
"At any rate I am going to have adventures, even though they may be on a ship, and even though I may be seasick," thought the Lamb. "And perhaps I may not be so very ill."
On and on walked the sailor, down this street up another until, after a while, he stopped in front of a house.
"This must be the place," he said to himself. "I wonder if Mirabell is at home. I'll go in and see."
Up the steps he went and rang the bell. There was a hole in the paper wrapped about the Lamb, and through this hole she could look out. She saw that she was on the piazza of a fine, large house. There was another house next door, and at the window stood a little girl with a doll in her arms.
"Gracious goodness!" exclaimed the Lamb on Wheels to herself. "That looks just like the Sawdust Doll who used to live in our store! I wonder if it could be?"
However she had no further chance to look, for the door opened just then, and the sailor went inside the house, carrying the Lamb with him.
"Where's Mirabell?" asked the sailor of the maid who opened the door.
"She is up in the playroom," was the answer. "She has been ill, but she is better now."
"So I heard!" went on the jolly sailor. "I brought her something to look at. That will help her to get well."
Up to the playroom he went, and no sooner had he opened the door than Mirabell, which was the name of the little girl, ran toward him.
"Oh, Uncle Tim!" cried Mirabell, as soon as she saw the jolly sailor, "how glad I am to see you!"
"And I'm glad to see you, Mirabell," he laughed. "Look, I have brought you something!"
"Is it a monkey, Uncle Tim?" she asked.
"No, Mirabell, it isn't a monkey. It is a woolly Lamb on Wheels. I saw it in a toy store and I brought it to you."
"For me--to keep, Uncle Tim?" asked Mirabell, as the sailor took the wrapping paper off.
"Yes, for you to keep," was the sailor's answer. "Did you think I would be buying a Lamb for myself, to take to sea with me? Ho! Ho! I should say not!" he chuckled.
"Oh, how glad I am! And how I shall love this Lamb!" said the little girl.
As for the Lamb on Wheels, she was glad and happy, too, when she heard, as she did, what the sailor said.
"Oh, I'm to have a home on shore!" thought the Lamb. "I am not going to be taken on an ocean voyage at all, and be made seasick. I am to have a home on shore!"
And that is just what the toy Lamb had. The jolly sailor, who was Mirabell's uncle, had bought the toy for the little girl.
"Do you like the Lamb?" asked Uncle Tim.
"Oh, do I? Well, I just guess I do!" cried Mirabell, and she hugged the Lamb in her arms, and rolled her across the floor on her wheels.
"Do you know, Uncle Tim," went on Mirabell, "this is the very same Lamb I saw in the store, and wanted so much?"
"No! Is she?" asked the sailor, in surprise.
"The very same one!" declared Mirabell. "I was in the store once with Dorothy, the little girl who lives next door. She has a Sawdust Doll that came from the same store. And we were there the other day, before I was taken ill, and I saw a woolly lamb--this very same one, I'm sure-- and I wanted it so much! But Mother said I must wait, and I'm glad I did, for now you gave it to me."
"Yes, I'm giving you the Lamb for yourself--to keep forever," said the sailor. "I wouldn't dream of taking her on a sea voyage with me."
So you see the Lamb need not have been uneasy after all. But of course she did not know that when the sailor bought her.
Mirabell stroked the soft wool of her new toy Lamb. She wheeled it across the floor again, and the sailor watched her. Then, all of a sudden, the door of the playroom was opened with such a bang that