IT was a warm, lazy sort of morning, and very few Teenie Weenies were to
be seen about the rose bush. Grandpa sat fast asleep in his easy chair
on the front porch of the shoe house. Gogo was busily engaged carving a
sugar bowl out of a large cherry seed, while several of the little men
hacked at the wood pile back of the kitchen.
The Policeman was telling a couple of sparrows how the Dunce howled over
his tooth being pulled when the Lady of Fashion touched him on the
shoulder.
“I beg your pardon,” she said, “but do you know where the General is?”
“He’s over at the tool house, ma’am,” answered the Policeman, touching
his hat.
“Is he busy?” asked the little lady.
“I don’t think so, ma’am. He’s just watching the Old Soldier and Paddy
Pinn, who are tanning a frog hide for shoe leather.”
“Would you mind asking him to meet me in the library. I want to see him
on a matter of great importance,” said the Lady of Fashion.
“With pleasure, ma’am,” answered the Policeman, and touching his hat
again he set off while the Lady of Fashion returned to the shoe house.
“Well, my dear lady,” said the General a few minutes later as he stepped
into the Teenie Weenie library where the Lady of Fashion sat waiting,
“the Policeman tells me that you want to speak with me.”
“Yes, General,” answered the little lady, “I have something important I
want to talk to you about. I want you to do something for me. Something
very nice. Will you?”
“Why, I don’t know. What do you want?” asked the head of the Teenie
Weenies as he sat down in one of the tiny chairs.
“Well,” began the little lady, “while I was out walking yesterday with
the Doctor, we went into a house to get warm and while we were there we
heard a little girl crying as though her heart would break. The little
girl had broken the wheel of her toy bear and I wish you would get the
boys to go over and fix it for her. She’s a child who hasn’t many toys.”
“I don’t see how we can spare the time just now, for we have eleven
clothes pins to split up into stove wood and—but we’ll do it anyhow!”
said the General, as he saw the tears gathering in the Lady of Fashion’s
eyes.
“Oh, thank you so much!” and the little lady kissed the General on top
of his bald little head.
That afternoon the General and several of the Teenie Weenie men walked
over to the house where the little girl lived, and had a look at the
broken toy. The bear was a big fellow, and one of the solid wooden
wheels on which he moved about was broken in two.
“The axle is broken, too,” said the Turk, peering under the board on
which the bear stood.
“We’ll have to make some long bolts to hold the wheel together,”
announced the Old Soldier, who had been measuring the broken wheel with
his tiny tape-measure.
[‡Illustration: Bear]
After a great deal of talk and measuring, the little men hurried back to
the shoe house, where they set to work making the bolts and nuts
necessary for mending the broken bear.
The next morning the Teenie Weenie workmen set off for the little girl’s
house, followed by a number of the little people who were curious to see
the bear. As the little girl had been taken out for a walk, the coast
was clear, and the little men started to work at once, while the rest
wandered about examining a doll’s house and many other toys which stood
about the room.
The Teenie Weenies jacked up the bear, fitted in a lead pencil for an
axle, bolted together the broken wheel, and in a short time the little
men had made the toy as good as new.
When the little girl came back from her walk and found the mended toy
she was very happy, and she wondered many, many times just who had fixed
the broken bear.
[‡Illustration: Boy and pencil]
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