[Illustration: TED MARTIN HIT THE GROUND WITH A HARD THUMP.
“Curlytops Touring Around” Page 137]
THE CURLYTOPS
TOURING AROUND
OR
_The Missing Photograph Albums_
BY
HOWARD R. GARIS
AUTHOR OF “THE CURLYTOPS AT CHERRY FARM,”
“THE CURLYTOPS IN THE WOODS,” “THE CURLYTOPS
AT SUNSET BEACH,” ETC.
_Illustrations by
JULIA GREENE_
NEW YORK
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
THE CURLYTOPS SERIES
By HOWARD R. GARIS
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
_THE CURLYTOPS AT CHERRY FARM Or, Vacation Days in the Country_
_THE CURLYTOPS ON STAR ISLAND Or, Camping Out With Grandpa_
_THE CURLYTOPS SNOWED IN Or, Grand Fun With Sleds and Skates_
_THE CURLYTOPS AT UNCLE FRANK’S RANCH Or, Little Folks on Ponyback_
_THE CURLYTOPS AT SILVER LAKE Or, On the Water With Uncle Ben_
_THE CURLYTOPS AND THEIR PETS Or, Uncle Toby’s Strange Collection_
_THE CURLYTOPS AND THEIR PLAYMATES Or, Jolly Times Through the
Holidays_
_THE CURLYTOPS IN THE WOODS Or, Fun in the Lumber Camp_
_THE CURLYTOPS AT SUNSET BEACH Or, What Was Found in the Sand_
_THE CURLYTOPS TOURING AROUND Or, The Missing Photograph Albums_
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY, New York
COPYRIGHT, 1925, BY
CUPPLES & LEON COMPANY
THE CURLYTOPS TOURING AROUND
Printed in U. S. A.
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I DOWN THE WELL 1
II GOOD NEWS 14
III THE CARDWELL ALBUMS 24
IV A BIG CROWD 35
V MOVING PICTURES 45
VI THE ALBUMS ARE GONE 53
VII ON THE TRAIL 65
VIII OFF AGAIN 75
IX AT THE FARM 84
X TROUBLE’S DANGER 96
XI FUNNY FISH 108
XII FLIP-FLOPS 117
XIII TED FALLS OFF 127
XIV JAN IN A TRAP 137
XV THE BOX COMES BACK 146
XVI ON AGAIN 158
XVII ALONG THE RIVER 166
XVIII TWO BEARS 175
XIX THE LUMBER CAMP 183
XX A SMASH 193
XXI ABOARD THE MOTOR BOAT 204
XXII ON THE LAKE 214
XXIII THE WRONG BOX 221
XXIV TROUBLE’S PUSSY 229
XXV THE RIGHT BOX 236
THE CURLYTOPS TOURING AROUND
CHAPTER I
DOWN THE WELL
“Come on, Jan! Now will be a good time to try it!”
“All right, Ted. But are you sure it will be safe?”
“Course I am! Why, it’s a big rope and I’m not very heavy, Jan.”
“I know that. But s’posing I shouldn’t be able to pull you up again?”
“Well, I could get up by a ladder, I guess. Come on now before Trouble
comes out to bother us. He’s in the house with mother and we have a
good chance now.”
Two children, a boy and a girl, each with clustering curls on their
heads, darted down a path, around the house, and ran toward the apple
orchard at the rear.
Ted Martin’s hair was darker than that of his sister Janet, but the
locks of each were so clustered on their heads that the children were
more often called “Curlytops,” than their right name.
Now the curly tops of the brother and sister were bobbing about as they
ran along, intent on having what they called “fun,” though, as you will
soon see, it developed into mischief. But that, as Ted said afterward,
wasn’t their fault.
“I’m glad Trouble is in the house,” remarked Jan, as she hastened along
beside her brother.
“So’m I,” answered Ted. “William is a good little boy, but when you
want to do something he always wants to do something else.”
“Always,” agreed Janet, with a wise shake of her head.
From this you may know that “Trouble” was only the jolly nickname of
the small brother of Ted and Janet. Mother Martin used to call him
“Dear Trouble” when he upset a glass of milk on the table or shoved his
plate to the floor. Daddy Martin used to speak of William as a “Bunch
of Trouble” when he had to drop his paper and rush out, perhaps to
pull the little fellow’s head loose from between the fence pickets,
where, possibly, he had thrust it.
Ted and Janet called their little brother simply “Trouble” and let it
go at that.
The two older children had been playing in the front yard of their home
when Ted had suddenly thought of a trick he had been wanting to try for
a long while. He had a strange idea in his head, and he needed the help
of Janet to carry it out. Now seemed a good time.
It was the beginning of the long vacation from school, and though the
Martin family expected to go away for the summer, plans had not yet
been made.
So Jan and Ted were amusing themselves as best they could until, tiring
of “playing store,” into Ted’s head had popped his big idea.
“Wait a minute now, Jan!” cautioned Ted, as they neared the back of the
house and could look over toward the apple orchard. It wasn’t a very
large orchard, but there were enough trees to call it by that name.
Though, as yet, the season being early, only green apples were on the
branches.
“What’s the matter--aren’t you going to do it?” Jan wanted to know, as
her brother put out a hand and detained her behind a screening bush.
“Course I’m going to do it!” he declared. “But I want to look and see
if Patrick isn’t there. Patrick maybe wouldn’t let me do it.”
“That’s so,” agreed Janet. “And if Nora saw us, she maybe wouldn’t let
us, either.”
“No,” said Ted, in a low voice. He looked carefully out from the fringe
of the bush, but saw neither Patrick, who did odd jobs about the Martin
place, nor Nora, the cook; so the coast was clear.
“Come on, Jan!” Ted whispered.
“Oh, I--I’m almost getting scairt!” whispered the little girl, as she
and her brother neared the scene of their latest trick.
“Pooh! Silly! What’s to be scared of?” asked Ted. “Come on!”
Thus teased, Janet took her brother’s hand for a quick dash across the
open space to the shelter of the orchard. Suddenly, when the children
were halfway over the little space, they heard their names called:
“Ted! Jan! Where are you? Come here! Mother says you have to ’muse me!
Come on!”
“It’s Trouble!” gasped Janet.
“And we’ve got to amuse him!” sighed Ted. “Oh, jinkity jinks!”
He kicked the sand at his feet peevishly.
“Come on! Let’s make believe we didn’t hear him. He hasn’t seen us and
we can hide from him.”
Janet was about to agree to this, but Trouble was smarter than either
of the older ones gave him credit for. He had run on after his first
call, and now he stood where he could look full at Ted and Jan.
“I see you!” he laughed. “You playin’ hide-an’-find? Anyhow, mother
says you have to ’muse me! Go on! ’Muse me!”
Mrs. Martin often, when she was tired of looking after William or when
she had to do something else, would call to the other children:
“Come and amuse Trouble!”
Nearly always Jan or Ted would be glad to do this. But now they had
something else they wanted to do.
“Too late!” sighed Ted. “We can’t skip away from him now.”
“No, if we did he’d tell mother,” agreed Janet. “Oh, I know what
we can let him do! He can do it all alone, too, so we can go to the
diamond mine!” she added.
“What?” asked Ted, to whom the reference to a “diamond mine,” did not
seem strange. That was part of the game they were going to play.
“I’ll get the sifter we were using when we played store, and I’ll let
Trouble sift a lot of sand and tell him to pick out all the stones,”
suggested the little girl. “That will keep him amused a long while.”
“Yes, I guess it will,” stated Ted.
“You playin’ hide-an’-find?” asked Trouble again. This was his name for
the game of hide-and-seek.
“No, we aren’t playing that, Trouble dear,” said Jan, with more
sweetness than usual in her voice. She wanted to be nice to her little
brother so he would be satisfied to play by himself.
“You goin’ to ’muse me?” demanded the little fellow.
“Sure we are!” exclaimed Ted. “I’ll get the sifter,” he told Janet.
“You keep him here a minute.”
“Come here and I’ll tell you a little story,” offered Janet.
“I’m comin’,” Trouble announced, as he toddled to his sister. She kept
him amused until Ted came running back with the sieve which, a little
while before, he and Janet had borrowed from Nora in the kitchen so
they could use it in sifting sand, which they pretended was sugar in
their play store.
Near the spot where Trouble had so unexpectedly found his brother and
sister was some clean sand, and it was this that Janet had thought
William could be induced to play with, while she and her brother went
on with their own plans.
And, for once at least, Trouble did just what was wanted of him.
“See the nice sand, Trouble,” murmured Janet. “Look, you put it in this
sifter and you jiggle it and all the nice little sand falls through.
The big stones and little stones stay inside. Then you pick out all the
stones and put them in a pile and you sift more sand. See!”
“Yep, I see,” murmured Trouble. “Let me shift sand.”
Janet gave him the sieve and filled it for him. He moved it to and fro
and a little pile of fine sand grew in the shape of a pyramid. Trouble
looked at the stones left in the sieve.
“What I do wif these?” he asked.
“Put ’em in a pile and then we’ll make believe they’re raisins and
we’ll stick ’em in mud pies,” said Ted.
“Oh, I like to make mud pies!” cried Trouble, with shining eyes.
“Yes, but not now! Not now! After a while!” cried Janet quickly, for
the little fellow seemed ready to drop the sieve. “What did you want to
say that for?” she asked Ted, in a whisper. “You’ll spoil everything!
Leave it to me!”
“Oh, all right,” mumbled Ted. “Go ahead! As soon as you can leave him
alone come on over to the old well.”
“All right,” answered Janet. “Now, Trouble,” she went on, as she filled
the sifter again, “shake this out and pick out all the stones. Put
the big ones in a pile by themselves and the little ones in a pile by
themselves.”
“Den we make mud pies,” laughed Trouble.
“I guess so--yes--maybe,” murmured Janet, who did not want to be too
sure on this point. “Now you play here, Trouble, and don’t go away,
will you?” she asked, as she prepared to follow Ted.
“Trouble stay here and shift sand,” gravely promised the little fellow.
“But where you goin’, Jan?” he asked suspiciously.
“Oh, just over here a little way,” she answered. “I’ll soon be back.
Now sift a lot of sand, Trouble, and pick out all the stones.”
“Aw right--I shift sand.”
He was having fun now, being “’mused” as his mother had told him he
would be, and he did not much care what Ted or Janet did--at least for
a while.
“Is he all right?” asked Ted, as his sister joined him under an apple
tree where an old well had been dug.
“Yes, I guess he’ll stay there until we play diamond mine a while,”
said Janet. “But are you sure it will be all right, Ted?”
“Sure I am. I’ll just step on the bucket and hold to the rope, and
all you’ll have to do is to keep hold of the handle and let it unwind
slowly. Then I’ll go down in the well and we’ll play it’s a diamond
mine.”
“But how you going to get up again, Ted?” his sister asked.
“Why, you can wind up the handle just as you unwound it, can’t you?
It’ll be like pulling up a bucket of water when there used to be water
in the well. That’s how I’ll get up.”
“Oh, I see! All right.”
The Curlytops ran over toward the old well, which had not been used
for a number of years, the water having seeped out of it, so that
the well was dry. But the curbing, the windlass, the bucket, and the
rope were still in place, and they had given Ted the idea for playing
diamond mine. He had seen some pictures of miners going down a hole in
the ground by means of a bucket and rope, and had got the idea that
diamonds were thus secured.
The reason Ted and Janet had not, before this, played at the old well,
was because they did not know it existed. It was on some land next to
their house which Mr. Martin had recently bought. And, learning there
was an old well on it, the children’s father had decided to do away
with it, for it might be dangerous, even if there was no water in it,
for it was about thirty feet deep.
The first step in doing away with the old well had been to have Patrick
clear away the weeds around it. Then the curbing was to have been
taken away and the well filled up. But when Patrick had cut down the
weeds he was called to other tasks, and so the old well stood plainly
revealed.
Ted and Janet had discovered it, and then into Ted’s mind had come the
idea of going down into the dry well. He had tested the rope, with its
bucket and windlass, and found that it worked.
“Now, Jan,” said her brother, when they were at the well, with no one
near to stop their mischievous play, “I’ll climb up and stand on the
bucket. You keep hold of the handle and let it unwind slowly. I don’t
want to go down too fast, you know.”
“No, I guess you don’t,” agreed Jan.
“After I get down to the bottom I’ll make believe dig diamonds,” went
on Ted. “Then you can twist the handle the other way and pull me up.
After that I’ll let you go down.”
“I don’t want to go down!” said Jan quickly, after one look into the
black depths of the well. “You can go. I don’t want to.”
“All right,” agreed Ted cheerfully. “I’ll go down twice. Now get
ready.”
He climbed the well curbing and put one foot on the edge of the bucket,
which was a little way below the top of the curbing, or elevated wooden
rim about the well. The rope was wound around a wooden roller, or
windlass, to the end of which a crank was made fast. And there was a
ratchet catch to prevent the rope from unwinding and letting the bucket
down into the well until such time as the person drawing was ready.
This catch now prevented Ted from dropping down into the well.
The curly-haired little boy steadied himself on the edge of the bucket
by holding to the rope above his head. He looked down into the well.
It was deep and black, but there was no water in it, so Ted did not
hesitate.
“All right, Jan! Let me down!” he called to his sister.
Already he was a little way down the shaft of the well, for the rope
was partly unwound and the bucket perhaps two feet below the top of the
curbing when Ted took his place.
Janet loosened the catch of the windlass and then, holding to the
handle with all her strength, let it slowly revolve. It would have
gotten out of control, and would have whirled around very fast, for
Ted was much heavier than a bucket of water, only the affair was old,
rusted and stiff. So, after all, Ted was quite safely lowered.
Down and down he went into the black depths of the old, dry well.
“It’s lots of fun, Jan!” he called up. “You’d better come down next
time!”
“I don’t want to. You can,” answered his sister.
“Now I’m all the way down. I’m standing on the bottom!” called up Ted.
“I’m going to dig for diamonds!”
Jan could see that there was no longer a strain on the rope. The handle
turned freely. Suddenly it gave a little quiver, Jan saw the rope slip
loose from around the windlass and then, as the end of it fell down the
well, the little girl screamed:
“Oh, Ted! Ted! Oh, something dreadful happened!”