THE CARAVAN COMES HOME
The letter was lying on a flat stone, with several lumps of sugar laid
on it like paper-weights to keep it from blowing away. It wasn't at all
a nice-looking letter; in fact, it looked as if it had been dragged over
the ground for a long distance; and Dorothy, after observing all this,
was just turning away when she chanced to look at the address and saw
that the letter was intended for her. The address was written in a very
cramped little hand, and the writing was crowded up into one corner as
if it were trying to get over the edge of the envelope; but the words
were "TO DOROTHY," as plain as possible.
"What a very strange thing!" she said to herself, taking up the letter
and turning it over several times rather distrustfully. "I don't think
it looks very nice, but it may be something important, and I s'pose I
ought to read it"; and saying this, she opened the letter. It was
printed in funny little letters something like bird-tracks, and this was
what was in it:
We are in a bad fix. The fix is a cage. We have been seezed in a
outburst of ungovernerubble fury by Bob Scarlet. He says there's
been too many robbin pies. He goes on, and says he is going to have
a girl pie. With gravy. We shreeked out that we wasn't girls. Only
disgized and tuff as anything. He says with a kurdling laff we'll
do. O save us. We wish we was home. There is no male and we send
this by a noble rat. He is a female.
THE CARAVAN.
"Now, _that's_ the most ridiculous letter I ever got," said Dorothy,
gazing at it in blank astonishment; "and I don't _think_ it's spelled
very well either," she added rather doubtfully as she read it again;
"but of course I must go and help the poor little creatures. I ought to
feel frightened, but I really feel as brave as an ox. I s'pose _that's_
because I'm going to help the unfortunate"; and putting the letter in
her pocket, she started off.
"It's perfectly surprising," she said to herself as she ran along, "the
mischief they get into! They're really no more fit to be going about
alone than so many infants"; and she was so pleased with herself for
saying this that she began to feel quite large and bold. "But it was
very clever of 'em to think of the rat," she went on, "and of course
_that_ accounts for the sugar. No one but a rat would ever have thought
of using sugar for paper-weights. If I wasn't afraid of a rat I'd wish
it hadn't gone away, though, for I haven't the slightest idea where the
Caravan is, or which way I ought to go."
But it presently appeared that the noble rat had arranged the whole
matter for her; for as Dorothy ran along she began to find lumps of
sugar set up at intervals like little mile-stones, so that she shouldn't
miss the road.
"It's precisely like Hop-o'-my-thumb and his little crumbs of bread,"
she said, laughing to herself when she saw these, "only better, because,
you see, the birds can't carry them off."
The rat, however, seemed to have had a very roundabout idea of a road,
for the lumps of sugar were scattered zigzag in every direction, and, at
one place, led directly through a knot-hole in a fence as if nobody
could possibly have any trouble in getting through _that_; but, as the
little mile-stones appeared again on the other side of the fence,
Dorothy scrambled over and ran on. Then she found herself climbing over
rocks and wading through little puddles of water where the sugar was set
up on stones in the most thoughtful way, so that it shouldn't melt; and
in another place the lumps were stuck up in a line on the trunk of a
large tree, and, after leading the way through a number of branches,
suddenly descended on the opposite side of the tree into a little bog,
where Dorothy stuck fast for several minutes and got her shoes very much
soiled. All this was very provoking, and she was beginning to get a
little out of patience, when the lumps of sugar suddenly came to an end
at a small stone wall; and, looking over it, she spied the Caravan in
their cage.
The cage proved to be an enormous rat-trap, and the Caravan, with
remarkable presence of mind, had put their legs through between the
wires at the bottom of it, and were walking briskly along, holding up
the cage with their hands. The news of this extraordinary performance
had evidently been spread abroad, as the Ferryman and a number of
serious-looking storks were escorting the Caravan with an air of great
interest, and occasionally taking to their heels when the Admiral
chanced to look at them through the wires with his spy-glass. There was
a door, to be sure, in the side of the trap, quite big enough for the
Admiral, and Sir Walter, and the Highlander to come out of, all in a row
if they liked, but they evidently hadn't noticed this--"and I'm not
going to tell 'em about it, just yet," said Dorothy to herself, "because
they deserve to be punished for their capers. But it's really quite
clever of 'em to put their little legs through in that way," she went
on, "and extremely convenient--that is, you know," she added
thoughtfully, "so long as they all want to go the same way"; and, with
this wise reflection, she scrambled over the wall and ran after the
procession.
The Admiral and Sir Walter seemed greatly mortified when Dorothy
appeared, and she saw that Sir Walter was making a desperate attempt to
pull up his legs into the cage as if he hadn't anything whatever to do
with the affair. The Highlander, however, who always seemed to have
peculiar ideas of his own, shouted out "Philopene!" as he caught sight
of her, and then laughed uproariously as if this were the finest joke in
the world; but Dorothy, very properly, took not the slightest notice of
his remark.
"How did you ever get into _this_ scrape?" said she, addressing the
Admiral as the head of the family.
"It was easy enough to get into," said the Admiral, peevishly; "we just
fell into it through the hole in the top. But there wasn't any scrape
about it until we tried to get out again. _Then_ we got scraped like
anything."
"Needles was nothing to it," added Sir Walter, solemnly.
"Nor cats," put in the Highlander.
"I'm very sorry," said Dorothy, compassionately; "and are you really
going to be made into a pie?"
"Oh, dear, no!" said the Admiral. "We got excused."
"Excused?" exclaimed Dorothy, very much surprised.
"Well, it was something like that," said Sir Walter, confusedly. "You
see, Bob Scarlet didn't exactly like to come in here after us--"
"Unconquerabubble awersion to cages," explained the Admiral.
"And so he goes off after hooks to pull us out with," continued Sir
Walter--
"And we inwents this way of going about, and comes away!" added the
Admiral triumphantly.
"And where are you going now?" said Dorothy; for by this time they were
running so fast that she could hardly keep up with them.
[Illustration: "BY THIS TIME THEY WERE RUNNING SO FAST THAT SHE COULD
HARDLY KEEP UP WITH THEM."]
"We're going to the Ferry," said the Admiral, "and these pelicans are
showing us the way"; and as he said this the whole party hurried through
a little archway and came out at the waterside.
An old stage-coach without any wheels was floating close up against the
river-bank, and quite a little party of the dancing animals was
crowding aboard of it, pushing and shoving one another, and all talking
in the most excited manner; and as Dorothy found herself next to her old
friend the Sheep, in the crowd, she inquired anxiously, "Where are you
all going?"
"We don't know exactly," said the Sheep, "but we've all taken tickets to
different places so as to be sure of getting _somewhere_"; and with this
remark the Sheep disappeared in the crowd, leaving Dorothy very much
bewildered.
By this time the Caravan had, by great exertions, climbed up on top of
the coach and were sitting there in the cage, as if it had been a sort
of cupola for purposes of observation; and, indeed, the Admiral was
already quite absorbed in taking in various points of interest with his
glass. The storks, meanwhile, had crowded into the coach after the
animals, and had their heads out through all the windows as if there
were no room for them inside. This gave the coach somewhat the
appearance of a large chicken-coop with too many chickens in it; and as
Dorothy didn't fancy a crowd, she climbed up on the box. As she did so,
Sarah, the Camel, put her head out of the front window and, laying it
in Dorothy's lap, murmured, "Good-evening," and went comfortably to
sleep. The next moment the fiddles in the air began playing again and
the stage-coach sailed away.
* * * * *
Dorothy never knew exactly what happened next, because everything was so
confused. She had an idea, however, that they were all singing the Ferry
Song, and that they had just got to a new part, beginning--
"It pours into picnics and swishes the dishes,"
when a terrible commotion began on top of the coach, and she saw that
Bob Scarlet had suddenly appeared inside the cage _without his
waistcoat_, and that the Caravan were frantically squeezing themselves
out between the wires. At the same moment a loud roaring sound arose in
the air, and the quadrupeds and the storks began jumping out of the
windows in all directions. Then the stage-coach began to rock violently,
and she felt that it was about to roll over, and clutched at the neck of
the Camel to save herself; but the Camel had slipped away, and she found
she had hold of something like a soft cushion--and the next moment the
coach went over with a loud crash.
[Illustration: "IT SLOWLY CHANGED TO A BIRD-CAGE WITH A ROBIN SITTING IN
IT."]
Dorothy gave a little scream as the coach went over, and then held her
breath; but instead of sousing into the water as she expected, she came
down on top of it with a hard bump, and, very much to her astonishment,
found herself sitting up on a carpeted floor. For a moment the
rat-trap, with Bob Scarlet inside of it, seemed to be floating around in
the air like a wire balloon, and then, as she rubbed her eyes and looked
again, it slowly changed into a bird-cage with a fat robin sitting in it
on a perch, and peering sharply at her sideways with one of his bright
little eyes; and she found she was sitting on the floor of the little
parlor of the Blue Admiral Inn, with her little rocking-chair overturned
beside her and the cushion firmly clutched in her hand. The coach, and
the dancing animals, and the Ferryman and his storks had all
disappeared, which was a very fortunate thing, as there wasn't room for
them in the parlor; and as for the roaring sound in the air--why, Uncle
Porticle was fast asleep in his big arm-chair, with his handkerchief
spread over his face, and I think it more than likely that he had
something to do with the sound.
Dorothy stared about for a moment, and then, suddenly remembering the
Caravan, she jumped up and ran to the window. It was snowing hard, and
she saw through the driving snowflakes that the Highlander and Sir
Walter Rosettes were standing on their pedestals, complacently watching
the people hurrying by with their Christmas parcels; and as for the
Admiral, he was standing on _his_ pedestal, with a little pile of snow
like a sugar-loaf on top of his hat, and intently gazing across the
street through his spy-glass.
[Illustration: TAIL-PIECE TO CHAPTER XII.]
THE END.