THE LOST IS FOUND
“Look at Donald! Look at Donald!” laughingly shouted the other children
who were coasting on the hill. “Donald fell off his sled!”
“I don’t care! It was fun!” and Donald also laughed. “Did you see me
roll over?” he asked.
“Yes, we saw you,” replied the other boys and girls.
“Did you get hurt?” asked Jane.
“No, it was fun,” said Donald.
“Then I’m going to do it!” announced his sister. “I’m going to ride
down hill and upset the way you did, Don.” Jane was very venturesome as
well as mischievous.
“No, you mustn’t do it!” Donald said. “Mother wouldn’t like it. She
might make us come in. Don’t upset, Jane.”
“All right, I won’t—not on purpose,” she answered, with a laugh. “But
if I happen to I can’t help it,” she added. “Can I?” Jane had gotten
over speaking “baby talk.”
And, really, I believe Jane would have been glad to upset off her sled
as Donald had done, and she might have given herself a little push to
bring this about, but that she happened to notice that her brother did
not have the Woolly Dog after he had picked himself up, following the
upset.
“Oh, where is he?” cried Jane.
“Who?” inquired Donald.
“The Woolly Dog you had riding with you. He’s gone!”
Then, for the first time since the accident, Donald noticed that his
birthday toy was missing.
“He was on my sled in front of me,” he said. “He must have fallen off
when I went around the curve.”
“Come on, I’ll help you look for him,” offered Jane.
But though she and Donald and the other children searched all around in
the snow for the Woolly Dog they could not find him. He had been tossed
off the overturned sled and had bounced into the middle of a snow bank
some distance away, falling deep down into the soft pile of flakes. The
children did not see him at all.
“Burr-r-r-r! But it’s cold!” shivered the Woolly Dog, as he found
himself in the midst of the snowdrift. “Oh, what a dreadful adventure
this is going to be! It’s worse than falling into the mud puddle and
it’s almost as bad as being cut and sewed up again! I wonder what is
going to happen to me?”
The Woolly Dog did not know. He could hear Donald, Jane and the other
boys and girls talking as they searched for him. The Woolly Dog wished
he might call out and tell them where he was so they could lift him
from his cold, white bed among the flakes of snow, but this was not
allowed. He could not move or speak when human beings were present.
“But it certainly is dreadfully cold here!” whined the Woolly Dog to
himself. “Oh, burr-r-r-r! It’s freezing!”
It was a good thing he was covered with warm lamb’s wool. If he had
been one of those skinny dogs, like a greyhound or a Mexican hairless
terrier, I’m sure our friend would have frozen stiff in a few minutes.
But, being a Woolly Dog, or “fuzzy,” as the Queen Bee had called him,
this kept him warmer.
“Oh, but my nose is so cold!” sighed the Woolly Dog, and that, not
being covered with wool, was very frosty indeed. Of course, you know a
real dog’s nose should always be cold. When your dog’s nose is warm it
is a sign that he is ill and has a fever. But when the Woolly Dog’s
nose was cold, that was a sign he was frosty.
“I’ll try to warm it,” he said to himself. And, being out of sight
among the snowflakes, he put his cold little black nose down between
his paws. Then it felt a little warmer and he listened to hear what was
going on. He heard no sound.
Donald, Jane and the other children, having searched for the Woolly Dog
without finding him, saw that it was getting late, and they ran home.
Donald was almost ready to cry over his lost toy, for he liked the
Woolly Dog very much.
“Never mind,” consoled Jane, “maybe Uncle Teddy will buy you another,
just as Daddy is going to buy Mother another diamond ring for the one
she lost.”
“I don’t want a new Woolly Dog! I want my old one!” exclaimed Donald.
In this he was like his mother, who wanted her engagement ring back,
and not a new one. But the lost diamond had never been found.
Donald, almost in tears, told his mother of the accident on the hill
and about his lost Woolly Dog.
“Never mind,” said Mrs. Cressey, “to-morrow I’ll go out there with you,
when it’s daylight, and perhaps we shall find him.”
But Donald was a sad little boy when he went to bed that night.
Meanwhile we must see what is happening to the Woolly Dog. For some
time he lay there in the snow, warming his cold nose. Then, as the
voices of the children grew quiet—for they had gone away—the Dog said:
“Perhaps I can wiggle out of here. No one can see me now.”
He kicked around in the snow with his paws, but all he did was to toss
snow up his nose, and this made him sneeze. And when he sneezed it made
the tickling feeling inside him grow worse, so that he wanted to laugh
and scratch and sneeze, all at the same time. And this, I think you
will agree with me, is too much for any Dog, Woolly or not.
“No use! I can’t get out of here!” sighed the Woolly Dog. But still he
did not give up. He was kicking around a bit more when, suddenly, he
heard a voice saying:
“Here’s a hole in the snow! Maybe a rabbit went down here!”
“It’s a boy!” thought the Woolly Dog. “But it doesn’t sound like
Donald.”
Nor was it. A strange boy, walking along near the coasting hill, had
seen the hole which the Woolly Dog had made when tossed into the drift.
Thinking it was a place where a rabbit had dived in, the boy went
closer to look. Then he saw the Dog.
“Yes, it is a rabbit!” cried the boy. “And he isn’t moving! I guess
he’s frozen! I’ll take him home.”
The Woolly Dog, being white, looked a little like a rabbit—that is, at
first glance. But when the boy reached his arm down in the snow bank
and pulled up the object, he saw what it was.
“Oh, only a toy dog!” cried the boy. “But I’ll take him home! He’s a
dandy!
“Mother, look what I found!” cried the boy, whose name was Frank, as he
hurried into the house, carrying the Woolly Dog. “Look!”
“Where did you get it, Frank?”
“In a snowdrift. He was down in a hole on the coasting hill.”
“Then some little child playing there must have lost the toy,” said
Frank’s mother. “And whoever it was will feel bad about it. If you knew
who owned the Dog, Frank, you could take it to him.”
“Yes, and if it was in a rich family maybe they’d give me a reward—a
lot of money!” cried Frank, for he and his mother were poor.
“You shouldn’t want a reward for doing what is right,” said Mrs. Ward.
“But as we don’t know to whom the Dog belongs, put him on the mantel
over the stove to dry. You’re too big to play with such toys.”
“Yes, I don’t want him for myself,” answered Frank. “But I’m glad I
found him.”
The Woolly Dog was glad, too, and he felt much better up over the warm
stove than down in the cold snowdrift. All night the Woolly Dog stood
on the mantel. There were no other toys for him to speak to or play
with. There was a match box, in the shape of an Alligator, but the
Alligator’s head was broken off and he could not talk.
“It is very lonesome here,” said the Woolly Dog aloud, in the middle of
the night.
“Tick-tock! Tick-tock!” went the clock.
“Oh, I can’t talk to you,” sighed the Dog, “for you only say the same
thing over and over again.” And this was true. A clock is one of the
most tiresome beings in the world to talk to, and it is so busy that
it never has time to play—it goes “tick-tock” all the while.
“I can see I am not going to have a very good time here,” said the
Woolly Dog. “There was more fun back in the store with the poor toys.”
But still he had a few adventures. Once he fell off the mantel into
the scuttle of coal when a door slammed too hard, and Mrs. Ward had to
put him in one of her tubs of suds to wash him. Mrs. Ward did washing
to make a living, and Frank worked in a store. Another time the Woolly
Dog was placed in a dark closet out of the way, and there a big Rat got
hold of him, thinking he was something good to eat.
“Oh, bah! You’re only stuffed with cotton!” snarled the Rat, after he
had tried to drag the Woolly Dog into its hole. “I can’t eat you!”
“I’m glad of it,” said the Woolly Dog.
[Illustration: “You’re Only Stuffed With Cotton!” Snarled the Rat.
_The Story of a Woolly Dog._ _Page 106_
]
The Rat left the Woolly Dog on the floor of the closet and went in
search of something else to gnaw. The next morning Frank, looking
for his rubbers, as it was raining, saw the Dog.
“I’ll put you back on the mantel,” said the boy. “I wish I knew who
owned you, as they must miss you.”
For over a week the Woolly Dog remained in the home of Mrs. Ward, and a
very lonesome week it was, for no one played with the toy. The Woolly
Dog was growing very sad.
Then, one day, he heard outside a voice he well knew. The voice asked:
“Will you have time to do some extra washing this week, Mrs. Ward?”
“Yes, Mrs. Cressey, I think so,” answered Frank’s mother. “Won’t you
come in for a moment and get warm?”
“Thank you, I will,” and Donald’s mother, who had come to see about
getting the washing done, entered the very room where the Woolly Dog
stood on the mantel.
In another instant Donald’s mother saw the Dog. Her eyes opened wide
with wonder.
“Oh, where did you get that?” she cried.
“What?” asked Mrs. Ward.
“That Woolly Dog! It belongs to Donald—at least, I’m sure it’s the
same one he lost in a snow bank. I can easily tell by looking. If it’s
Donald’s Dog it will have an extra seam underneath where I sewed him up
after Jane cut him open.”
Mrs. Ward lifted the Woolly Dog down.
“Oh,” thought the birthday toy, “suppose she can’t find that seam? Then
she won’t know me and I’ll never get back home again!”