good-by to the poor family, and went out into the street, Mary holding
the grocery boy’s right hand, and Tommy his left hand, and Johnny held
hold of Mary’s other hand, so they all had hold of hands, you see.
“Now which way had we better go?” asked the grocery boy, when they
stood out on the sidewalk.
“Oh, the shortest way,” said Mary. “We want to get home as soon as we
can.”
“Well, I think that would be a good plan,” spoke the grocery boy, “so
if you will show me the shortest way to your house, we’ll take it.”
“Why, don’t you know the shortest way?” asked Mary.
“No,” answered the grocery boy, “I can’t say that I do. You see, I
haven’t lived in this part of the city very long, and I don’t know
my way about very well. So you can easily see that I don’t know the
shortest way to your house.”
“Well, then, I suppose we will have to go the longest way home,” said
Tommy.
“It won’t matter so much,” went on his brother. “For if we go the
longest way we may meet with an adventure, and we might not if we went
the short way.”
“Oh, that would be fine!” exclaimed Mary. “Yes, grocery boy, please
take us home the longest way.”
The grocery boy took off his cap, and scratched first his nose, and
then his left ear. Then he waved his white apron like a flag, and he
seemed to be thinking very deeply, just as some children do when they
have to spell a hard word in school.
“Well, to tell you the truth, as I always do,” said the grocery boy,
“I don’t believe I even know which is the longest way to your house, to
say nothing of the shortest way.”
“That’s queer,” spoke Tommy. “What can we do?”
“Oh, I have it!” suddenly cried Mary. “He can take us home the middle
way. Don’t you remember the story of the three bears? The little bear
couldn’t sleep in the big bed, and the big bear couldn’t sleep in the
little bed, but the middle-sized bear could sleep in the middle-sized
bed, and so we can go home the middle way, if we can’t find the short
or long way.”
“Oh, fine!” exclaimed Tommy and Johnny together.
“How is that, grocery boy?” asked Mary, as she took a tighter hold of
his hand.
“It would be very nice, very nice, indeed,” said the grocery boy, “but
the truth of the matter is that I don’t know even the middle way to
your house. But, if you can tell me what street it’s on, I think I
could find it.”
“There we are again!” cried Tommy. “I wish we had thought to have tags
put on us, with our address, and then we wouldn’t get lost, or, if we
did, a postman could take us home.”
Then the three little Trippertrots looked worried, and, when the kind
grocery boy saw this, he said:
“Never mind, I’m sure I can find your house sooner or later. Come, we
will walk along, and look for it. Whoever sees it first will get a
penny.”
“Who will give it to us?” asked Johnny.
“I will, myself, out of my own pocket,” said the grocery boy. “See, I
have a bright, new penny,” and he showed it to the Trippertrots.
“Ah, but suppose _you_ see the house first?” asked Mary.
[Illustration: TOMMY, JOHNNY AND MARY BEGAN TO FLOAT UP INTO THE AIR]
“I won’t, I promise you,” said the grocery boy. “I will walk along
with my eyes shut, and you can lead me. Then some of you will be sure
to see the house first yourselves, and you can have the penny, whoever
is first.”
“But suppose we all see our house at the same time?” inquired Johnny.
Once more the grocery boy took off his cap, and scratched his nose and
ear. Then he again waved his apron like a flag, and said:
“Well, in that case, I will give you each a penny, as I happen to
have three,” and he showed them to the children. So they walked along
together, the grocery boy with his eyes shut, so he couldn’t see the
Trippertrot house first, while Mary and Tommy and Johnny were eagerly
watching for it.
In this way the children went along for some distance, but they
couldn’t find their house. They saw many wonderful things, however,
such as men and ladies riding around in automobiles, and some people
in trolley cars, and they saw a dog chasing a cat, and the cat ran up
a tree, and her tail was as big as two bananas. At last, however, Mary
said:
“Oh, dear, I don’t believe we’ll ever find our home this way. We ought
to have the old fisherman, or Jiggily Jig, or Simple Simon, or the
newsboy, to help us. We’ll never get home.”
“Oh, yes, we will,” said the grocery boy.
“Ah, I have an idea,” suddenly exclaimed Tommy. “The grocery wagon
horse knows where our house is, because he stopped in front of it. Do
you know where to find your horse, grocery boy?”
“Yes, I expect he is in the stable now,” was the answer.
“Then go get him, and he’ll take us home in the wagon,” said Tommy.
“The very thing. I’ll do it at once!” exclaimed the grocery boy. “You
stay right here until I come back, and I’ll soon have you home in your
own house, and I think the horse will know the shortest way, too.”
So the grocery boy started off to the stable, and the Trippertrot
children sat down on the front steps of a house to wait for him to come
back.
ADVENTURE NUMBER EIGHT
THE TRIPPERTROTS AND THE BASKET OF CLOTHES
“My, he is gone a terrible long time,” said Mary Trippertrot, after she
and her brothers had waited, and waited, and waited some more, for the
grocery boy to come back.
“Yes, perhaps he is lost himself, looking for the stable where his
horse is,” suggested Johnny.
“Oh, grocery boys can’t get lost,” declared Tommy. “They have to know
their way everywhere, so as to deliver groceries, and bread and butter
and--and--lots of things. They can’t get lost.”
“Yes, they can,” said Johnny. “Don’t you remember when we once moved in
a new house, and the grocery boy came with some groceries? Suzette told
him to put them down cellar. He went down the stairs with his basket,
and pretty soon we heard him hollering like anything. He was lost in
the cellar, all right, so that shows you grocery boys _can_ get lost.”
“Oh, I remember _that_ time,” said Mary, with a laugh. “The boy
hollered because Suzette forgot, and locked him in the cellar, and he
couldn’t get out.”
“Well, when you can’t get to where you want to go you’re lost,”
insisted Johnny, “so it’s the same thing. That grocery boy was lost,
and maybe this one is, who has gone after the horse to take us home.”
“Oh, I hope not,” said Mary, “for it’s getting late, and it will
soon be dark. I wish we were home. But we’ll wait here a little while
longer.”
So the three little Trippertrots sat on the house-steps and watched the
people walking along the street.
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Tommy, at length, “everybody seems to have a
house but us. See, they are all hurrying home, and we have to stay
here.”
“Yes, let’s ask some of them to take us home, and not wait for the
grocery boy,” suggested Johnny.
“Oh, no, don’t do that,” begged Mary. “It will be just as it always is.
Folks will want to know where our house is, so they can take us to it,
and, of course, we can’t tell them, and they’ll lead us off, and we’ll
be lost more than ever. The best way will be to wait right here, until
the grocery boy comes back with the horse, and then we’ll get home,
for some horses know more than people, when it comes to taking lost
children home to their papa and mamma.”
“All right, then we’ll wait,” agreed Tommy and Johnny.
They sat on the steps for some little time longer, and, pretty soon,
along came a policeman swinging his club, and the brass buttons on his
coat sparkled just like diamonds in the sunshine.
“Ah, ha, children!” he exclaimed. “What are you doing here?”
“Don’t tell him we’re lost,” whispered Tommy to Mary. So the little
Trippertrot girl said:
“Oh, we are waiting here for the horse and wagon.” She meant the
grocery horse and wagon, you know.
“Very good,” said the policeman. “I hope it comes soon. But don’t go
away or you might be lost.” Then he walked on, swinging his club, and
Johnny laughed softly, and said:
“He doesn’t know we are lost already! But we will soon be at home.”
So they still sat there, and, by-and-by, a fireman came along. He had
been home to dinner, and now he was going back to the engine house, to
be ready to go to put out any fires that might happen to burn things.
The fireman saw the children and he smiled at them.
“Ah, little ones,” he said, “I see you are sitting on the stoop to get
the fresh air. That is right, but don’t go away, or you might get lost.”
Then the fireman hurried on to the engine house, and Tommy laughed very
softly and said:
“Ha, ha! He doesn’t know we are lost, either.”
And many other people passed by, and either spoke to the Trippertrot
children, or laughed at them, or smiled, and still Tommy and Mary and
Johnny sat on the steps waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for the
grocery boy to come back with the horse and wagon.
And then, somehow or other, before she knew it, Mary began to feel
sleepy.
“I will just close my eyes for a minute or two,” she said. “You boys
can make-believe you are out camping in the woods, and you can sit up
on guard, while I sleep.”
Well, Tommy and Johnny thought that would be fun, so they kept their
eyes very wide open, but nothing happened, and pretty soon they felt
sleepy, but they wouldn’t go to sleep, for they knew that soldiers
never slumbered while they were on guard.
Well, it was getting toward evening now, and it was becoming somewhat
cold, and still that grocery boy hadn’t come. You see, he was lost
himself, and he couldn’t find the stable where the horse was, and he
couldn’t find his way back to where the children were, and there they
waited, and waited, and waited.
And then something happened. All at once, along came a boy with a big
basket of clothes on a little wagon. Oh, it was a very large basket,
and a very small wagon, but it was quite strong, and the boy was also
quite strong, so he could pull it very easily. But, when he came to the
stoop where the children were, he sat down on the curbstone to rest.
And the basket of clothes was so big that he didn’t see the Trippertrot
children because they were behind it.
But Tommy and Johnny, who hadn’t gone to sleep, but who still sat
beside their sister Mary, they saw the basket of clothes. And they knew
Mary was very tired, for her head had fallen over on Tommy’s shoulder.
Then Tommy thought of something.
“I say, Johnny,” he exclaimed, “wouldn’t it be fine if we could put
Mary in the basket of clothes, so she could have a nice rest?”
“Hum! It would be nice if we could get in ourselves,” said Johnny,
“only but the boy wouldn’t let us, I guess.”
“Maybe he wouldn’t,” agreed Tommy, and just then, as truly as I’m
telling you, the boy who had the basket of clothes ran across the
street to look in a toy shop window; maybe he wanted to see if they
had anything he could buy for a penny. Anyhow, there was the basket
of clothes on the wagon, and there was no one near it except the
Trippertrots.
“Now’s our chance!” exclaimed Tommy. “Quick! We’ll put Mary in the
basket, and get in ourselves.”
“But what about when the grocery boy comes back with the horse for us?”
asked Johnny.
[Illustration: “_Tuck Me in Good, I’m So Tired and Sleepy_”]
“I don’t believe he’s coming back,” spoke his brother, “or else he’d
be here now. We might as well get in the clothes-basket and rest, and
see what happens after that.”
“All right,” agreed Johnny. So they lifted Mary up very gently, for she
was a little girl, and not very heavy, and they were strong boys, if
they were younger than their sister, and they carried her over toward
the basket of clothes.
“Good-night, mamma,” murmured Mary, who was only half awake. “Tuck me
in good, I’m so tired and sleepy.”
“She thinks she’s home,” whispered Tommy.
“Yes, we mustn’t wake her up,” said Johnny, also in a whisper. So, very
gently, they lifted off the sheet that was over the top of the clean,
ironed clothes, and they laid Mary down in among them. But first they
put some newspapers around her shoes so they wouldn’t dirty the towels
and pillow-cases, you know.
“Now let us get in ourselves,” said Johnny, and he and his brother
wrapped some newspapers around their shoes, and then they crawled in
the big basket of clothes beside their sister Mary. Then they pulled
the sheet up over them, and then--and then--and then--they were both
fast asleep almost as quickly as the pussy cat can wiggle its tail.
Fast asleep in the basket of clothes were the Trippertrots.
Then the boy, who had been pulling the basket on his wagon, came back
from across the street. He didn’t buy anything in the toy shop.
“Now I must take these clothes home,” he said to himself, as he began
to wheel them. And then, all of a sudden, he exclaimed: “My! How heavy
they are! I wonder what makes that? I guess it must be because I’m
going up hill. Never mind, I’ll soon have them where they belong, and
then I’ll get the money and take it home to mamma, and she’ll be happy.”
And, mind you, that boy never even dreamed that the three Trippertrot
children were in his basket of clothes. He kept on wheeling them along
the street, and once he slipped on a banana-skin, and almost fell down.
Almost, I say, but not quite. And once a dog barked at him, not in
earnest, only in fun, you know. And, all the while, the Trippertrots
were fast asleep.
They even dreamed, too, as they were being wheeled along in the basket.
Mary dreamed she was in a balloon, taking a trip through the air, and
Tommy dreamed he was on the tail of a kite, and Johnny dreamed that he
was bouncing up and down on a rocking-horse.
And, after a while, the boy who was pulling the basket of clothes on
his wagon came to a house. He stopped in front of it. The house was
painted green, and it had a red roof, only you couldn’t see that part
of it, unless you went up in a balloon.
“Well, I’m glad I’m here with the clothes,” said the boy. “Now I’ll
take them in and get my money.”
So he carried the basket of clothes up into the house. And there he
found great excitement going on. The telephone bell was ringing, and
there was a policeman there, and the nursemaid was running around
through all the rooms, and the lady and man were almost crying.
“My children! Oh, where are my children? They are lost!” cried the
lady. “Oh, have you seen my children?”
“No, I’m sorry to say I haven’t,” said the boy, and he really hadn’t,
you know. “But here are your clean clothes, Mrs. Trippertrot,” he went
on.
The lady took off the sheet from the basket of clothes and there she
saw Mary and Tommy and Johnny, all fast asleep.
“Oh, my darlings!” she exclaimed. “Here they are! Oh, you dear
washerwoman’s boy, to bring back my lost children!” And she hugged
him, and then Tommy and Mary and Johnny awakened, and there they were,
right in their own home. It was their own mamma’s basket of clothes
into which they had crawled, never even guessing it, and the boy, not
knowing it, had brought them safely home. The boy’s mamma was the
washerwoman for Mrs. Trippertrot, you see, and he always delivered the
clean clothes.
So there the Trippertrots were, but that wasn’t the last of their
adventures. No, indeed!
ADVENTURE NUMBER NINE
THE TRIPPERTROTS AND THE POSTMAN
The three little Trippertrots had not done any traveling for some days
now, and they were beginning to get a bit tired of staying in the house
so much. They were almost wishing something would happen.
One day they were in the front parlor of their home, looking out of the
window, for it was Saturday, I think, and they didn’t have to go to
kindergarten school. Suddenly the doorbell rang, and Mary said:
“Oh, I wonder who that is?”
“I’m going to look,” spoke Tommy.
“Mamma said we mustn’t do that,” said Mary. “It isn’t polite.”
“It sounds like company ringing the bell,” spoke Johnny. “And there
goes Suzette to answer it,” he added, as the nursemaid hurried down to
the hall to the front door.
“Oh, I remember now!” exclaimed Mary. “I saw mamma putting on her new
silk dress a while ago, so she must be going to have company. Come on,
boys, we’d better get out of the front room, for mamma doesn’t allow us
in there when she has visitors.”
“I know what we can do,” said Tommy, as he crawled under a big chair to
get his rubber ball, which had rolled there.
“What?” asked Mary, eagerly.
“We can go upstairs to our playroom,” went on her brother, “and then
we can look down in the street, and see whose carriage or automobile is
there. Then we’ll know what company mamma has, without looking out of
the windows down here.”
“That’s the very thing!” cried Johnny. “And maybe it’s some of those
ladies who play or sing in such high voices. We can hear them upstairs,
and it will be lots of fun.”
So the Trippertrot children started to go up to their playroom, and in
the hall they met Suzette.
“Where are you going?” the nursemaid asked them, as she paused on her
way to answer the bell.
“Just upstairs to look out of the window,” replied Mary.
“Very well, but don’t go away,” cautioned Suzette.
“No, not unless it’s a very special, extra-extraordinary occasion,”
answered Johnny.
Once they were upstairs they all ran to the window and looked down
into the street below. There, in front of their house, was a great
big automobile, all enclosed with glass windows, so the people in it
wouldn’t get cold. And the man who sat in front had on a big fur coat,
like a shaggy bear, so he wouldn’t get frosty.
“Oh, I know whose car that is!” cried Mary. “It belongs to Mrs.
Robertson Dudleyshire, and she doesn’t sing or play, so we can’t hear
her. It won’t be any fun at all. I wish we had something to do.”
“Wait, maybe she will do something funny, so we can hear it and laugh,”
proposed Tommy, so they waited until Mrs. Robertson Dudleyshire was
sitting in the parlor below them. They could hear her voice, a deep,
rumbling one, and they could hear their mother answering, but, as Mary
had said, there was “no fun,” and the Trippertrot children didn’t know
what to do.
“Hark! What’s that?” suddenly exclaimed Tommy, as he heard a loud
whistle out in the street. “Is that a policeman?”
“Oh! Maybe he’s chasing a dog, with a tin can tied to his tail?”
suggested Johnny.
“Why, you silly boys!” cried Mary. “That’s the postman’s whistle.
Perhaps he has some letters for us--maybe invitations to some party.
Let’s look out of the window.”
So they ran from the middle of the room, where they had been sitting
to listen to the rumble of Mrs. Robertson Dudleyshire’s voice, to the
front windows, and stuck their little noses flat against the panes of
glass, so they could look down to the street.
“Oh, dear! He isn’t coming to our house at all!” cried Mary, as the
letter-man passed by, with his bag over his shoulder. “He’s gone next
door.”
Once more the postman’s whistle sounded, and then Tommy, who was
watching him eagerly, hoping that perhaps there might, after all, be a
letter for the Trippertrot home, uttered a cry.
“See!” Tommy exclaimed. “The postman has dropped a letter from his bag,
and he doesn’t know it. He’s going right on.”
“Oh, we must tell him about it!” decided Mary. “Knock on the window,
boys, and call to him. He’ll understand.”
So Tommy and Johnny knocked on the pane of glass with their fingers,
and Mary helped them, but they couldn’t make noise enough so that the
postman could hear them. On he hurried, blowing his whistle, and he
never thought that he had lost a letter in the street.
“Raise the window and call to him!” said Mary.
So Tommy and Johnny tried to do this, but the window was stuck fast,
and they couldn’t open it. And all this time the postman was getting
farther and farther away.
“Well, we’ve got to do it!” sighed Mary, at last.
“Do what?” asked Tommy and Johnny together.
“We’ve got to run after the postman, and give him the letter he lost,”
said the little Trippertrot girl. “We’ve tried every way we knew to
make him hear us, but he didn’t. Now we’ve got to go out. It’s a
special, extra-extraordinary occasion, anyhow, I guess.”
“Shall we tell mamma we’re going?” asked Tommy.
“No, she wouldn’t want to be bothered, when she has company,” decided
Mary. “Besides, we’ll be right back. It’s only a step. Get your hats
and coats, boys, for it’s quite cold.”
“We’ll go down the back stairs,” suggested Tommy, when they were all
ready. “Then Suzette won’t see us, and ask questions about where we’re
going.”
So they did this, and soon they were running softly along the narrow
passageway at the side of the house, that led from the back stoop. Out
into the street they scampered and they eagerly looked toward the place
where they had seen the letter fall.
Surely enough, it was still there, and Tommy, running to it, eagerly
picked up the envelope.
“It’s a real one, all right,” he said, “for it’s got a postage stamp on
it, and really-truly writing, with ink.”
“Does it say who it is to?” asked Mary.
“It does, I guess,” answered her brother, “but I can’t read writing.”
“If we could, it would save us the trouble of running after the postman
and giving it to him,” spoke Johnny. “Where is he, anyhow?”
They looked up the street and down the street and all over, but they
couldn’t see the letter-man. I guess he had gone around the corner.
“Oh, what shall we do?” asked Mary. “We can’t keep the letter, and it
wouldn’t be right to take it home. Oh, I wish the postman hadn’t walked
so fast!”
“I know what we can do!” cried Tommy. “We can be the postman ourselves,
and take the letter where it belongs. We’ll ask the first person we
meet where the right house is, and we’ll go there. Then to-morrow we
can tell the postman, and he’ll be very glad the letter wasn’t lost.”
Johnny and Mary thought this a fine plan, so they walked along, and
pretty soon they met a man.
“If you please,” asked Tommy, “where does this letter belong?” and he
showed him the lost one.
“Ha! You are very little children to be out delivering letters,” said
the man. “Be careful you don’t get lost yourselves.”
“We won’t!” exclaimed the three little Trippertrots, like two twins,
and part of another one, you know. Then the man said that if they went
down to the corner, and turned to their right for about four houses
they would come to the one where the letter belonged, for the man had
read the address.
Then he gave the children each a penny, for he loved little ones, and
Mary and Tommy and Johnny walked on to deliver the letter for the
postman.
Well, as true as I’m telling you, instead of turning to the right when
they got to the corner, they turned to the left. Then, of course, when
they went to the fourth house the lady there said the letter didn’t
belong to her. So they tried the first house and the second and the
third and the fifth, up to over a dozen, on both sides of the street,
but they couldn’t find where that letter belonged.
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Mary, when they had walked on for some distance
more. “I just knew this would happen.”
“What has happened?” asked Tommy. “We haven’t lost the letter.”
“No, but we’re lost ourselves,” went on Mary. “Do you boys know which
way to go home?”
“No,” answered Tommy, “I don’t.”
“Me either,” said Johnny. “We surely are lost again, and we have the
postman’s letter, and that’s lost, too.”
“Oh, we must be very careful of that letter,” said Mary. “We must keep
it safe. Here, Tommy, you had better let me carry it. Boys are such
careless creatures. I’ll put it in my pocket.”
“Huh! We’ve got more pockets than you have,” declared Johnny, but Mary
took the letter and put it in her coat pocket.
“Now we must decide what to do,” the little Trippertrot girl said. “It
will soon be night, and we ought to be home, but we can’t find where we
live. So let’s sit down on this doorstep, and maybe a policeman will
come along and take us back to papa and mamma.”
So down they sat on the cold stone steps, and they looked up and down
the street for a kind policeman, but they saw none. And they were--lost
again--with a lost letter. Oh, wasn’t it dreadful? But don’t worry.
I’ll help them all I can. You just wait for the next story and see what
happens.
ADVENTURE NUMBER TEN
THE TRIPPERTROTS AND THE MILKMAN
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Mary Trippertrot, after a while, “if we didn’t
want a policeman one would be sure to come along, but when you do want
one, there never is any. I wonder what we had better do?”
“Well, I know what we _hadn’t_ better do,” spoke Tommy, her brother,
quickly.
“What is that?” asked Johnny, Mary’s other brother.
“We hadn’t better go any farther,” answered Tommy, “or else we’ll be
more lost than we are now.”
“We can’t be any _more_ lost,” replied Mary, quickly. “But I think we
had better stay here until something happens.”
“Well, I wish it would happen very soon,” said Tommy. “Oh, if only the
old fisherman, or Jiggily Jig, the funny boy, or even Simple Simon, or
the pieman, would come along now they might show us the way home.”