LOST IN THE WOODS
Janet and the others laughed when Baby William finished his funny
little song, Mary joining in, though she looked a bit ashamed when she
thought of having taken a ride without paying for it.
“But really I didn’t mean to,” she said. “I never read the sign on your
goat. I thought it was a new kind of summer blanket to keep off the
flies.”
“Oh well, it’s all right,” replied Janet kindly. “I guess maybe we can
get somebody else to ride and pay pennies.”
“I’ll ask my mother for some,” offered Mary.
“Oh, no! Don’t!” begged Janet. “It’s all right! We gave you the ride
for nothing, and it would be Indian-giving to take money now.”
“My mother’s going to do something for the Home when it has the fair,”
announced Mary.
“That’ll be nice,” remarked Ted slowly, but he was thinking of
something else. “I guess we’ll have to go away far off, where nobody
knows us, and give rides for five cents and a penny,” he added more
briskly.
“Go away off?” asked Janet wonderingly.
“Yes, off on some other road. Here we know everybody, and course we
were glad to give Mary and Jimmie rides, but that isn’t makin’ money,”
went on Ted earnestly. “You see if we came to somebody we didn’t know
we wouldn’t mind askin’ ’em to pay, like the waffle and lollypop man
did us.”
“Oh, did you meet him?” asked Mary. “Isn’t he nice? He comes every
year, and he’s always the same. I like him!”
“We liked his waffles!” laughed Ted. “But what’ll we do, Jan?”
“I guess we’ll have to go a little farther from here to get money for
the Home,” agreed his sister. “And maybe folks what haven’t heard
Trouble’s song so often would give pennies to hear him sing.”
“Maybe,” said Teddy. He was not quite sure about it.
“Well, I’m much obliged for my ride,” put in Mary. “And I’ll give you
for the Home the first penny I get.”
“Thanks,” answered Jan. “Now we’ll ride ourselves;” and she got in the
seat when Mary got out, while Ted took his place in front and then, Jan
holding Trouble, away started the Curlytops once more to see what they
could do to help Hal and the other little lame boys and girls by making
the Home, where they spent so many sad months, a little happier place.
Janet and Teddy were so deeply interested in getting to some stretch of
road where they were not known, so that they might ask strange children
to have goat rides, and charge for them, that they never thought of
sending word back to Cherry Farm that they were going off farther than
they usually did. They just drove Nicknack on and on, away from the
little village of Elmburg near which Grandpa Martin lived, out past
Clover Lake and on to a strange country road that led through the woods.
“There’s a house and some children playing in the yard,” said Janet as
they came within sight of a large white farmhouse. “Let’s ask if they
don’t want a ride.”
The way in which two boys and three girls crowded to the fence as the
goat wagon drove up seemed to show that the children did want a ride
very much.
“Down the road and back for five cents,” explained Ted, as he pointed
to the sign on Nicknack’s side, while the goat ate grass. “Or you can
have a short ride for a penny.”
“I’ll go and ask my mother,” said the oldest girl. “Now don’t any of
you dare go outside the fence!” she warned the others--her smaller
brothers and sisters it seemed. “If you do a gobile might hit you.”
“What’s a gobile?” asked Janet.
“It’s what he calls an automobile,” explained the older girl, and she
pointed to a small boy about the size of Trouble.
She hurried into the house, the others, meanwhile, looking eagerly
through the fence palings at the goat and wagon. Jan and Ted had gotten
out, ready for business in case this family of boys and girls wanted a
ride.
“Maw gimme a quarter,” explained the girl when she came hurrying back,
“and she says will you give us all a ride down the road and back and
keep us out half an hour so she can git some rest.”
“All right,” said Janet. “We’ll give you a nice ride for twenty-five
cents. But will you let my little brother stay in the wagon with you?
He’s too small to walk and we can’t leave him.”
“Sure he can come,” said the girl, whose hair was almost red. “I’ll
hold him on my lap. I’m used to children.”
“If you hold him maybe he won’t sing,” Ted told her.
“Sing? Oh, I don’t mind singin’. I like it!” said the almost red-haired
girl with a laugh. “Our Babs sings lots, though we never can tell what
he’s sayin’,” and she pointed to the smallest child.
“I will not sing!” decided Trouble, with a little stamp of his foot. “I
will _not_ sing ’less I wide on Nicknack’s back!”
“Well, you can’t do that,” stated Ted. “Get in now, everybody,” he went
on, “and we’ll give you a good ride.”
“Here’s your quarter,” said the girl, who was taller than Jan. “Better
take it ’fore I lose it. I’m always losin’ somethin’. Maw says I’d lose
my head if it wasn’t fast. Shouldn’t much mind though. I hate red hair.
Don’t you?” she asked Janet fiercely.
“Not when it’s the color yours is,” answered Ted’s sister. “I think
it’s lovely!”
“Oh, do you?” and the other girl, whose name was Maude, smiled and
seemed pleased. “I like curls best, like yours.”
“They’re too tangly,” announced Janet, shaking her head.
“Well, this is a start!” exclaimed Ted as his sister put in her pocket
the twenty-five cent piece--the first money they had earned for the
Home.
The Curlytops gave the Pratt children--that was the name of the
family--a good long ride down the road and back. They kept them out
over an hour, for when Ted would have driven back to the yard to let
off his passengers Jan whispered to him to keep on so Mrs. Pratt could
have her half-hour rest. It was very hard to tell whether a half-hour
or fifteen minutes or an hour had gone by.
Trouble, too, got over his fit of sulks and sang his funny song, much
to the delight of Maude and her brothers and sisters. Babs, the Pratt
baby, also sang and he and Trouble gave a sort of duet which sounded
very strange, as each one tried to sing louder than the other, and no
one could tell what either said.
“I wish you’d come over to-morrow,” said Maude, when, at last, the
goat ride was over. “I think maw’ll give another quarter to be quiet.”
“We’ll see,” half-promised Jan. “We want to make all the money we can
as Grandpa Martin is poor, and he can’t give as much as he has before
to the Crippled Home. His crops failed.”
“All but cherries,” explained Ted. “He’s got bushels of them!”
“I wish we had,” said Maude. “I love cherries.”
Once more the Curlytops drove on down the road. It was not late yet,
and Ted wanted to see if he could not earn more money. They passed
several houses, some where there were children, but none of them had
any money to pay for rides. At one place, though, where a little boy
was playing with a nurse maid in the front yard they were called to by
the boy’s mother, who engaged Ted to drive the little fellow up and
down, with the nurse to hold him, and when the ride was over, at which
the little boy cried, the lady gave Janet fifty cents.
“Oh, but it isn’t worth that much--not such a short ride,” Janet said.
“I’m giving the money to the Home,” said the lady softly. “I had
another little boy--once. I haven’t him now,” and she took up the small
lad whom the nurse was holding and pressed him closely in her arms.
“Whew! what a lot of money we have!” cried Ted, as he turned Nicknack
toward Cherry Farm a little later. “Seventy-five cents! You’d better
tie it in your handkerchief, Jan, and then tie the handkerchief on your
neck so you won’t lose it.”
“Can’t tie my handkerchief on my neck. It’s too little. But I’ll put it
in my pocket--it’ll be all right there;” and this she did.
They were now on the road that led through the woods, and they were
talking so earnestly about how surprised those at home would be over
the seventy-five cents, and Trouble was singing his Mother Goose song
so loudly, that none of them--especially Jan and Ted--noticed when
Nicknack left the main road and turned into a side path that led
beneath the trees.
It was not until the wagon got clear off even the side path and nearly
upset, because the goat pulled it over a big tree root, that Ted
called: “Whoa!” and looked about him.
“Why! Why!” he exclaimed. “Where are we?”
“In the woods,” answered Janet calmly.
“I know--yes. But _what_ woods? We didn’t come here before.”
“Maybe it’s a short cut to Cherry Farm,” said his sister.
Ted looked all about him. He could see nothing in the woods that he had
ever seen before, not a house or a barn was in sight.
“Janet,” he said, and he spoke in a whisper, half afraid Trouble would
hear and be frightened, “Jan, we--we’re lost!”
“Lost? In these woods?”
“Yep! We’re lost!” and Ted got down out of the wagon and tied Nicknack
to a tree.