IN THE SAND
Sometimes things occur very luckily in this world. If it had not
happened that the colored man, who was pushing the big, double, wheeled
chair, looked down at the boardwalk and saw the Plush Bear just in time,
Mr. Bruin would have been crushed. His spring that made him move his
head and paws and the growler inside him would have been broken to bits.
But, as it happened, the colored chair-pusher saw the Plush Bear fall
from the lap of Arthur Rowe, who sat beside his sister Nettie in a chair
on the boardwalk at the seaside city.
"Hi! My land! Wait a minute!" shouted the colored man.
"Maybe he is going to save me!" thought the Plush Bear, who had seen the
rubber-tired wheels coming nearer and nearer.
"What's the matter, Sam?" asked the man in the big rolling chair.
At the same time Arthur leaned forward with a cry of alarm, for he saw
his Plush Bear had slipped, as it had slipped from him and out of the
car window the day before.
"Li'l boy done drop his play-toy!" answered Sam, the colored man. "I
come nigh onto runnin' ober it. Heah it is, li'l man," went on the
chair-pusher as he picked up the Plush Bear and handed him back to
Arthur.
"Oh, thank you!" exclaimed Arthur, while Nettie, who had seen what
almost had happened, held her Rag Doll tighter in her arms.
"I'm not going to drop Polinda, not ever!" declared Nettie. Polinda was
the name of her doll. When Nettie first received the toy she had wanted
to call the doll Polly, but the little girl next door said Lucinda would
be a better name. So Nettie mixed up both names and called her doll
Polinda, which is a very good name, I think.
With his Plush Bear safe in his arms once more, Arthur leaned back in
his rolling chair. He and Nettie smiled at the lady and gentleman in the
chair that had almost run over Mr. Bruin, and then the two chairs were
pushed on by the men rolling them. Just behind Arthur and his sister, in
another chair, were Mr. and Mrs. Rowe, but they had been so busy,
looking at the sights along the boardwalk, they had not seen how nearly
there was an accident.
"Is your Bear all right?" asked Nettie of her brother, as they were
wheeled along. "I mean will his head nod?"
"His head doesn't exactly nod," replied Arthur. "I guess you're
thinking of Joe's Nodding Donkey. But my Bear wags his head."
"Maybe he won't now, after all that happened," suggested Nettie.
"Oh, I guess he will," said Arthur. "But I'll wind him up and see."
He turned the key that wound up the spring, and as soon as it was tight
enough the Plush Bear began to move his paws, shake his head from side
to side and growl in a gentle voice, just as Santa Claus had intended he
should do.
"He's all right," said Arthur.
"Thank goodness for that!" exclaimed the Plush Bear to himself. "One
never knows what may happen when one falls out of a car window and then
from a wheeled chair to the boardwalk. I might have got a lot of slivers
in me, or have loosened a wheel! I'm glad I'm all right."
After an hour spent on the boardwalk, seeing the many sights and looking
at the waves of the ocean rolling up on the sandy beach, Arthur and his
sister, with their father and mother, went back to their hotel. Evening
was coming on and it was time for supper, or dinner as it is called in
fashionable seaside hotels, for the principal meal is served in the
evening instead of at noon.
"I wish we could go down and play on the sand," said Nettie, as she and
her brother got out of the wheeled chair. "My Rag Doll wants to go
barefoot on the beach."
"And I think my Plush Bear would like it, too," said Arthur.
"You may go down and play in the sand all day to-morrow," promised their
mother.
"Oh, won't we have fun!" cried Nettie. "Maybe my Rag Doll can learn to
swim."
"Well, swimming won't hurt _her_," said Arthur; "but I'm not going to
let my Plush Bear get in the water. I'm going to make a sand cave for
him to live in."
"Well, it seems I am to have some fun," thought the toy, as he was taken
up in the elevator.
The Plush Bear did not like the elevator very much. It gave him a queer
feeling among his wheels and spring; and his grunter, by means of which
he growled, seemed to be turning over and over. But this did not last
long, and while Arthur and Nettie, with their parents, were at dinner in
the hotel, the Bear and the Doll had a chance to talk.
"How do you like it at this fashionable seaside hotel?" asked the Bear.
"Quite well," answered the Doll, lifting her eyebrows the way she had
seen some ladies doing in the hotel parlor as she was carried in. "I
wish Nettie would put a different dress on me, though," the Doll added.
"It is fashionable to dress here in the evening, but she has left my old
clothes on."
"Old clothes are best," growled the Bear. "You feel more comfortable in
them. I don't need any, I'm glad to say, not even at the cold North
Pole. But say, Rag Doll, now we're alone, let's do something."
"I know what we can do!" the Rag Doll exclaimed. "All my life I have
wanted to play with the glistening things in a hotel bathroom. I want to
work the shower, and turn the shiny handles. There are ever so many more
than we have at home. Come on into the bathroom, and let's turn every
handle we see!"
"All right," agreed the Plush Bear. "That'll be fun!"
And there is no telling what mischief he and the Rag Doll might have got
into, only, just then, in came Nettie and Arthur, having finished
dinner.
"I'm going to play with my Plush Bear!" cried the fat boy.
"And I'm going to get my Rag Doll to sleep," said Nettie. "It's time she
was in bed."
The Doll and the Bear could only look slyly at one another. There was
no chance now for them to have fun with the shiny handles in the
bathroom. But perhaps it was just as well.
That night, when Arthur and Nettie, as well as their father and mother
were asleep, the Bear and Doll had a chance to make believe come to
life, move about, and speak.
"But we won't turn the handles in the bathroom and splash the water
now," said the Doll. "It would make such a noise that they'd awaken and
we'd be caught. But what can we do?"
"Let's look out the windows," suggested the Plush Bear. So, climbing up
first on little stools, and then on chairs, the two toys looked from the
hotel windows. They saw many lights sparkling, and out to sea was a tall
lighthouse with a gleaming beacon which flickered like a giant lightning
bug.
In the morning Arthur and Nettie went down on the sand to play, the
little fat boy taking his Plush Bear and Nettie her Rag Doll.
"Oh, what a dandy Teddy Bear!" cried a small, red-haired chap as he ran
along the beach to play with Arthur.
"This isn't a Teddy Bear," explained Arthur. "He's a Plush Bear, and he
can move his head and his paws and he can growl."
"Let's hear him!" begged the red-haired boy.
So Arthur wound up the spring, and, surely enough, the toy did all those
things.
"Oh, he's a dandy!" cried the red-haired lad. "If you let me play with
him, I'll let you take my airship that flies."
"We'll take turns playing with them," said Arthur, and then began a
happy time for the children. Some little girls came over to play with
Nettie, and they had lots of fun on the sand.
After a while Arthur happened to think of what he had said he was going
to do--dig a sand cave for his Bear.
"We'll make a big one," he said to the red-haired lad. "We'll dig a big
hole."
"With clam shells!" cried the other lad, and, putting aside the Plush
Bear and the airship, the two little friends began to make a large hole
in the sand. When it was finished the Plush Bear was put down in it, and
some sticks were stuck up in front.
"We'll make believe the sticks are the bars of his cage," said Arthur.
"We'll pretend he's a circus Bear."
"Oh, yes," agreed the red-haired boy. "That's lots of fun."
So they played with the Plush Bear in the hole of the sand for some
time. Then other boys and girls came along, joining in the fun, and
pretty soon some children rode past on ponies.
"Oh, I'm going to ask mother if we can't ride on the ponies!" cried
Nettie.
"So'm I!" added her brother, and, forgetting all about the Plush Bear in
the hole, away they ran to tease for ponies to ride. Mrs. Rowe was
sitting on the sand not far from where the children had been playing.
"Yes, Arthur and Nettie, you may ride the ponies," she said. "I'll take
you down and tell the man to put you on."
And in the excitement of the pony ride Arthur forgot all about his Plush
Bear in the sand cave. The toy was left there all alone, and he did not
know what to think.
"I wonder if I dare knock down those sticks they call bars and climb
out?" thought the toy. "I don't believe any one is looking." He was just
going to do this when along the beach dashed one of the ponies with a
little girl on his back. The pony stepped close to the hole where the
Plush Bear was, and in another instant the sand caved in, covering Mr.
Bruin from sight!