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“Is she hurt?” asked Arnold, as he saw his sister holding her new toy.

“No, she seems to be all right,” replied Mirabell. “But I’m not going to slide her down the ironing-board hill any more to-day. She must go to sleep.”

So the board was hung away, and soon the Lamb was put in a little stable Mirabell made for her out of a pasteboard box. The stable was set in a corner of the playroom, near a little Wooden Lion that had once lived in a Noah’s Ark. He was the only one of the Ark animals left. Arnold or Mirabell had lost all the others.

“Don’t be afraid of me! I won’t bite you,” said the Wooden Lion to the Lamb on Wheels, when they were left alone in the playroom. The children had gone downstairs to supper with Uncle Tim, and the sailor was telling them many jolly stories of the sea.

“Oh, I’m not afraid of you,” said the Lamb on Wheels to the Wooden Lion. “I am much larger than you, even if you are like the jungle animals.”

“It isn’t my fault that I am small,” said the Wooden Lion, a little crossly, the Lamb thought. “I had to be made that way to fit in the Ark. You ought to see the Elephant. He isn’t much larger than myself!”

“Did he have on roller skates?” asked the Lamb.

“Roller skates!” exclaimed the Wooden Lion. “Why! who ever heard of such a thing? A Noah’s Ark Elephant on roller skates! The idea!”

“Oh, you needn’t get so excited,” said the Lamb, as she wiggled her short tail the least bit. “In the toy store, where I came from, we had an Elephant who put on roller skates and raced with a White Rocking Horse.”

“I wish I could have seen that,” said the little Wooden Lion. “It must have been funny.”

“It was,” said the Lamb on Wheels. “The Elephant wanted to race with me, after the Horse was taken away. But I was sold, too, and brought here.”

“I am glad to see you,” said the Noah’s Ark Lion. “I have been quite lonesome. There used to be a number of us–there was a Tiger, a Camel, a Monkey, a Hippopotamus, and, oh! ever so many others, besides the Elephant. But we are all scattered. I am the only one left. Tell me, were you ever in a Noah’s Ark?”

“I never was,” admitted the Lamb. “Is it nice?”

“Well, yes, only it’s a bit crowded,” answered the Wooden Lion. “But it has to be that way, I suppose. I like it better in this playroom, as I can move about more. But still I was lonesome until you came. Let us be friends, and tell each other our adventures.”

So the Lamb told of the fun she had had in the toy store with the Bold Tin Soldier, the Calico Clown, and the others. She told of having been taken away by the jolly sailor, and how afraid she was that she would be seasick.

“But it was all right when I found he was bringing me to a home on shore with Mirabell,” said the Lamb. Then she told of her slide down the ironing board.

“Now I will tell you some of the things that happened to me,” said the Wooden Lion. So he related his adventures–how once he and the other animals had been jumbled together and piled into the Ark.

“And then, all of a sudden, that boy Arnold took the Ark and dropped it in the bathtub full of water, with all us animals inside!” said the Lion.

“Good gracious! why did he do that?” asked the Lamb, in surprise.

“Oh, he said he was pretending there was another flood, and he wanted to see if any of us could swim,” the Lion answered.

“Could you?” the Lamb wanted to know.

“Well, those of us who couldn’t swim could float, so none of us was drowned,” the Lion answered. “Only being soaked in the water, as I was, made some of the paint come off my tail. I really haven’t been the same Lion since,” he added, with a sorrowful sigh.