FullReads

And one day the Lamb had another strange adventure.

Mirabell had been out in the street near Dorothy’s house drawing her Lamb up and down by means of a string. And Mirabell kept watch to see that Carlo did not run along and get tangled in the string. The little girl also made sure that no sidewalk coal holes were open. She did not want the Lamb to fall into another one.

“Oh, Mirabell, come over here a minute!” called Dorothy to her friend. “Mother got me a new trunk for my Sawdust Doll’s things.”

“Oh, I want to see it!” cried Mirabell, and she was in such a hurry that she let go of the string by which she had been by herself on the sidewalk for a little way, and finally rolled out toward the gutter. For once in her life Mirabell forgot all about her toy. pulling her Lamb. The Lamb rolled along

And while Mirabell was looking at the new trunk for the Sawdust Doll’s clothes, a big dog came running along the street. He saw the white, woolly Lamb near the curbstone.

“Oh, ho! Maybe that is good to eat!” thought the dog. And before the Lamb on Wheels could say a word, that dog just picked her up in his mouth and carried her away as a mother cat carries her little ones. Yes, the big dog carried away the Lamb on Wheels!

CHAPTER VIII

SAILING DOWN THE BROOK

The Lamb on Wheels was so frightened when the dog took her up in his mouth that she did not know what to do. If she could, she would have rolled away as fast as a toy railroad train, such a train as Arnold and Dick played with. But the dog had the Lamb in his mouth before she knew what was happening.

Besides, across the street was a man, and, as he happened to be looking at the Lamb, of course she dared not make believe come to life and trundle along as she sometimes did in the toy store. It was against the rules, you know, for any of the toys to do anything by themselves when any human eyes saw them. And so the Lamb had to let herself be carried away by the dog.

Now you might think that when the man saw the dog run away with the Lamb on Wheels in his mouth the man would have stopped the dog. But the man was thinking of something else. He was looking for a certain house, and he had forgotten the number, and he was thinking so much about that, and other things, that he never gave the Lamb a second thought.

He did see the dog take her away, but maybe he imagined it was only some game the children were playing with the toy and the dog, for Mirabell and Dorothy were there on the street, in plain sight.

But as the two little girls were just then thinking of the new trunk for the Sawdust Doll, neither of them thought of the Lamb, and they did not see the dog take her.

“Oh, what a nice trunk!” said Mirabell to Dorothy.

“I’m glad you like it,” said Dorothy. She had her Sawdust Doll in her arms, and, as it happened, the Doll saw the dog running away with the Lamb on Wheels in his mouth.

“Oh! Oh! Oh, dear me! That is dreadful!” said the Sawdust Doll to herself. “Oh, the poor Lamb! What will happen to her?”

Away ran the dog with the Lamb on Wheels in his mouth down the street, over a low fence, and soon he was in the vacant lots where the weeds grew high. And then, as there were no human eyes in the vacant lots to see her, the Lamb thought it time to do something. She began to wiggle her legs, though she could not get them loose from the platform with wheels on, and she cried out: