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“Baa! Baa! Baa!”

“Hello there! what’s the matter?” barked the dog, and it made his nose tickle to have the Lamb, whom he was carrying in his teeth, give that funny Baa! sound in his mouth.

“Matter? Matter enough I should say!” exclaimed the Lamb on Wheels. “Why are you carrying me away like this, you very bad dog?”

For, being a toy, she could talk animal language as well as her own, and the dog could understand and talk it, too.

“Why am I carrying you away?” asked the dog. “Because I am hungry, of course.”

“But I am not good to eat,” bleated the Lamb. “I am mostly made of wood, though my wheels are of iron. Of course I have real wool on outside, but inside I am only stuffed.”

“Dear me! is that so?” asked the dog, opening his mouth and putting the Lamb down amid a clump of weeds in the vacant lot.

“Yes, it’s just as true as I’m telling you,” went on the Lamb. “I am only a toy, though when no human eyes look at me I can move around and talk, as can all of us toys. But I am not good to eat.”

“No, I think you’re right about that,” said the dog, after smelling of the Lamb. For that is how dogs tell whether or not a thing is good to eat–by smelling it.

“You looked so natural,” went on the dog, “that I thought you were a real little Lamb. That’s why I carried you off when that little girl left you and ran away. I’m sorry if I hurt you.”

“No, you didn’t hurt me, but you have carried me a long way from my home,” the Lamb said. “I don’t know how I am ever going to get back to Mirabell.”

“Can’t you roll along to her on your wheels?” asked the dog. “I haven’t time now to carry you back.”

“Not very well,” the Lamb answered. “It is very rough going in this lot, full of weeds and stones. I can easily roll myself along on a smooth floor, in the toy shop or at Mirabell’s home. But it is too hard here.”

“Ill leave you here now,” barked the dog, “and when it gets dark I’ll come and get you. I’ll carry you back to the porch of the house, from in front of which I carried you off. Then you can roll in and get back to Mirabell, as you call her. Shall I do that?”

“Well, I suppose that would be a good plan,” the Lamb said. “I don’t exactly like being carried in your teeth, but there is no help for it.”

“Then I’ll do that,” promised the dog. “I’ll come back here and get you after dark. You’ll be all right here in the tall weeds.”

“I suppose so,” replied the Lamb. “Though I shall be lonesome.”

“Please forgive me for causing you all this trouble,” went on the dog. “I never would have done it if I had known you were a toy. And now I’ll run along and come back to-night. I hear a dog friend of mine calling me.”

Another dog, at the farther end of the lot, was barking, and the Lamb crouched deeper down in the weeds.

“Dear me! this surely is an adventure,” said the Lamb on Wheels to herself, as she was left alone. “Being taken away in a rag bag, as the Sawdust Doll was, couldn’t be any worse than this. And though none of my legs is broken, as was one of the White Rocking Horse’s, still I am almost as badly off, for I dare not move. I wonder what will happen to me next!”

It was not long before something did happen. As the Lamb stood on her wheels and wooden platform among the weeds, all at once two boys came along. They were looking for some fun.

“Oh, look!” cried a big boy. “There’s a little white poodle dog over in the weeds!” and he pointed to the Lamb, whose white coat was easily seen amid the green leaves.