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The two boys poled their raft down to a broader part of the brook, where it flowed at the bottom of a garden. At the upper end of the garden was a large house, and not far away was another house. The Lamb on Wheels could see the houses from where she stood on the raft, and she wondered if any little boys or girls lived in them.

“Having adventures is all right,” thought the Lamb, “but one can have too many of them. I have been on a voyage long enough, I believe. I wish I could get back home to Mirabell.”

A few minutes after that the big boy cried:

“Oh, come on, Jimmie! There’s Tom and Harry! We can have a game of ball,” and he pointed to some boys who were running around the lots, through which the brook was now flowing.

“What shall we do with the Lamb?” asked the small boy.

“Leave it here on the raft,” answered the older boy. “Maybe we’ll want to play Noah’s Ark again, and we can find the raft here. Now we’ll go and play ball!”

They shoved the raft over toward the shore of the brook, and then the two boys jumped off. They left the Lamb behind them.

“Dear me! how fast things do happen,” said the Lamb, speaking out loud to herself, as there was no one near just then. “A little while ago Mirabell was pulling me along the sidewalk with a string. Then she left me and the dog ran off with me. Then he left me, and the boys carried me off on the raft. Now they have left me. I wonder who will take me next?”

The raft was smooth in places, and the Lamb was just going to start to roll along a board toward shore when, all at once, she heard a noise, and a voice cried:

“Whoa!”

“My goodness!” thought the Lamb, coming to a stop almost as soon as she had started along on her wheels, “what’s that? I wonder if some one is driving the White Rocking Horse along here!”

She looked through the weeds growing on the edge of the brook and saw a real horse and wagon and a real man driving down to the water through the vacant lot. And as the man was real the Lamb dared not move while he was in sight.

“Whoa!” called the real man, and it was to his real horse he was speaking, and not to the White Rocking Horse. “Whoa now, Dobbin!” went on the man, “and I’ll let you have a drink here if the water is clean. I know you are thirsty, and there is a brook here somewhere.”

So that is why the man was driving his horse down through the lot–to give his horse a drink. The man climbed down off his wagon and walked toward the brook, right at the place where the raft had gone ashore with the Lamb on board.

“I wonder if this can be the junkman who carried the Sawdust Doll away in his wagon,” thought the Lamb. “If it is I am in for another adventure!”

As the man came to look at the brook, to see if the water was clean enough for his horse to drink, the man saw the raft.

“Oh, ho! There are some good boards and planks I can carry home to break up for kindling wood,” said the man. “That’s what I’ll do. I’ll have some good firewood from these boards! Or maybe I can sell some.” Then he came nearer and saw the Lamb.

“Well, I do declare!” the man cried. “There is a white woolly Lamb toy! I must take that, too, though I don’t know what I can do with it. Maybe I can sell it. I am in luck to-day, getting a load of wood and a toy. Now come on, Dobbin!” he called to his horse. “The brook is nice and clean for you to drink from, and while you are drinking I will load the wood on my wagon and take the Lamb on Wheels. Come on, Dobbin!”