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And while the clerk was gone the sailor walked about, looking at some bicycles and velocipedes at the far end of the toy department. Thus the Lamb and her friends were left by themselves for a moment or two, with no one to look at them. This was just the chance the Lamb wanted. She could talk now.

“Oh, just think of where I am going to be taken!” she said to the Calico Clown. “Off to sea!”

“Real jolly, I call it!” said the Clown. “I wish he had picked me for the trip.”

“And I wish he had taken me,” put in the Bold Tin Soldier. “I have always longed for a sea trip.”

“Well, I wish either of you had gone in my place,” said the Lamb on Wheels, a bit sadly. “Now I shall never see the Sawdust Doll or the White Rocking Horse again.”

“You must make the best of it,” said the Monkey on a Stick. “I know what sailors are–I have heard of them. They like to have monkeys and parrots for pets–that is, real ones, not toys such as we are. But sailors are kind, I have heard.”

But the woolly Lamb only sighed. She felt certain that she would be seasick, and no one can have a good time thinking of that.

“Well, if you go on an ocean trip we may never see you again,” said the Monkey on a Stick. “Ocean travel is very dangerous.”

“Nonsense! It isn’t anything of the sort!” cried the Calico Clown, and he tried to wink at the Monkey from behind a pile of building blocks. “The ocean is as safe as the shore. Why, look at the English and French dolls,” he said, waving his cymbals in the direction of the imported toys in the next aisle. “They came over the ocean in a ship, and they did not even have a headache. And look at the Japanese dolls–they came much farther, over another ocean, too, and their hair was not even mussed.”

“That’s so,” said the Lamb, and she felt a little better at hearing this.

“You want to keep still–don’t scare her!” whispered the Clown to the Monkey. “It’s bad enough as it is–having her taken away by the sailor. Don’t make it worse!”

“All right, I won’t,” said the Monkey. And he began to talk about the happier side of an ocean trip; how beautiful the sunset was, and how there was never any dust at sea.

Then the sailor came back from having looked at the velocipedes, and the girl clerk brought a large sheet of paper. In this the Lamb was wrapped. She had a last look at her friends of the toy shelves and counters, and then she felt herself being lifted up by the sailor.

Out of the store the sailor carried the Lamb on Wheels. She wished she had had time to say good-bye to her friends, but she had not, and she must make the best of it.

“At any rate I am going to have adventures, even though they may be on a ship, and even though I may be seasick,” thought the Lamb. “And perhaps I may not be so very ill.”

On and on walked the sailor, down this street up another until, after a while, he stopped in front of a house.

“This must be the place,” he said to himself. “I wonder if Mirabell is at home. I’ll go in and see.”

Up the steps he went and rang the bell. There was a hole in the paper wrapped about the Lamb, and through this hole she could look out. She saw that she was on the piazza of a fine, large house. There was another house next door, and at the window stood a little girl with a doll in her arms.

“Gracious goodness!” exclaimed the Lamb on Wheels to herself. “That looks just like the Sawdust Doll who used to live in our store! I wonder if it could be?”