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However she had no further chance to look, for the door opened just then, and the sailor went inside the house, carrying the Lamb with him.

“Where’s Mirabell?” asked the sailor of the maid who opened the door.

“She is up in the playroom,” was the answer. “She has been ill, but she is better now.”

“So I heard!” went on the jolly sailor. “I brought her something to look at. That will help her to get well.”

Up to the playroom he went, and no sooner had he opened the door than Mirabell, which was the name of the little girl, ran toward him.

“Oh, Uncle Tim!” cried Mirabell, as soon as she saw the jolly sailor, “how glad I am to see you!”

“And I’m glad to see you, Mirabell,” he laughed. “Look, I have brought you something!”

“Is it a monkey, Uncle Tim?” she asked.

“No, Mirabell, it isn’t a monkey. It is a woolly Lamb on Wheels. I saw it in a toy store and I brought it to you.”

“For me–to keep, Uncle Tim?” asked Mirabell, as the sailor took the wrapping paper off.

“Yes, for you to keep,” was the sailor’s answer. “Did you think I would be buying a Lamb for myself, to take to sea with me? Ho! Ho! I should say not!” he chuckled.

“Oh, how glad I am! And how I shall love this Lamb!” said the little girl.

As for the Lamb on Wheels, she was glad and happy, too, when she heard, as she did, what the sailor said.

“Oh, I’m to have a home on shore!” thought the Lamb. “I am not going to be taken on an ocean voyage at all, and be made seasick. I am to have a home on shore!”

And that is just what the toy Lamb had. The jolly sailor, who was Mirabell’s uncle, had bought the toy for the little girl.

“Do you like the Lamb?” asked Uncle Tim.

“Oh, do I? Well, I just guess I do!” cried Mirabell, and she hugged the Lamb in her arms, and rolled her across the floor on her wheels.

“Do you know, Uncle Tim,” went on Mirabell, “this is the very same Lamb I saw in the store, and wanted so much?”

“No! Is she?” asked the sailor, in surprise.

“The very same one!” declared Mirabell. “I was in the store once with Dorothy, the little girl who lives next door. She has a Sawdust Doll that came from the same store. And we were there the other day, before I was taken ill, and I saw a woolly lamb–this very same one, I’m sure– and I wanted it so much! But Mother said I must wait, and I’m glad I did, for now you gave it to me.”

“Yes, I’m giving you the Lamb for yourself–to keep forever,” said the sailor. “I wouldn’t dream of taking her on a sea voyage with me.”

So you see the Lamb need not have been uneasy after all. But of course she did not know that when the sailor bought her.

Mirabell stroked the soft wool of her new toy Lamb. She wheeled it across the floor again, and the sailor watched her. Then, all of a sudden, the door of the playroom was opened with such a bang that it struck the Lamb and sent her spinning across the floor, upside down, into a corner.

“Oh, Arnold!” cried Mirabell to her brother, who had come in so roughly. “Look what you did! You’ve broken my Lamb on Wheels!”

CHAPTER IV

SLIDING DOWNHILL

Arnold, who was a boy about as old as Dick, the brother of Dorothy, stopped short after slamming open the playroom door. He looked at his sister, then at the Lamb lying upside down in a corner, and then he looked at the jolly sailor.

“What did I do?” asked Arnold, who was taken by surprise by the way his sister called to him.

“You broke my new toy, the Lamb on Wheels,” answered the little girl. “Oh, I hope she isn’t killed!” and running to the corner, she picked up her new toy.