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“Well, I am certainly doing some traveling this day,” thought the Clown, as he reposed in the Man’s pocket. “First I am carried up a tree, and then I fall down. Next I am taken to an office, just as if I were in business like the Ink-Well Dwarf, and now I am being taken to the home of Mirabell and Arnold. I wonder what will happen next.”

He did not have to wait long to find out.

Down the street walked the Man, and soon he was within sight of his home, where Mirabell and Arnold lived. The two children were out in front, waiting for their father. As soon as they saw him coming they stopped swinging on the gate and cried:

“Here comes Daddy!”

He waved his hand to them.

Down the street they raced to meet him, and taking hold of his hands, one on either side, they led him toward the house.

Just then out of the side gate came Mandy, the jolly fat colored washer-woman. She had a basket full of clothes on a small express wagon.

“Oh, that reminds me!” exclaimed Mirabell’s father. “I’ll put these handkerchiefs from my pocket in your basket of wash, Mandy! You can take them home with you, wash them clean and iron them and bring them back to me.”

“‘Deed an’ dat’s just what I can do!” exclaimed Mandy, smiling broadly. “Put ’em right down yeah in mah basket!”

She turned back the sheet she had spread over the soiled clothes and made a little place down in one corner for the Man to put his handkerchiefs.

There was quite a bundle of them, all wadded together.

“There, you can tell Mother I didn’t forget my handkerchiefs this time,” said Daddy to his two children. “You saw me put them in the wash, didn’t you?”

“Yes, Daddy, we did!” exclaimed Mirabell. “And, oh, you ought to see what happened to my Lamb on Wheels to-day!”

“What happened?” asked Daddy, as he straightened up after having stooped down to thrust the handkerchiefs into the basket.

“Why, Arnold’s Bold Tin Soldier got caught in the curly wool on my Lamb’s back,” explained Mirabell, “and they both fell into the flour barrel!”

“That WAS funny!” laughed Daddy. And he was thinking so much about this and laughing so with Arnold and Mirabell that he never stopped to think of the Calico Clown in among the handkerchiefs he had put in the wash-basket.

But that is what he had done. He had thrust the Clown, with the handkerchiefs, down in Mandy’s basket of soiled clothes.

“Oh, my! Oh, dear me! Oh, what is going to happen now?” thought the Calico Clown as he felt himself covered up and taken away. “Oh, if I could only tell Mirabell or Arnold I am here. Oh, this is dreadful.”

But he could do nothing! Away he was taken in the wash-basket.

CHAPTER VIII

DOWN IN A DEEP HOLE

Daddy hurried into the house with Mirabell and Arnold. The children were eager to show their father into what a funny pickle the Bold Tin Soldier and the Lamb on Wheels had got. Of course, it wasn’t exactly a “pickle.” I only call it that for fun. It was really the flour barrel into which the two toys had fallen.

“How did it happen?” asked Daddy, as the children brought out their playthings, the Soldier still entangled in the Lamb’s wool, and both of them white with flour.

“It happened when we were in the kitchen watching the cook make a cake,” explained Mirabell. “I was playing with my Lamb on the floor and I lifted her up to let her see how nice the cake looked.”

“But what about your Soldier, Arnold?” asked Daddy.

“Oh, I had set my Soldier Captain on the back of Mirabell’s Lamb to give him a ride,” explained the little boy.

“I said he could,” remarked Mirabell.

“And when she lifted her Lamb up she lifted my Soldier up, too,” added Arnold.

“And then!” burst out Mirabell, laughing, “my foot slipped and I let go of my Lamb on Wheels, and she fell into the flour barrel, and so did Arnold’s Bold Tin Soldier.”