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She held the Calico Clown up and looked at him.

“Oh, ain’t he jest grand!” cried Jim, his eyes shining with delight.

“He suah is a gay fellow all right,” said Mandy.

Liza Ann reached up and pulled one of the Clown’s strings. Quickly his legs jiggled and he cut some funny capers.

“Oh, my! Dat suah is scrumptious!” laughed the little colored girl.

“Oh, Mammy, jest let us play with him a little while!” begged Jim. “Den I’ll take him back to where he belongs.”

“All right,” agreed Mandy. “But be mighty keerful of him! If dat Calico Clown should get busted Mirabell or Arnold is gwine to feel mighty bad!”

You see she didn’t know the Clown belonged to Sidney, and not to either Mirabell or Arnold.

“Come on, we’ll have some fun wif him!” said Liza Ann to her brother.

And then, while their mother put the clothes to soak, the children played with the Calico Clown. They were good and gentle children, and the gay toy did not in the least mind clanging his cymbals for them or doing his funny dance. He jiggled and joggled his arms and legs, and went through such funny antics that Jim and Liza Ann laughed again and again.

“Po’ li’l honey lambs!” said Mandy with a sigh, as she bent over the wash tub. “I wish dey had some toys of dere own. But den I’se got good clean and soft watah to wash wif, an’ dat’s a blessin’! Lots of folks hasn’t got only hard watah, what won’t make no suds.”

After the clothes had been put to soak in a tub Mandy dried her hands and sat and looked at Liza Ann and Jim playing with the Calico Clown.

“Come now, you’d better get ready to take him back,” she said to Jim, after a while.

“Does you mean to take him back where you got de basket of wash, Mammy?” asked the colored boy.

“Yes,” his mother answered. “You know de big green house. You’s been dere befo’, honey. You go dere now, Jim–tisn’t late yet–an’ you take back dis Clown. Tell Mirabell or Arnold dat it got in de wash wif dere daddy’s pocket hankowitches.”

“All right,” said Jim, with a sigh. “I will. But I suah does wish we could keep him!”

“So do I,” sighed Liza Ann in a low voice.

“Well, maybe some day I can make money enough to git you somethin’ to play wif,” said their mother.

As she had said, it was not late, though the sun had set. It was a warm, summer night, and the moon was shining brightly. Jim knew the way to the house where Mirabell and Arnold lived, for he had often gone there both with his mother and alone, either to get or bring back the clothes.

With the Calico Clown wrapped in a piece of paper, Jim set off on his trip. He hurried along, thinking how nice it would be if he had a toy like that. He was wondering how long it would be before his mother could earn enough money to buy one when, just as he turned into the yard of the house where Arnold and Mirabell lived, Jim stumbled and fell.

The Calico Clown shot out of his hands, and the poor toy, as he flew along, thought to himself:

“Oh, what is happening now!”

The next moment he fell into a deep hole, and only that he grasped the long grass at the edge of it, Jim would have fallen in himself.

“Fo’ de lan’ sakes!” exclaimed the little colored boy as he picked himself up. “What have done gone an’ happened now?”

You see, he felt about it just as the Calico Clown did.

CHAPTER IX

BACK HOME

The door of the house in which Arnold and Mirabell lived opened, and their daddy looked out toward the front yard. He had heard the grunt made by Jim when the little colored boy fell down and dropped the Calico Clown into a hole.