CHAPTER XIIITED AND HIS KITE
Thetwo little girls stood and looked and looked and looked. Then they looked once more to make sure that the missing doll was not somewhere on the porch—in a corner perhaps. But Flo was nowhere in sight.
“Where can she be?” asked Mary.
“That’s what I want to know,” wailed Jan. “Oh, if anybody has taken her away——”
“Maybe they has,” suggested Mary. “That is, unless maybe she walked away. Was your doll a walking doll, Jan?”
“Nope! Dolls can’t walk!”
“I know mine can’t,” went on the other little girl; “but my mamma read to me about a little girl who had a doll that could walk. She walked and talked when you wound up a spring in the back of her dress.”
“Oh, my doll wasn’t that kind,” said Jan,and as she talked she looked all around the porch, even lifting up the cloth that was on the box which was used for the play-party table.
“I thought maybe she had eaten so much she might have gone to sleep, and then she would fall under the table,” said Jan to Mary.
But Flo was not there.
“Why don’t you call her, the same way our mammas call us when we go away?” asked Mary.
“I could do that,” agreed Jan, and then she called:
“Oh, Flo! I want you, dollie! Where are you?”
But no answer came, and then Jan, with a little laugh, said:
“Oh, it’s silly to call! A doll can’t hear, of course. We only make-believe they can. And this is real—it isn’t make-believe. Flo is really gone!” and tears came into her eyes.
“I’ll help you look for her,” offered Mary. “We won’t play party any more. It won’t be any fun. Come on, we’ll have a doll hunt.”
“You’d better put your doll in the house,”advised Jan. “Somebody may take her, too.”
“I guess I will,” agreed Mary.
Then, when she came out after putting her Anna Belle, as her doll was named, safely in her little bed, the two girls began once more to search for Flo.
They had looked in all the places they could think of around the house and porch, and were beginning on the bushes, which were down along both sides of the path, when Jan happened to think of her little brother.
“Oh, where is Trouble?” she suddenly cried.
“Here I is,” came the quick answer, and the little fellow, his face and hands very dirty, came out from behind a snowball bush. He had been picking the white balls that looked like little drops of snow.
“Oh, Trouble! where have you been?” asked Jan.
“And did you see anything of Jan’s doll?” asked Mary.
“Yes, I sawed her,” answered Trouble, and his sister noticed that Baby William looked a little frightened, as if something queer had happened.
“Where is she? Where is my Flo?”asked Trouble’s sister quickly. “Tell me!” she begged.
“Dog took her,” was the answer.
“A dog took my doll?” asked Jan. “Whose dog? When?”
“’Ittle while ago. It was Mary’s dog,” and Trouble threw a snowball at a fluttering butterfly without hitting it.
“Mary’s dog took my doll?” cried Jan. “Tell me all about it.”
“Do you mean our Rover?” asked Mary.
“Yes—big-dog-Rover. He take Jan’s doll.”
“But why did he do it?” Jan demanded. “A doll isn’t good for a doggie to eat, and Rover wouldn’t want to play with Flo. Why did he take her?”
“I dess he wanted the ham bone,” was Trouble’s answer.
“A ham bone? In my doll!” cried Jan. “Flo hasn’t any ham bone!”
“She did have one,” explained Trouble, and he never even smiled. “I gived her my ham bone.”
“Your ham bone?” repeated Mary. “Where did you get a ham bone, Trouble Martin?”
“Offen your mamma’s table when shewasn’t in de titchen. I tooked de ham bone to suck ’cause I was hungry.”
“Yes, he does do that, sometimes,” explained Jan, as Mary looked at her in surprise. “Mother often gives him one that’s been boiled and’s had most of the meat cut off. He likes to gnaw the bone and pretend he’s a little dog.”
“And there was a ham bone out in our kitchen,” said Mary. “I saw it there when I went in to get some cookies. I’ll see if it’s gone.”
“Oh, if Trouble says he took it he did,” replied Jan, and when Mary went to look, surely enough the ham bone was gone. Mrs. Seaton was not in the kitchen, having gone to the cellar to get some molasses to make a cake.
“But what did you do with the bone, Trouble?” asked Jan. “And how did the dog take my doll?”
“I did eat the ham bone,” said Baby William, speaking very slowly and trying to use the best words he knew, for he saw his sister was very anxious. “I did eat the ham bone and then big-dog-Rover he did come and want some. So I did hide the ham bone under your dollie’s dress so Rover not haveit. I did not eat all de meat—I mean the meat,” and Trouble corrected himself.
“You hid your ham bone under Flo’s dress?” asked Jan.
“Yes, I did.”
“And then what happened?”
“Then big-dog-Rover he take the dollie in his mouth and he runned off with her, he did! Now may I have a cookie?”
“Oh, I see what happened,” said Jan. “Trouble wanted to keep the ham bone away from Rover, so he hid it under Flo’s clothes. Then your dog smelled it there and carried away the doll and the bone, too.”
“I guess he did,” agreed Mary. “He thought your doll was all one big ham bone I guess. But where did Rover take it, Trouble?” she asked Baby William.
“Don’t know. Big-dog-Rover runned off.”
“Oh, dear!” cried Jan. “If he’s buried my doll, as dogs bury the bones they find, she’ll be spoiled!”
“Maybe he hasn’t had time to bury it yet,” said Mary. “Come on. I know where Rover buries most of his bones. It’s in a soft place near his kennel. Let’s run!”
And run Jan and Mary did, leavingTrouble on the stoop. The little boy at once began to eat some of the cookies left on the play-party table.
“There he is!” cried Mary, as she saw the dog lying down in the grass near his kennel, or house.
“And he’s eating something!” added Jan, for Rover was certainly gnawing something he held between his paws. “Oh, I hope it isn’t my doll!”
“Rover wouldn’t eat a sawdust doll when he could get a bone,” returned Mary.
And so it proved. As the little girls ran up Rover wagged his tail as if saying he was glad to see them, and he kept on gnawing. Then Mary cried:
“Oh, there’s your doll, Jan!”
“Where?”
“Over in the grass behind Rover.”
And there was the missing Flo, not in the least hurt, though there were some stains on her dress, made by the grass and the greasy ham bone.
“But we can play it’s Monday and have a wash day,” said Mary. “We’ll wash her clothes!”
Jan thought this would be fun.
“I guess the ham bone must have droppedout when Rover carried my doll as far as this,” said Jan. “Then he let go of Flo and began to gnaw Trouble’s bone. Oh, I wonder what Trouble will do next!”
“He’s awful cute,” laughed Mary. “How nicely he told us what he had done.”
“Yes, Trouble is good that way. He never tries to get out of anything he does. Well, I’m glad Flo isn’t hurt. Now let’s wash her dress,” and the two little girls had as much fun at this as they had had playing party.
So, after all, it was a good thing that Rover carried off the doll with the ham bone hidden under her dress. For if he had not Trouble might have eaten too much. And Mrs. Seaton said it made no difference to her—they had other hams in the smoke-house.
Everyone at Cherry Farm laughed that night when Jan came home and told what had happened to her doll.
“I had a lovely time over at Mary’s,” she said to her brother. “What did you do at Jimmie Dell’s?”
“Oh, we made a big kite and we’re going to fly it to-morrow.”
“May I come and see you?”
“Course you can! But don’t bring Trouble.”
“Why not?”
“’Cause he might get tangled in the tail and sail up in the air.”
So Baby William was left with his mother when Jan and Ted went over to Jimmie Dell’s house the next day to fly the big kite. It was quite a large one—almost as tall as Ted himself—but as there was a good wind the boys thought it would go up all right. They tied the string to it, made the tail, and then while Jimmie held it up off the ground Ted ran, holding the ball of cord in his hand.
The kite went up a little distance in the air, and then gave a sudden downward dive.
“What’s the matter?” asked Jan. “What made it do that?”
“Not enough tail on,” answered Jimmie. “Wait a minute, I’ll fix it.”
Not wanting to wait to get more string and pieces of cloth from which the tail was made, Jimmie fastened on a bunch of weeds he pulled up from the spot where he was standing.
“That will make it heavier, and then the kite won’t dip and dive,” he said. “All ready now!” he called to Ted. “Start and run!”
Ted ran, letting out string from the ballhe carried in his hand. The kite went up a little way and then gave another sudden dive, right down near a place where some chickens and an old rooster were picking bugs and worms from the grass. The chickens gave frightened squawks and ran away with fluttering wings.
“Oh, dear!” cried Jan, who was watching the boys. “It’s going to come down again!”
But the kite did not. That one dive seemed to be enough for it, as it at once began to soar up in the air.
“Oh, it’s going up! It’s going up!” cried Jimmie.
“Run, Teddy, run!” called Jan.
And her brother did run.
The kite rose in the air until the long tail was almost clear from the ground and then the Curlytop girl saw a queer sight.
For, tangled in the weed which Jimmie had tied on the end of the tail, was the rooster. He was being raised up with the big kite and his frightened crows and the flapping of his wings showed that he did not like it at all.
Up and up went the kite, and up and up went the rooster!