CHAPTER XIITHE LOST DOLL
Grandpa Martin, pausing in his work of tossing hay up on the wagon to fan himself with his big straw hat, looked across the field. What he saw made him cry out:
“Look at that boy!”
He pointed toward Teddy on the hay-rake, and one of the farm hands exclaimed:
“He’ll be hurt, sure! Does he know how to drive a horse?”
“He can drive a goat a little,” said Jan. “Oh, get him, Grandpa, ’fore he’s hurt!” she cried.
“He oughtn’t to have got up there!” said Grandpa Martin as he dropped his pitchfork and ran after the hay-rake. One of the hired men ran with him.
“Ted! Teddy! Stop the horse!” cried grandpa, running faster.
“I’m trying to,” answered Ted, but hisvoice sounded faint and far off. “Whoa!” he called, but instead of pulling back on the reins as he ought to have done, he flapped them up and down on the back of the horse. And, as this was what other drivers did when they wanted him to go faster, the horse did not know what to do.
With his voice Teddy was telling the horse to stop, but with the reins he was urging him on. So the horse kept going.
“I’ve got to stop! I’ve got to stop!” said the frightened boy to himself. “Maybe if I pull on the handle, like the man did, and raise up the rake, the horse will stop long enough for me to jump down. I’ll try it.”
Then, before Grandpa Martin or the hired man could reach Ted, he leaned forward. But he did not pull the handle. His hand just missed it and the next moment the little boy fell from the high iron seat, right behind the horse’s legs.
“Oh! Oh!” screamed Jan.
“Good land!” cried Grandpa Martin. “The boy will be hurt!”
But Teddy was a lucky little boy. Instead of falling on the iron-shod feet of the horse, he just missed them and rolled into a little pile of hay. But the horse kept on going,and the next Ted knew, he was being rolled along, over and over in a bundle of the dried grass.
For the curved teeth of the big rake were pulling him along, together with a bundle of the hay, and he was so wrapped up in it, like a Christmas doll in a package of straw or excelsior, that Teddy was not even scratched, though the ends of the hay did tickle him and make him sneeze.
“Whoa, there! Whoa!” cried the hired man in a loud voice. At the same time he ran forward and caught hold of the reins. This stopped the horse, and when the man and Grandpa Martin raised the teeth of the rake, and pulled apart the bundle of hay, there was Ted inside it. He looked frightened.
“Oh, Ted! Teddy!” gasped Jan, running up to him.
“Are you hurt?” asked one of the men.
“I guess not,” Ted slowly answered, as he stood up. “I didn’t mean to do it,” he added, looking at his grandfather.
“I should hope you didn’t! But don’t dare get up on that rake again!”
“Not even when there isn’t a horse hitched to it?” asked Ted.
“No, even when there is no horse. That’sfor not being careful. You mustn’t do such things, Theodore.”
Teddy looked a little ashamed of himself.
“I—I won’t do it any more,” he faltered. “But it was awful funny being rolled along over and over inside the rake.”
“It’s a wonder you weren’t hurt,” said Grandpa Martin. “It’s a good thing the teeth of the rake are so big and curved, and not sharp. Now go back and sit down until we load the wagon.”
Grandpa and his men finished gathering up the hay, and when the big wagon was loaded he called:
“Come now, Curlytops! Up with you!”
Jan and Ted were tossed up on the very top of the load. And such fun as it was to ride along the road on the way back to the barn! No matter how rough the journey was the children never felt it, for the load of hay was like a feather bed, and much nicer than the Curlytops had thought. In the barn they had fun, too, sliding down one side of the big mow where the hay was stored.
Back they rode to the hay field again, and this time Ted kept far away from the big rake. He and Jan had a good time trying to catch the grasshoppers which flew andhopped from one pile of the dried grass to another.
Then came a final ride back to the barn on the last load, and Ted and Jan were so tired out and so drowsy from the sweet smell and the heat that they fell asleep and had to be lifted down.
“Oh, we had such dandy fun!” cried Jan that night.
“And I had an adventure!” added Ted. Then he told about being rolled along in the big rake.
“Teddy! Teddy!” exclaimed his grandmother when she heard the story, “what will you do next?”
“Something one would never imagine a child would think of—that is all you can be certain of, Grandma,” put in the Curlytops’ mother, with a sigh.
“Well, I wonder what we’ll do to-day?” asked Ted of his sister the next morning after breakfast, when they went out on the porch to find the sun shining brightly after a shower in the night.
“Can’t we go for a ride with Nicknack? That would be fun.”
“No. One of the wheels of the goat wagon needs fixing and grandpa is going to take itto the blacksmith shop. If we go anywhere we’ll have to walk, Jan.”
“Then we can’t take Trouble,” declared Jan, “for he doesn’t like to walk.”
“And Hal isn’t here to make a pole Indian wagon like the one we made before. What’ll we do?” added Ted.
Before Jan could answer she heard her name called, and, looking toward the front gate, she saw Mary Seaton, a little girl with whom she sometimes played.
“Oh, Jan!” called Mary, “can you come over to my house and bring your doll?”
“Yes, I guess so. I’ll ask my mother.”
Mrs. Martin was willing, and soon, with flaxen-haired Flo, her prettiest doll, in her arms, Jan was ready to go with her little playmate.
“Oh, Jan!” called her mother, as the two girls were skipping out of the yard. “As long as you are only going over to Mary’s, can’t you take Trouble with you?”
“Oh, yes, let’s!” cried Mary.
“All right, we’ll take him,” said Jan, and she sighed a little. “But tell him, please, Mother, that he mustn’t pull my doll’s hair.”
“No, he mustn’t do anything like that,” said Mother Martin. “If you do, William, Ishall punish you when Jan brings you home.”
“Me be dood!” promised Trouble.
“Well, if Jan’s going over to Mary’s, I guess I’ll go and find Jimmie Dell or Hal Chester and have some fun,” remarked Ted, as, with hands in his pockets, he walked slowly down the road.
The two little girls, with Baby William, found a nice place to play on the shady porch of the Seaton farmhouse, which was not far from that of Grandpa Martin’s.
“We’ll have a little tea-party,” said Mary.
Her mother gave her some cookies and some bread and butter, and with her toy set of dishes Mary soon had a table set on a box on the porch, and the two dolls were propped up in front of it, while Jan and Mary fed them—make-believe, of course.
“Me’s hungry, too,” said Trouble, as he saw the things to eat.
“Well, you can’t have any now, because you’re not a doll,” said Jan. “After the dolls eat then you can, Trouble dear.”
Baby William seemed to be thinking about this. It did not seem just fair that a real flesh-and-blood chap should have to wait until some dolls, who didn’t have any teeth,got through with their make-believe eating. Then, while Jan and Mary were busy pretending their dolls were eating and talking like grown-up people, Trouble toddled out into the kitchen.
His sister and her playmate did not pay much attention to him, and a little later the two girls thought they would play another game—that of “dress up like ladies.” To do this Mary had to get some old, long skirts from the attic, and Jan went with her to help pick them out.
“Now you’ll be Mrs. Martin and I’ll be Mrs. Seaton,” Mary explained, when they were down on the porch again, ready for the new game. “And we’ll take our dolls—they’ll be our children you know——”
“But where is my doll?” cried Jan suddenly, as she looked around. “She’s gone! Oh, my lovely Flo doll is lost!”
There was only one doll at the play-party table on the porch, and that was Mary’s. Jan’s doll was gone, and so were some of the cookies that had been on the toy plate in front of her.