CHAPTER XVIIILOST IN THE WOODS
Janetand the others laughed when Baby William finished his funny little song, Mary joining in, though she looked a bit ashamed when she thought of having taken a ride without paying for it.
“But really I didn’t mean to,” she said. “I never read the sign on your goat. I thought it was a new kind of summer blanket to keep off the flies.”
“Oh well, it’s all right,” replied Janet kindly. “I guess maybe we can get somebody else to ride and pay pennies.”
“I’ll ask my mother for some,” offered Mary.
“Oh, no! Don’t!” begged Janet. “It’s all right! We gave you the ride for nothing, and it would be Indian-giving to take money now.”
“My mother’s going to do something forthe Home when it has the fair,” announced Mary.
“That’ll be nice,” remarked Ted slowly, but he was thinking of something else. “I guess we’ll have to go away far off, where nobody knows us, and give rides for five cents and a penny,” he added more briskly.
“Go away off?” asked Janet wonderingly.
“Yes, off on some other road. Here we know everybody, and course we were glad to give Mary and Jimmie rides, but that isn’t makin’ money,” went on Ted earnestly. “You see if we came to somebody we didn’t know we wouldn’t mind askin’ ’em to pay, like the waffle and lollypop man did us.”
“Oh, did you meet him?” asked Mary. “Isn’t he nice? He comes every year, and he’s always the same. I like him!”
“We liked his waffles!” laughed Ted. “But what’ll we do, Jan?”
“I guess we’ll have to go a little farther from here to get money for the Home,” agreed his sister. “And maybe folks what haven’t heard Trouble’s song so often would give pennies to hear him sing.”
“Maybe,” said Teddy. He was not quite sure about it.
“Well, I’m much obliged for my ride,” put in Mary. “And I’ll give you for the Home the first penny I get.”
“Thanks,” answered Jan. “Now we’ll ride ourselves;” and she got in the seat when Mary got out, while Ted took his place in front and then, Jan holding Trouble, away started the Curlytops once more to see what they could do to help Hal and the other little lame boys and girls by making the Home, where they spent so many sad months, a little happier place.
Janet and Teddy were so deeply interested in getting to some stretch of road where they were not known, so that they might ask strange children to have goat rides, and charge for them, that they never thought of sending word back to Cherry Farm that they were going off farther than they usually did. They just drove Nicknack on and on, away from the little village of Elmburg near which Grandpa Martin lived, out past Clover Lake and on to a strange country road that led through the woods.
“There’s a house and some children playing in the yard,” said Janet as they came within sight of a large white farmhouse. “Let’s ask if they don’t want a ride.”
The way in which two boys and three girls crowded to the fence as the goat wagon drove up seemed to show that the children did want a ride very much.
“Down the road and back for five cents,” explained Ted, as he pointed to the sign on Nicknack’s side, while the goat ate grass. “Or you can have a short ride for a penny.”
“I’ll go and ask my mother,” said the oldest girl. “Now don’t any of you dare go outside the fence!” she warned the others—her smaller brothers and sisters it seemed. “If you do a gobile might hit you.”
“What’s a gobile?” asked Janet.
“It’s what he calls an automobile,” explained the older girl, and she pointed to a small boy about the size of Trouble.
She hurried into the house, the others, meanwhile, looking eagerly through the fence palings at the goat and wagon. Jan and Ted had gotten out, ready for business in case this family of boys and girls wanted a ride.
“Maw gimme a quarter,” explained the girl when she came hurrying back, “and she says will you give us all a ride down the road and back and keep us out half an hour so she can git some rest.”
“All right,” said Janet. “We’ll give you a nice ride for twenty-five cents. But will you let my little brother stay in the wagon with you? He’s too small to walk and we can’t leave him.”
“Sure he can come,” said the girl, whose hair was almost red. “I’ll hold him on my lap. I’m used to children.”
“If you hold him maybe he won’t sing,” Ted told her.
“Sing? Oh, I don’t mind singin’. I like it!” said the almost red-haired girl with a laugh. “Our Babs sings lots, though we never can tell what he’s sayin’,” and she pointed to the smallest child.
“I will not sing!” decided Trouble, with a little stamp of his foot. “I willnotsing ’less I wide on Nicknack’s back!”
“Well, you can’t do that,” stated Ted. “Get in now, everybody,” he went on, “and we’ll give you a good ride.”
“Here’s your quarter,” said the girl, who was taller than Jan. “Better take it ’fore I lose it. I’m always losin’ somethin’. Maw says I’d lose my head if it wasn’t fast. Shouldn’t much mind though. I hate red hair. Don’t you?” she asked Janet fiercely.
“Not when it’s the color yours is,” answeredTed’s sister. “I think it’s lovely!”
“Oh, do you?” and the other girl, whose name was Maude, smiled and seemed pleased. “I like curls best, like yours.”
“They’re too tangly,” announced Janet, shaking her head.
“Well, this is a start!” exclaimed Ted as his sister put in her pocket the twenty-five cent piece—the first money they had earned for the Home.
The Curlytops gave the Pratt children—that was the name of the family—a good long ride down the road and back. They kept them out over an hour, for when Ted would have driven back to the yard to let off his passengers Jan whispered to him to keep on so Mrs. Pratt could have her half-hour rest. It was very hard to tell whether a half-hour or fifteen minutes or an hour had gone by.
Trouble, too, got over his fit of sulks and sang his funny song, much to the delight of Maude and her brothers and sisters. Babs, the Pratt baby, also sang and he and Trouble gave a sort of duet which sounded very strange, as each one tried to sing louder than the other, and no one could tell what either said.
“I wish you’d come over to-morrow,” saidMaude, when, at last, the goat ride was over. “I think maw’ll give another quarter to be quiet.”
“We’ll see,” half-promised Jan. “We want to make all the money we can as Grandpa Martin is poor, and he can’t give as much as he has before to the Crippled Home. His crops failed.”
“All but cherries,” explained Ted. “He’s got bushels of them!”
“I wish we had,” said Maude. “I love cherries.”
Once more the Curlytops drove on down the road. It was not late yet, and Ted wanted to see if he could not earn more money. They passed several houses, some where there were children, but none of them had any money to pay for rides. At one place, though, where a little boy was playing with a nurse maid in the front yard they were called to by the boy’s mother, who engaged Ted to drive the little fellow up and down, with the nurse to hold him, and when the ride was over, at which the little boy cried, the lady gave Janet fifty cents.
“Oh, but it isn’t worth that much—not such a short ride,” Janet said.
“I’m giving the money to the Home,” saidthe lady softly. “I had another little boy—once. I haven’t him now,” and she took up the small lad whom the nurse was holding and pressed him closely in her arms.
“Whew! what a lot of money we have!” cried Ted, as he turned Nicknack toward Cherry Farm a little later. “Seventy-five cents! You’d better tie it in your handkerchief, Jan, and then tie the handkerchief on your neck so you won’t lose it.”
“Can’t tie my handkerchief on my neck. It’s too little. But I’ll put it in my pocket—it’ll be all right there;” and this she did.
They were now on the road that led through the woods, and they were talking so earnestly about how surprised those at home would be over the seventy-five cents, and Trouble was singing his Mother Goose song so loudly, that none of them—especially Jan and Ted—noticed when Nicknack left the main road and turned into a side path that led beneath the trees.
It was not until the wagon got clear off even the side path and nearly upset, because the goat pulled it over a big tree root, that Ted called: “Whoa!” and looked about him.
“Why! Why!” he exclaimed. “Where are we?”
“In the woods,” answered Janet calmly.
“I know—yes. Butwhatwoods? We didn’t come here before.”
“Maybe it’s a short cut to Cherry Farm,” said his sister.
Ted looked all about him. He could see nothing in the woods that he had ever seen before, not a house or a barn was in sight.
“Janet,” he said, and he spoke in a whisper, half afraid Trouble would hear and be frightened, “Jan, we—we’re lost!”
“Lost? In these woods?”
“Yep! We’re lost!” and Ted got down out of the wagon and tied Nicknack to a tree.