CHAPTER IVTHE QUEER BOX
Trouble was now crying and kicking with his little heels against the floor of the garage. Part of his little body was half way under the carriage, the front wheels of which were turned in such a way that Janet could reach her little brother’s legs. His head stuck out through one of the front wheels, in between two spokes.
“We’ve got to get him out!” decided Janet, as she and Ted paused to get their breath.
“Yes,” replied Teddy. “Let’s both pull hard!”
They were about to take hold of Baby William once more, but he screamed so loudly that they held back.
“You hurted me!” he wailed. “You hurted me! Don’t push me an’ pull me any more!”
“But we’ve got to get you out, Trouble!” said Teddy. “We have to push you or pull you!”
“Which hurts the most, Trouble?” asked Jan kindly. “Does it hurt most to pull you or to push you?”
“Dey boff hurts!” sobbed the little boy. “You go and tell my mommer I wants her to get me out! I wants my mommer!”
“I guess we’d better do that!” decided Teddy. “You go for mother, Jan. I’ll stay with Trouble.”
Off toward the house hurried the little girl. She burst into the kitchen, where Mrs. Martin was making some broth for the sick man who had fallen down through weakness and hunger on the Martin lawn that morning.
“Oh, Mother, he’s stuck fast!” cried Janet.
“Who, Skyrocket? Did you find him?” asked Mrs. Martin, thinking of course it was the dog about which her little daughter was talking.
“No, Skyrocket isn’t stuck fast. We didn’t find him,” replied Janet. “It’s Trouble! He’s stuck fast! And Teddy pulled and I pulled, and then we both pushed, but we can’t get him loose. He’s stuck!”
“Oh, dear me!” sighed Mrs. Martin. “What will happen next? Here, Nora, watch this broth so it doesn’t burn. Now, Jan, come and show me where Trouble is stuck fast.”
Taking hold of Janet’s hand, Mrs. Martin hurried out to the garage. Rushing in, she saw Teddy holding Trouble’s head, which was still thrust between two of the carriage wheel spokes.
“Is he badly hurt?” asked Mrs. Martin, thinking perhaps Baby William was in worse trouble than Janet had told her.
“Oh, no, he isn’t hurt,” explained Ted. “He just can’t get his head out, that’s all. I’m holding it up for him, ’cause he says the wheel spokes hurt his neck.”
“Poor little darling! I should think they would!” said his mother.
“I—I was playin’ peek-a-boo wif a chicken,” explained Baby William. “An’ I stuck in my head, but I can’t stick it out! Oh, Muzzie!” he cried, using a pet name for his mother that he had almost forgotten, “you det me out!”
“Of course I will!” exclaimed Mrs. Martin. “Here, Ted, let me get hold of him.”
“You can’t push him out!” declared Ted.
“And you can’t pull him out,” added Janet. “His head is too big!”
Mrs. Martin gave one look at the wheel spokes, she saw just how Trouble’s head was caught, and then, with a quick motion, she lifted him up, pulled him back, and in another moment he was safe in her arms and sobbing on her shoulder.
“Why—why!” exclaimed Teddy, “how’d you do it so quick, Mother?”
“We tried and tried, an’ we couldn’t do it,” added Jan. “We pushed and we pulled; didn’t we, Ted?”
“Yes!”
“Well, you should have lifted up,” said Mrs. Martin with a smile.
“We never thought of that,” Teddy said.
“You see the carriage wheel spokes are put together like the letter ‘V,’” said Mrs. Martin, as she showed the two older children. “When Trouble’s head and neck were toward the bottom of the V they were in so tightly that neither pushing nor pulling would get him out. But when I lifted him up I raised him toward the wide part of the V, at the place where he had stuck his head in, and then it was easy enough to get him out. But you mustn’t do it again, Baby William!” she added, as she patted the sobbing little fellow on his shoulders.
“No, me don’t want to play peek-a-boo wif a chicken any more at all!” decided Trouble.
“Haven’t you found your dog yet?” their mother asked.
Ted and Jan sadly shook their heads.
“Well, maybe he’ll come home,” said Mrs. Martin kindly. “He may be off paying a visit to some doggie friends of his. Look around some more, and take good care of Trouble.”
Baby William felt better now, especially after Nora had brought out to him, and also to Janet and Teddy, some sugar cookies. Munching these, the children wandered around, looking here, there, everywhere for the lost Skyrocket.
Mrs. Martin went back to the kitchen to finish making the broth for the sick man.
“I wish he would wake up,” said Teddy, as he and his sister, each holding a hand of Baby William, walked about searching for the pet dog. They had looked in the room of the sick man.
“What do you want him to wake up for? To tell us a story?” asked Janet.
“Oh, maybe he can tell stories!” exclaimed Ted. “I didn’t think of that. But I want to ask him if he saw Skyrocket. He’s a tramp, and tramps see lots of dogs when they walk around.”
“He is not a tramp!” declared Jan. “I heard daddy say he wasn’t a tramp, even if he was poor.”
“Well, he’d been walkin’ a lot!” exclaimed Ted. “I looked at his shoes when daddy and Patrick carried him into the house, and his shoes had a lot of holes in ’em. Shoes get holes in ’em when you walk a lot, and if you walk a lot you’re a tramp, even if you have good clothes. So maybe he did see Skyrocket.”
“Well, maybe he did,” agreed Janet, thinking that, as Teddy was older than she, he must know more about it.
“’Et’s go in an’ p’ay buttons!” suddenly proposed Trouble, as he thought of the fun he had had the night before. “I want all de wed buttons!”
“No, dear, we aren’t going to play the button game now,” said Janet. “We must look for Skyrocket.”
“Trouble want to play buttons!” exclaimed the little fellow. “If no play, Trouble sit down in de mud!” and he pulled his hands away from both Ted and Janet and started toward a little mud puddle at one side of the garden path.
Jan looked at Ted, not knowing what to do.
“No play button game, Trouble sit in de mud!” cried the little fellow; and, tiny “tyke” that he was, he stuck the toe of one shoe in the puddle.
“Yes, Jan will play the button game!” cried his sister. “Don’t sit in the mud!” She ran over and caught Trouble by the hand again. “I’ll take him up to the house and get out the button bag,” said Jan to Ted. “You can keep on looking for Skyrocket. Mother won’t like it if Trouble gets all muddy, and he will sit down in it if I don’t keep hold of him.”
“All right,” agreed Ted. “You can play with him. I’ll go and see if I can find Skyrocket. But if that man wakes up you come and tell me. I want to ask him if he saw our dog.”
A little later, when Janet had taken Trouble back to the house, and while Ted was walking down in the peach orchard, whistling and calling to Skyrocket, the boy heard an answering signal.
“Hello!” called Ted. “Who’s there?”
“It’s me,” was the answer, which, if not just the right way to answer, told Teddy what he wanted to know.
“Oh, hello, Tom!” he called, as Tom Taylor, a boy chum who lived in the next street, came walking along the orchard path. “What are you doin’?”
“Nothin’!” answered Tom. “What you doin’, Ted?”
“Looking for our dog,” said Teddy, beginning to remember that his mother had told him to be careful not to drop the last letter “G” from his words that needed it. “Skyrocket is lost.”
“Skyrocket lost?” cried Tom Taylor. “How’d it happen?”
Teddy told the simple little story, and also how he and Janet had been looking for their missing pet, and how Trouble had been caught in the carriage wheel.
“I’ll help you look,” offered Tom. “Skyrocket is a nice dog. Maybe some tramp opened the woodshed window and coaxed him out,” he added.
“There’s a tramp up at our house now,” said Ted, rather proud to be able to tell such news as that.
“A tramp! There is?” cried Tom. “Did he take Skyrocket?”
“Well, he isn’t zactly a tramp,” went on Ted, and then he explained about the man his father and Patrick had carried in. “When he gets woke up I’m going to ask him about Skyrocket, though.”
“I guess you’d better,” agreed Tom. “Now come on, I’ll help you look.”
But, though the two little boys wandered here and there, calling and whistling, there was no sign of Skyrocket.
“I guess we’ll have to put a piece in the paper about him,” decided Ted, as he sat down to rest on the bank of a little pond in the shade of a willow tree.
“I hope you’ll find him,” said Tom, again. “Say, I know what we can do while we’re resting,” he went on.
“What?”
“We can make a raft and go riding in the pond,” answered Tom. “It’s got lots of water in now, after the rain. We can make a raft from the fence boards and have a dandy sail.”
Ted thought about it for a moment, and then said:
“That’s what we’ll do! We can take off our shoes and stockings, ’cause a raft isn’t like a boat. The water sloshes all up on it. We’ll go barefoot, and we’ll have a lot of fun.”
The pond where the boys had sat down to rest in the shade was not usually deep enough to float a raft, or any boat except tiny toy ones. But since the rain two days before had made the pond larger and deeper, and also muddier, there was, as Tom had said, water enough to let a small raft of boards be paddled around in it.
This raft Ted and Tom now started to make. There were plenty of loose fence boards near the pond, and some of the boards had nails in them. Using stones for hammers, the two boys knocked out some of the rusty nails, and drove them in again, fastening a number of boards together. Then they put the raft in the water. It floated, but when Tom and Ted stood on it, the raft sank out of sight under the muddy surface.
“But it doesn’t touch bottom!” cried Ted, as he pushed it about with a willow pole. “It floats, and we don’t care if we get our feet wet, ’cause we’ve got our shoes and stockings off.”
“Hi! We’ll have lots of fun!” cried Tom.
And the boys did. They pushed the raft to and fro, from one side of the little meadow pond to the other. They pretended they were making long voyages, and half the time Ted was captain of the “ship,” and the other half it was Tom’s turn.
The boys were having a very jolly time, thinking nothing of splashing each other with the muddy water as they poled the raft about, when suddenly Ted gave too hard a thrust on his pole. It broke in two pieces and the next second he found himself splashing about in the muddy water. He had fallen off the raft!
“Oh! Wug! Guggle! Blug!” spluttered Ted, his mouth full of muddy water.
“Wait! Sit still! I’ll get you out!” cried Tom.
But Ted did not wait. The water was not deep—hardly up to his knees, and, after splashing and floundering about, he managed to stand up on his feet. He did not “sit still” as Tom had told him to.
Oh, but he was a sight—all muddy, and dripping water all over!
“Are—are you hurt?” asked Tom.
“N—n-no!” stammered Ted, in answer. “You don’t need to jump in to get me out. I—I can wade out.”
“Get on the raft and I’ll pole you to shore,” offered Tom.
“Yes, I can do that,” Ted answered. “There might be glass on the bottom and I’d cut my feet. I’ll get on.”
He managed to get aboard the raft again, though he nearly tipped Tom off in doing so. Then the two boys poled their craft to shore.
“Say, you are wet!” exclaimed Tom, as he looked at his chum. “Awful wet! Will your mother be mad?”
“I guess she won’t like it,” Ted confessed. “But if I stay out long enough maybe I’ll dry. I guess we won’t sail any more.”
“No,” agreed Tom, “I guess we better not. I’ll walk around with you till you get dry.”
It was a warm, sunny day, and Ted felt sure he would not take cold from his ducking. He knew, too, that the sun and wind would soon dry his clothes, though of course the mud would still remain.
So he and Tom walked about in the lower peach orchard, and around in the meadow where the pond was, on which they had sailed the raft. Ted was about half dry, and the two boys were throwing stones in the water, seeing who could make the biggest splash, when they saw Mrs. Ransom, owner of the little store, hurrying along the meadow path.
“Hello, boys!” she called pleasantly to Ted and Tom. She knew them well, for they spent many pennies over her counter.
“Hello, Miss Ransom!” answered the two boys.
“Land sakes! what are you all wet and muddy for, Teddy Martin?” asked the storekeeper, when she saw the state Teddy was in. “It hasn’t been raining, has it?”
“No’m,” answered Ted. “I fell off the raft.”
“Raft? What raft?” asked Mrs. Ransom. “I didn’t know there was a raft around here.”
“Ted and I made one,” explained Tom, “an’ his pole broke and he fell in. He’s walkin’ around to dry himself off.”
“Land sakes!” exclaimed Mrs. Ransom. “Your mother won’t like that, Teddy Martin. But I mustn’t stand here talking. I’m going over to Constable Juke’s house. Have you see him this morning?”
“Constable Juke!” exclaimed Teddy and Tom in one breath.
“Yes, I want him to arrest somebody,” went on Mrs. Ransom.
The two boys looked at each other. A constable in the country, they knew, was the same as a policeman in the city. He could arrest people if they were bad.
“You—you want Constable Juke?” asked Ted, in a low voice.
“To arrest somebody?” asked Tom, almost whispering.
“Yes, that’s what I want him to do if he can catch ’em!”
“Is it—do you want him to arrestus, ’cause I fell in the water, Miss Ransom?” asked Teddy, and his voice trembled.
“Land sakes, no, child!” laughed the storekeeper lady. “What ever put such a notion in your head? What I want of Constable Juke is to have him arrest somebody that robbed my store.”
“Robbed your store!” cried Ted and Tom. This was getting more and more exciting.
“Yes,” went on Mrs. Ransom, whom the boys were apt to call “Miss,” though she had been married and was a widow. “Some one got into my place last night and took a lot of things. I didn’t miss ’em until just now. And as soon as I did I started for the constable. I’m on my way there now. I hope to find him at home.”
“Did they take any money?” asked Ted.
“Yes, a little. But they took some other things, too. I don’t mind the money so much, nor the other things. But they took a queer box my brother, that used to be a sailor, brought me from a far-off country. It was a very queer box, and I wouldn’t sell it for a lot of money. Now the burglars have it, and I’m going to have them arrested if Constable Juke can find ’em! Land sakes, but I must hurry on! Stay out in the sun, Teddy, until you get dry, and then most of that mud will brush off. Dear me! To think that queer box should be taken after all these years that I’ve kept it! I hope I can get it back!”