"Where's Mirabell?" asked the sailor of the maid who opened the door.

"She is up in the playroom," was the answer. "She has been ill, but she is better now."

"So I heard!" went on the jolly sailor. "I brought her something to look at. That will help her to get well."

Up to the playroom he went, and no sooner had he opened the door than Mirabell, which was the name of the little girl, ran toward him.

"Oh, Uncle Tim!" cried Mirabell, as soon as she saw the jolly sailor, "how glad I am to see you!"

"And I'm glad to see you, Mirabell," he laughed. "Look, I have brought you something!"

"Is it a monkey, Uncle Tim?" she asked.

"No, Mirabell, it isn't a monkey. It is a woolly Lamb on Wheels. I saw it in a toy store and I brought it to you."

"For me--to keep, Uncle Tim?" asked Mirabell, as the sailor took the wrapping paper off.

"Yes, for you to keep," was the sailor's answer. "Did you think I would be buying a Lamb for myself, to take to sea with me? Ho! Ho! I should say not!" he chuckled.

"Oh, how glad I am! And how I shall love this Lamb!" said the little girl.

As for the Lamb on Wheels, she was glad and happy, too, when she heard, as she did, what the sailor said.

"Oh, I'm to have a home on sh.o.r.e!" thought the Lamb. "I am not going to be taken on an ocean voyage at all, and be made seasick. I am to have a home on sh.o.r.e!"

And that is just what the toy Lamb had. The jolly sailor, who was Mirabell's uncle, had bought the toy for the little girl.

"Do you like the Lamb?" asked Uncle Tim.

"Oh, do I? Well, I just guess I do!" cried Mirabell, and she hugged the Lamb in her arms, and rolled her across the floor on her wheels.

"Do you know, Uncle Tim," went on Mirabell, "this is the very same Lamb I saw in the store, and wanted so much?"

"No! Is she?" asked the sailor, in surprise.

"The very same one!" declared Mirabell. "I was in the store once with Dorothy, the little girl who lives next door. She has a Sawdust Doll that came from the same store. And we were there the other day, before I was taken ill, and I saw a woolly lamb--this very same one, I'm sure--and I wanted it so much! But Mother said I must wait, and I'm glad I did, for now you gave it to me."

"Yes, I'm giving you the Lamb for yourself--to keep forever," said the sailor. "I wouldn't dream of taking her on a sea voyage with me."

So you see the Lamb need not have been uneasy after all. But of course she did not know that when the sailor bought her.

Mirabell stroked the soft wool of her new toy Lamb. She wheeled it across the floor again, and the sailor watched her. Then, all of a sudden, the door of the playroom was opened with such a bang that it struck the Lamb and sent her spinning across the floor, upside down, into a corner.

"Oh, Arnold!" cried Mirabell to her brother, who had come in so roughly.

"Look what you did! You've broken my Lamb on Wheels!"

CHAPTER IV

SLIDING DOWNHILL

Arnold, who was a boy about as old as d.i.c.k, the brother of Dorothy, stopped short after slamming open the playroom door. He looked at his sister, then at the Lamb lying upside down in a corner, and then he looked at the jolly sailor.

"What did I do?" asked Arnold, who was taken by surprise by the way his sister called to him.

"You broke my new toy, the Lamb on Wheels," answered the little girl.

"Oh, I hope she isn't killed!" and running to the corner, she picked up her new toy.

"Oh, I didn't mean to do that," said Arnold, who was sorry enough for the accident. "I didn't know you were in here," he went on. "I came to get my toy fire engine. I'm going to play with d.i.c.k and his express wagon. Where'd you get your Lamb on Wheels, Mirabell?"

"Uncle Tim brought her to me," answered the little girl.

Mirabell carefully looked at her plaything. And she was very glad to find out that no damage seemed to have been done. None of the four wheels was broken, the little wooden platform on which the Lamb stood was not splintered, and there was not so much as a bruise on the little black nose of the Lamb herself.

"I guess she is so soft and woolly that she didn't get hurt much,"

Mirabell said, turning the Lamb over and over. "She's so fat and soft--like a rubber ball," she added.

"I'm glad of that," said Arnold. "Next time I come into a room I'll look near the door to see that there isn't a Lamb behind it."

"That's the boy!" exclaimed Uncle Tim. "And here is something I brought for you, Arnold. I didn't buy it in a toy store. It's a little wooden puzzle I whittled with my knife out of a bit of wood when I was on the ship."

Arnold looked at what Uncle Tim gave him. It was a puzzle, made of some wooden rings on a stick, and the trick was to get the rings off the stick. Arnold tried and tried but could not do it until his uncle showed him how the trick was done. Then it was easy.

"Oh, thank you!" cried the boy, when he had learned how to do the trick himself. "I'm going over and show d.i.c.k this puzzle. I don't believe he can do it. Want to come, Mirabell, and show Dorothy your Lamb on Wheels?"

"No, thank you, not now," Arnold's sister answered. "I'm going to get a comb and brush and make my Lamb's wool all nice and fluffy. She got all mussed when you banged her into the corner."

"I'm sorry," said Arnold again. "Do you want me to brush her off for you?"

"I guess not!" laughed Mirabell. "Once you tried to get the tangles and snarls out of the hair of one of my dolls, and you 'most pulled her head off."

"All right. Then I'll take this puzzle and show it to d.i.c.k and Dorothy,"

decided Arnold.

"Who are d.i.c.k and Dorothy?" asked Uncle Tim.

"The little boy and girl who live next door," Mirabell explained.

"Dorothy has a Sawdust Doll, and d.i.c.k has a White Rocking Horse. They came from the same store where you got my Lamb on Wheels!"

"Is that so?" cried the jolly sailor. "Well, you'll have to take your Lamb over next door and let her meet her toy friends again."

"I'm going to," Dorothy said. "Oh, Uncle Tim, don't you believe Dolls, and Lambs, and things like that, really know one another when they meet?"

"I shouldn't be a bit surprised if they did," answered the sailor. "You take your Lamb over and see if she remembers the Sawdust Doll and the White Rocking Horse."