Part 5

“If we could, it would save us the trouble of running after the postman and giving it to him,” spoke Johnny. “Where is he, anyhow?”

They looked up the street and down the street and all over, but they couldn’t see the letter-man. I guess he had gone around the corner.

“Oh, what shall we do?” asked Mary. “We can’t keep the letter, and it wouldn’t be right to take it home. Oh, I wish the postman hadn’t walked so fast!”

“I know what we can do!” cried Tommy. “We can be the postman ourselves, and take the letter where it belongs. We’ll ask the first person we meet where the right house is, and we’ll go there. Then to-morrow we can tell the postman, and he’ll be very glad the letter wasn’t lost.”

Johnny and Mary thought this a fine plan, so they walked along, and pretty soon they met a man.

“If you please,” asked Tommy, “where does this letter belong?” and he showed him the lost one.

“Ha! You are very little children to be out delivering letters,” said the man. “Be careful you don’t get lost yourselves.”

“We won’t!” exclaimed the three little Trippertrots, like two twins, and part of another one, you know. Then the man said that if they went down to the corner, and turned to their right for about four houses they would come to the one where the letter belonged, for the man had read the address.

Then he gave the children each a penny, for he loved little ones, and Mary and Tommy and Johnny walked on to deliver the letter for the postman.

Well, as true as I’m telling you, instead of turning to the right when they got to the corner, they turned to the left. Then, of course, when they went to the fourth house the lady there said the letter didn’t belong to her. So they tried the first house and the second and the third and the fifth, up to over a dozen, on both sides of the street, but they couldn’t find where that letter belonged.

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Mary, when they had walked on for some distance more. “I just knew this would happen.”

“What has happened?” asked Tommy. “We haven’t lost the letter.”

“No, but we’re lost ourselves,” went on Mary. “Do you boys know which way to go home?”

“No,” answered Tommy, “I don’t.”

“Me either,” said Johnny. “We surely are lost again, and we have the postman’s letter, and that’s lost, too.”

“Oh, we must be very careful of that letter,” said Mary. “We must keep it safe. Here, Tommy, you had better let me carry it. Boys are such careless creatures. I’ll put it in my pocket.”

“Huh! We’ve got more pockets than you have,” declared Johnny, but Mary took the letter and put it in her coat pocket.

“Now we must decide what to do,” the little Trippertrot girl said. “It will soon be night, and we ought to be home, but we can’t find where we live. So let’s sit down on this doorstep, and maybe a policeman will come along and take us back to papa and mamma.”

So down they sat on the cold stone steps, and they looked up and down the street for a kind policeman, but they saw none. And they were--lost again--with a lost letter. Oh, wasn’t it dreadful? But don’t worry. I’ll help them all I can. You just wait for the next story and see what happens.

ADVENTURE NUMBER TEN

THE TRIPPERTROTS AND THE MILKMAN

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Mary Trippertrot, after a while, “if we didn’t want a policeman one would be sure to come along, but when you do want one, there never is any. I wonder what we had better do?”

“Well, I know what we _hadn’t_ better do,” spoke Tommy, her brother, quickly.

“What is that?” asked Johnny, Mary’s other brother.

“We hadn’t better go any farther,” answered Tommy, “or else we’ll be more lost than we are now.”

“We can’t be any _more_ lost,” replied Mary, quickly. “But I think we had better stay here until something happens.”

“Well, I wish it would happen very soon,” said Tommy. “Oh, if only the old fisherman, or Jiggily Jig, the funny boy, or even Simple Simon, or the pieman, would come along now they might show us the way home.”

So they looked up and down the street, but they saw no one, and then, all at once, they heard a jolly whistle.

“Oh, there’s the postman!” cried Mary, jumping up. “Now we can give him back the letter he dropped out of his bag, and he will take us home.”

“But that doesn’t sound like the postman,” spoke Tommy.

“I don’t think so either,” added Johnny.

“Then I wonder who it can be?” asked Mary, for there was no letter-man to be seen. “Who whistled? Is somebody playing a trick?”

“I did!” cried a jolly voice, and, just as true as I’m telling you, out from behind a telegraph pole danced Jiggily Jig, the funny boy. “I whistled,” he said, and then he turned two somersaults, one after the other, and laughed in such a jolly way, that the Trippertrots didn’t in the least mind being lost.

“Where did you come from?” asked Mary.

“From behind the telegraph pole,” answered Jiggily Jig.

“And where have you been?” inquired Tommy.

“Behind the telegraph pole,” said Jiggily Jig. “Oh, I was there ever so long, watching you children, but I wasn’t sure you were the Trippertrots, so I didn’t want to come out.”

“Where are you going?” asked Johnny.

“I’m going back behind the telegraph pole, when I do what I can for you,” replied Jiggily Jig. “I live there, you know.”

“What, not behind a telegraph pole?” asked Mary. “You don’t mean to tell me you live _there_!”

“Why not, I’d like to know?” asked Jiggily Jig. “People live in houses, when telegraph poles are in _front_ of them, so why shouldn’t I live _behind_ a telegraph pole? Come here, and I’ll show you.”

So tripping, and leaping, and dancing, and jumping, Jiggily Jig led the Trippertrots to the telegraph pole, and there, as true as I’m telling you, was the cutest little house you could imagine. It was made out of a whole lot of little dolls’ houses built into one, and there was a front porch, and steps with an upstairs to it, and a chimney on the roof, and doors and windows, and everything that is found in a regular house.

“Oh, how lovely!” cried Mary, in delight.

“Yes, it’s fine!” exclaimed Tommy and Johnny.

“Who made it?” asked Mary.

“I did,” replied Jiggily Jig, proudly. “I would ask you to come in, and have lunch with me,” the funny boy went on, “but to tell you the truth, as I always do, the house is only big enough for one to get in at a time. So we would have to take turns going in to lunch.”

“Oh, we shouldn’t mind that!” said Tommy, quickly, for he was hungry.

“Not in the least,” added Johnny.

“And you could go in to lunch first,” went on Mary, for she was also hungry.

“Oh, there’s no use thinking about it,” said Jiggily Jig, with a sigh, “for, to tell you the truth again, there is nothing to eat for any of us, so there is no manner of use going in.”

“Oh, that’s too bad!” exclaimed Tommy, and he was more hungry than ever, and so were Mary and Johnny.

“Well, maybe I’ll have something by supper time, if you stay around long enough,” went on Jiggily Jig. “But it seems to me that you are rather sad. Is there anything I can do for you? Are you lost again?”

“Yes,” replied Mary, “we are. And this letter is lost, too,” and she gave the funny boy the one the postman had dropped.

“Oh, that letter is an easy matter,” said Jiggily Jig. “First I will take it to where it belongs, and then I will take you home.”

“But you don’t know where we live!” objected Mary. “You didn’t the last time, you know.”

“I think I know this time,” spoke Jiggily Jig. “Wait until I look at the writing on the letter,” and he squinted at it upside down.

“Why, you can’t read it that way, can you?” asked Tommy. “I can read some letters in my picture book, but I couldn’t if I turned them upside down.”

“Why, it’s easy if you know how to do it,” spoke Jiggily Jig. “To read a thing upside down, you have only to stand on your head, like this,” and then, as quickly as a cat can wash her face with her red tongue, the funny boy gave a jump and there he was, standing on his head, and reading the letter that way.

“Oh, ho!” he exclaimed. “Now I see where it belongs. I will soon take it there, and soon take you home. Come along, little Trippertrots,” and he started off up the street, holding Mary by the hand.

“Oh, but aren’t you going to lock your house that stands behind the telegraph pole?” asked Mary. “Some one might get in while you are away.”

“No, I won’t bother to lock it,” said Jiggily, “but I have a better plan. Here, watch me.” Then he took hold of a rope, that was fastened around the chimney of his house, and the rope went up over the telegraph wires, and came down on the other side. “I’ll just hoist my house in the air,” said Jiggily Jig, “and then I’d like to see any one get in.” So he pulled on the rope, and up went the house, swinging and dangling in the air. Then Jiggily fastened the rope around the telegraph pole, and left it there.

“I don’t think that’s a very good way,” said Tommy. “Some one might come along, untie the rope, let your house down to the ground, and go in it. Then you couldn’t get in when you came back.”

“Ah, I never thought of that,” said Jiggily. “Wait, I’ll fix that.” So he took a piece of paper and he wrote on it a little message like this:

PLEASE DON’T LET MY HOUSE DOWN, OR GO IN IT.

“There, that will make it safe,” he said. “Now come along, little ones, and we shall see what will happen next.”

So off down the street he led the Trippertrots, but it was rather hard for them to keep up with Jiggily Jig, for he was either dancing, or skipping, or turning somersaults the whole livelong time, and sometimes he was out in the street, and sometimes on the sidewalk.

“Goodness!” thought Mary, “I hope we don’t meet any one who knows us, or they’ll think we’ve gone out walking with a circus clown, though, of course, Jiggily Jig is very nice.”

But Mary didn’t meet any of her friends. In fact, there seemed to be no one on the street, not even a policeman--only the Trippertrot children and Jiggily Jig.

“Are we anywhere near the house where the letter belongs, Jiggily?” asked Mary, after a while.

“I don’t know, I’ll look,” answered the funny boy, and then he turned the letter upside down again, and stood on his head to read the address on the envelope. “Yes, we will be there pretty soon,” he said.

Then he and the Trippertrots went on some more, but they couldn’t go very fast, for, every once in a while, Jiggily would forget where the letter belonged, and he would turn it upside down, and stand on his head to read it, and all this took time.

“Why don’t you hold it right side up when you read it? Then you won’t have to stand on your head,” suggested Mary, who was getting tired and hungry.

“That would be a good way, I guess,” answered the funny boy. “I’m glad you spoke of it, for I would never have thought of it.”

After that they got along better, and pretty soon they came to a fine, large house.

“I think this is where the letter belongs,” said Jiggily. “I’ll go in and inquire, anyhow. The old fisherman lives here.”

“Oh, can we go in and see him?” cried all the Trippertrots together, for they liked the funny old man.

“No, I’m sorry, but you can’t,” answered Jiggily. “He is busy fishing, up in the bathtub, and he doesn’t want to be bothered. But if the letter doesn’t belong here, he can tell me where to take it.”

“And can he tell you how to take us home?” asked Tommy.

“Oh, yes, surely. You wait here until I come back,” and with that Jiggily went up the front steps and rang the bell. But he didn’t wait for any one to come to the door, for, seeing a window on the porch open, he just gave a somersault and went in that way.

“Oh, what a queer way to go in a house!” exclaimed Tommy, as he looked at the window through which Jiggily Jig had vanished.

“Yes, I think it’s real jolly,” said Johnny.

“I don’t think it’s very polite,” remarked Mary, “but then I suppose Jiggily means it all right. It’s just one of his funny ways. Oh, dear, I wish he’d hurry out. Let’s sit down and wait. I wish we were home.”

Tommy and Johnny did, too, and they hadn’t been sitting there very long, waiting for Jiggily, when, all at once, up drove a milk wagon, and out jumped the milkman, with a whole lot of bottles of milk in a little wire basket.

“Oh, you’re here, are you?” the milkman asked, of the Trippertrots, with a jolly laugh.

“Yes, did you expect to see us?” inquired Mary, for she had never seen that milkman before, that she could remember.

“Well, I generally expect to find you somewhere along where I drive,” went on the milkman. “Your papa has told me about you, and how you run away so much.”

“Oh, then, you know us!” exclaimed Tommy, in delight.

“To be sure I do,” was the milkman’s answer. “Why, I leave milk at your house every morning. Of course I know you, and sooner or later I’ve been expecting to find you.”

“That’s funny, we never saw you at our house,” said Johnny.

“No, but that’s because I come around so early in the morning, so your papa can have cream in his coffee,” went on the milkman. “But what are you doing here?”

Then the Trippertrots told him how they had run out to give the lost letter to the postman, and how they had become lost themselves, and how Jiggily Jig had started home with them, and how they had reached the fisherman’s house.

“But he’s in there now with the letter, and he’s been gone some time, and we’re tired,” sighed Mary.

“I know just how you feel,” said the kind milkman. “Well, I’ll soon fix it all right. I’ll go in to leave the bottles of milk for the old fisherman. He pours it in the bathtub, and fishes in it. Sometimes he catches eels, and sometimes bits of cheese or butter. It doesn’t much matter to him.

“But when I come out I’ll drive you home, and you won’t have to worry any more. Now you go hop in my wagon, and I’ll be out very shortly.”

“And will you tell Jiggily Jig that we’re much obliged to him, and that you’ll take us home?” asked Tommy.

“To be sure I will,” answered the milkman, and then he went around the side of the house to leave the bottles of milk, while Mary and Johnny and Tommy ran and got in the milk wagon, cuddling down in the straw that was on the floor.

And, oh! how nice and warm and comfortable it was there.

“We’ll soon be home now,” said Mary, drowsily, for she was very tired.

“Yes,” said Tommy and Johnny together, and they, too, were very sleepy, and, before you could count fifty backwards, the three Trippertrot children were slumbering in the milk wagon.

ADVENTURE NUMBER ELEVEN

THE TRIPPERTROTS AND THE LITTLE BABY

All of a sudden Mary woke up. She looked out of the little door in the wagon, and she saw houses and trees and telegraph poles moving quickly by.

“My goodness!” exclaimed the little Trippertrot girl, “I wonder why everything is going so fast?”

“What’s that?” politely asked Tommy, as he awakened, when he heard his sister speaking. “What’s the matter, Mary?”

“Are we home yet?” asked Johnny, in his sleepy voice, and he cuddled down farther into the warm straw.

“No, we’re not home, as far as I can see,” answered Mary, looking out of the wagon again, “but everything is sailing past me so very fast--trees, and houses and people and telegraph poles and----”

“Why, it’s us that are sailing!” cried Tommy, when he had taken a peep. “It’s just like riding in a railroad train, when you look out of the window, and you see everything flying past--horses and cows and sheep and farms and fences and trees and telegraph poles and everything. We are moving, Mary, and not the things on the street.”

“That’s right!” said Johnny, when he had peered out.

“Oh, my goodness!” cried Mary. “Then the milkman’s horse must be running away with us, and the milkman isn’t here! Just take a look, Tommy dear, and see if it isn’t so.”

So Tommy looked, and then he cried out:

“Say, I should think he _was_ running away! He’s going so fast that you can’t notice his legs move.”

“Really?” asked Mary.

“Look for yourselves and see,” invited Tommy, so Mary and Johnny looked, and, surely enough, the horse was running as fast as he could along the street, pulling the milk wagon after him, and the three Trippertrot children were inside, down in the warm straw.

“Oh, dear!” cried Mary. “How did it happen?”

“I don’t know,” answered Tommy. “Perhaps a little dog barked at the horse, and he ran away.”

“Who ran, the horse or the dog?” asked Johnny.

“The horse, of course,” replied Tommy, “and he’s running away now.”

“And with us, too; he’s running away with us!” said Mary. “I wonder where he’ll take us?”

“Maybe he’ll take us home,” spoke Tommy. “You know the milkman said he left milk at our house every morning, before we were out of bed, and maybe the horse knows where our house is. We’ll just stay in the wagon, and see what happens.”

“Well, if the horse doesn’t bring us to our house, he may go to his own stable,” said Johnny. “Then the milkman will come after him, and he’ll find us, and he’ll take us home.”

“Oh, that will be nice,” said Mary. So the three Trippertrot children stayed in the wagon, and the horse kept going on faster and faster, but still it was very nice, for the street was smooth, and they didn’t get shaken up the least bit.

And it was comfortable and warm and cozy down in the straw, and there were lots of bottles. After a bit the children were hungry, so they drank some of the milk.

“We’ll ask mamma or papa to pay the man for it,” said Tommy. “They will, for they like us to drink it.”

All this time the horse was pulling the milk wagon farther and farther away. The children kept peering out, but they couldn’t see any house that looked like theirs, and they thought they must have come a long distance from home.

All of a sudden the Trippertrots heard some one out in the street crying:

“Whoa! Whoa there, horsie!”

Then the milkman’s horse stopped running, and the wagon, of course, stopped also.

“Ha! I wonder who that can be?” asked Tommy.

“I’m going to look and see,” spoke Johnny, so out he peeped and then he cried: “Why, it’s Simple Simon, and the pieman is with him.”

“Really?” asked Mary. “I wonder what they want?”

“We want some milk, if you please,” answered the pieman, putting his head in through the milkman’s wagon window--not through the glass, you understand, or he would have been cut, but through the open window. “I would like some milk,” went on the nice pieman.

“What for?” asked Mary, who always liked to know the reason for everything.

“I have to use it to make pies,” said the pieman. “I am going to make a custard pie for Simple Simon, and I need milk.”

“Oh, yes, I have found my penny, though at first I thought I hadn’t any,” said Simple Simon, “so I am going to buy a pie for little Jack Horner, who sits in the corner. But it isn’t going to be a Christmas pie, and there aren’t going to be any plums in it--only custard. And you have to have milk for a custard pie.”

“Then you can take all you want, but you will have to pay the milkman, because we have no money,” said Mary, and the pieman said he would, as the milkman was a friend of his.

Then the Trippertrots each handed out a bottle of milk to the pieman, and away the milkman’s horse galloped again, pulling the wagon after him.

“I wonder what will happen next?” asked Mary, and hardly had she spoken, than the horse stopped in front of a house that had a red chimney on top, and green shutters on the windows.

“Oh, maybe this is our house!” cried Tommy.

“No, it isn’t,” said Mary, quickly, as she looked out of the wagon. “We don’t live here at all. But since the horse stopped here, maybe he means for us to get out. Perhaps we shall have another adventure here.”

“I’m a little tired of having adventures,” said Tommy. “I want to go home.”

“So do I,” added his brother.

“Well, we’ll just see what is here,” suggested Mary, so they got out of the milk wagon, and started to go up to the house, in front of which the horse had stopped. As soon as they were out of the wagon, the horse laid down in the street, and went to sleep.

“That’s good,” said Mary, when she saw this. “He won’t run away and leave us, as the grocery wagon horse did.”

As the Trippertrot children were going up the steps of the house, to see who lived there, they heard a baby crying. Oh, how sadly that baby cried! and Mary and Tommy and Johnny knew the big tears must be running down its face, for they were once babies themselves, and they knew what happens when you cry.

“Poor little baby!” exclaimed Mary. “I wonder what’s the matter with it?”

“Maybe a pin is sticking it,” suggested Tommy.

“Maybe it can’t find its rattlebox,” said Johnny.

And just then the door of the house opened, and out came a nice lady.

“I heard what you children said,” she exclaimed, “and the trouble with my baby is that he is hungry.”

“Why don’t you give him something to eat, then?” asked Johnny.

“I do,” answered the lady. “I sent the nurse girl to the store for some milk, but she has been gone an hour, and is not back yet, and my baby is crying with hunger. I can’t see what keeps that girl.”

“Maybe she is lost, the same as we are,” said Mary.

“Oh, you poor little dears! Are you lost?” asked the nice lady. “Then come right in the house and get warm.”

“And may we see the baby?” asked Mary, who loved little children.

“Oh, yes,” said the lady, so she took them into the parlor, where the baby was lying in a cradle. Oh! it was the loveliest baby you can imagine! It had such cute little hands and feet, and such blue eyes, and it was all rosy and dimples, and it smelled just like talcum powder perfume.

“Oh, isn’t it a dear!” exclaimed Mary.

“Wah! Wah! Wah!” cried the baby, all of a sudden, as it took hold of Mary’s little finger.

“Poor little dear, he’s hungry, and I can’t see what keeps that nurse girl who went for the milk,” said the lady. “Oh, where can I get something to eat for my baby?”

“Why, we have a whole wagonful of milk!” cried Tommy.

“Of course,” said Johnny. “It belongs to the milkman, but his horse ran away with us.”

“And you can have all the milk you want for your baby,” went on Mary. “Tommy, you and Johnny go and bring in some bottles, please.”

So the Trippertrot boys did this, and soon the lady had warmed some milk for the baby, and then it wiggled its pink toes, and held tight hold of Mary’s little finger, and drank the milk out of a bottle just as any baby should.

“Oh, he’s too sweet and cute for anything!” cried the little Trippertrot girl. “I wish he was mine.”

“Well, I can’t give up my baby,” said the nice lady, “but some day you may come, and take him out in his carriage. But I am sorry to hear that you are lost. Don’t you know where your home is?”

“No, we never do,” answered Tommy. “We’re the Trippertrots, you know.”

“Oh, yes, I’ve heard of you,” said the lady. “Well, perhaps I can think of some way to send you home.”

And all of a sudden there was a noise out in the street, and Mary, looking from the window, cried:

“There goes the milkman’s horse! He’s running away.”

And the next moment there was a knock on the door, and in came the old fisherman who used to catch fish in the bathtub.

“Oh, how glad I am that I have found you,” said the old fisherman to the children. “I have been looking all over for you. Now I will take you home.” And then what do you think? He took his fishpole and began fishing in the baby’s carriage!

ADVENTURE NUMBER TWELVE

THE TRIPPERTROTS AND THE BABY CARRIAGE

When the baby’s mamma saw the queer old fisherman fishing in the baby’s carriage she cried out:

“Oh, you funny man! Why are you doing that?”

“Hush!” exclaimed Mary Trippertrot, in a whisper, “don’t disturb him, please. He always fishes in strange places, and you should see the queer things he catches.”

“Yes,” went on Tommy, “once he fished up an umbrella and a pair of rubber boots from a little lake.”