"I wonder if they are going to leave me here," thought Louise. "Some one will be sure to step on me." Just then she saw a Teddy Bear lying on his side under the couch. "Why are you under there?" Louise asked.
"The little girl who was playing with me dropped me back of the couch a week ago," he said, "and I have been here ever since, and you will probably remain on the floor where you are now, for she never picks up her toys. She is a very careless girl."
Louise did not reply, for just then Emily Doll came over to the couch for a book and pushed Louise out of the way with her foot. Bella Doll set out a croquet set and one of the balls hit Louise on the head. Then Emily dropped her book and said: "Come along, Bella, let us go outdoors."
Louise watched them as they went out. "Oh, this is the way she always leaves her room," said Teddy Bear, for he could not see from under the couch there were two little girls, and thought it was Louise who went out of the door. "She never thinks of us," the Teddy Bear continued, "or how uncomfortable we may be, for she is a very careless and untidy girl."
The door opened and Bella Doll came in. She went over to the couch for her hat and Louise saw her foot over her head. "She will break me if she steps on me," cried poor Louise, and she jumped up as she cried aloud. There she was on the couch. She had been asleep. She got up and finished her work, when suddenly she thought of the Teddy Bear, and looked under the couch. There he was on his side just as she had seen him in her dream. Louise picked him up and set him in a chair; then she looked at Bella's clothes to make sure there were no pins pricking her, and after looking at Emily also she put both of them in a comfortable place. Her books were put on a shelf, and she resolved never again to let her room get so untidy or to let her dolls or Teddy Bear suffer from neglect. "Perhaps they do feel things," she said. "Anyway, I'll be sure not to hurt them or let them be in uncomfortable positions, for I was very miserable lying on the floor thinking I might be stepped upon."
headpiece to The Wise Old Gander
THE WISE OLD GANDER
Once there lived a farmer who was not a good caretaker. He did not have a house for the hens and chickens and geese and ducks, and Old Fox, who lived in a hole over the hill, never had any trouble in getting a nice goose or a fat hen for his supper or breakfast.
"Something must be done at once," said Madam Goose. "There will be no one left in the whole yard if this keeps on. Why, only last night Madam Gray Hen was carried off and she has left all those little chicks; it is really too awful to think of."