Early that morning Sally had started for the tower, as she knew that a bulletin of some sort would be posted. The little girl was glad to see daylight once more and also to be able to take a good long walk, and she skipped along in the bright sunshine, occasionally giving a little jump for sheer joy. The period of the eclipse had been a tedious one for her, as she despised being shut in the house. So now she made very good time along the highway, and so thoroughly did she manage to interest herself in everything and everybody that before very long she found that she had lost her way.
Now, of course in Toyland it is not such a very serious thing to lose one’s way, for as everybody knows, all roads lead to the palace. However, Sally was greatly surprised to suddenly find herself in a little strip of woods, with no road at all visible in any direction, and without even a path to show the way that others had taken. She recollected having left the highway to run after a queer looking figure that had attracted her attention and which had kept just beyond her, dodging along behind trees and bushes. And then, just as she had come up to it, had vanished as completely as though the ground had swallowed it. And then she had awakened to the fact that she was lost.
“How provoking!” she said crossly to herself. “If I ever get hold of the animal that coaxed me in here, I’ll show him what’s what.”
She had spoken out loud, and at the same time shook her little fist in a decidedly threatening manner.
“I’m no animal, I’ll have you know,” exclaimed a shrill, squeaky voice so close to her that she jumped at least a foot in the air.
And whirling around, she beheld just at her elbow the queerest little man that she had ever laid eyes on. He was white all over, with floppy arms and legs, and a squatty, flabby body and a head that wabbled. And he had a general appearance of being all tied up in knots. It was the creature that she had been following to her own undoing, and for a moment she glared at it as if she would fall upon it tooth and nail. The very next she fell to laughing as if she would burst.
“Oh, I know you! You are just tied out of a handkerchief.”
“Oh, I know you!” she exclaimed breathlessly. “You are just tied out of a handkerchief. I have often made a lot of you at home to hang over the chandelier with long strings. And when I pulled the strings you danced.”
“I do not know where home may be,” returned the Handkerchief Man crossly, “but I do know that you never pulled any strings as far as I am concerned.” Then he added, peering anxiously about, “Have you happened to see my brother, the Doughnut Man? He came here yesterday to pick buttons which he sells to the people in town who are too lazy to come out and pick them for themselves.”