Oh-h! Wonder of wonders! That charming music-box for my own!
And so began the time when I hunted for the tortoise. It was really great fun, you know,—exactly as if I were a detective; though people said I would never make a detective, for I was too indiscreet and talked too much.
My! The places I went to, to inquire about that tortoise! Into yards and barns and sheds of all sorts, down in the town, and up on the hill; and I talked with every man, woman and child about the lost tortoise. But no. No one had seen anything a bit like such a creature.
“Well?” Madam Knoll would say questioningly, looking over her spectacles, the minute I opened the door. “Have you found any trace of my dear, beautiful tortoise?”
It began to look as if there were little hope of my getting the music-box that played, “Bim bam! Bilibum, bum, bum.”
Eight days had passed since the tortoise had disappeared. Shame on me, I scarcely thought of it any more; but a person can’t go on thinking of one thing forever.
One day, though, when I went home from school, past the cemetery, I suddenly wanted awfully to play hop-scotch on Peter Bertzen’s gravestone, it is so remarkably flat and broad, just the thing for hop-scotch. While I was hopping there, something moved among the barberry-bushes over by the stone wall. When I went to find out what it was, I saw Kalle Lindquist squatting on the ground, handling something. I crept softly up to him—and just think! It was the tortoise! It had been lying in the stone wall, I could see, for Kalle had taken out some stones from there.
“Kalle, you rascal!” I said, grabbing him by the hair.
“Kalle, you rascal!” I said, grabbing him by the hair.