"Sammy Pinkney!" cried Mrs. MacCall, the first to spy the boy at the window of the little girls' play-room, "what are you doing up there?"
"He's got the cat and the kittens in that basket. Did you ever?" exclaimed Aunt Sarah.
"You naughty boy!" commanded Mrs. MacCall, "you pull that thing right back here and let poor Sandyface out."
"I can't, Mrs. MacCall," woefully declared the boy who wanted to be a pirate.
"Then pull it over to your house," said the housekeeper.
"I—I can't do that either," confessed Sammy.
"Why not, I should admire to know?" demanded Aunt Sarah.
"'Cause it's stuck," gloomily explained Sammy. "I can't pull it one way, nor yet the other. Oh, dear! I wish that cat would stop yowling!"
What he feared happened at that moment. His mother, hearing the commotion in the street and seeing a crowd beginning to gather, ran out of the house. She was always expecting something to happen to Sammy; and if a crowd gathered anywhere near the house she surmised the most dreadful peril for her son.
"Sammy! Sammy!" she shrieked. "What has become of Sammy?"