“But however am I to go?” cried Coppertop. “My wings are gone!”
“I forgot that!” said Tibbs, ashamed of his thoughtlessness. “Couldn’t we carry you?”
“It would take ages that way,” she replied.
And they sat down on the sand again to think the matter over.
“If the old Big Bed hadn’t been shipwrecked, we might have sailed over the sand on that.”
“Or if we could find some camels,” suggested Tibbs; “they call them the ‘ships of the desert,’ you know.”
“Miss Smiler is a camel,” said Coppertop, fingering the little bronze animal that hung on a chain round her neck. “But she’s so very small, I don’t suppose she’d do.”
“That little thing!” laughed Tibbs. “Lor, no!”
“You’ve no business to laugh at her, anyway,” pouted Coppertop. “Daddy gave her to me, and she’s a very dear little person,” and, so saying, she took the little bronze camel from the chain and kissed it.
No sooner had she done this, than it began to grow.