“Well, you can’t do that,” stated Ted. “Get in now, everybody,” he went on, “and we’ll give you a good ride.”
“Here’s your quarter,” said the girl, who was taller than Jan. “Better take it ’fore I lose it. I’m always losin’ somethin’. Maw says I’d lose my head if it wasn’t fast. Shouldn’t much mind though. I hate red hair. Don’t you?” she asked Janet fiercely.
“Not when it’s the color yours is,” answered Ted’s sister. “I think it’s lovely!”
“Oh, do you?” and the other girl, whose name was Maude, smiled and seemed pleased. “I like curls best, like yours.”
“They’re too tangly,” announced Janet, shaking her head.
“Well, this is a start!” exclaimed Ted as his sister put in her pocket the twenty-five cent piece—the first money they had earned for the Home.
The Curlytops gave the Pratt children—that was the name of the family—a good long ride down the road and back. They kept them out over an hour, for when Ted would have driven back to the yard to let off his passengers Jan whispered to him to keep on so Mrs. Pratt could have her half-hour rest. It was very hard to tell whether a half-hour or fifteen minutes or an hour had gone by.
Trouble, too, got over his fit of sulks and sang his funny song, much to the delight of Maude and her brothers and sisters. Babs, the Pratt baby, also sang and he and Trouble gave a sort of duet which sounded very strange, as each one tried to sing louder than the other, and no one could tell what either said.
“I wish you’d come over to-morrow,” said Maude, when, at last, the goat ride was over. “I think maw’ll give another quarter to be quiet.”
“We’ll see,” half-promised Jan. “We want to make all the money we can as Grandpa Martin is poor, and he can’t give as much as he has before to the Crippled Home. His crops failed.”