“Ha! Ha!” laughed Teddy and Janet, while Hal and some others joined in. Everyone looked at the Curlytops.
“I’d like to have a ride on Nicknack,” went on Mr. Punch. “Oh, I’m not afraid of him! I’ll show him how to do it!” and he banged his stick down with a loud whack that made the children jump.
“How’d he know about our goat?” asked Janet in surprise.
“Oh, I guess somebody must have told him,” Hal said. “Once, when I lived at home, they took me to a Punch and Judy show, and the man who worked it made a lot of jokes about the boys and girls. I guess their fathers and mothers told him to. It was lots of fun.”
Mr. Punch kept on talking and acting in a most funny and jolly way and soon the roomful of children was laughing.
“Where’s Trouble?” suddenly asked Ted, looking at his sister, while they were waiting for the next scene in the Punch and Judy show.
“He was here a minute ago,” she answered. “I guess he went back to mother,” for Mrs. Martin was in the rear of the hall with some other ladies.
Ted and Janet were wondering whether they had better not go and look for their little brother when the curtain of the little Punch and Judy theater opened and a real man, and not one of the doll-images, looked out and said:
“Some one has taken the funny little bear I use in the next part of the show. Has any little boy or girl been playing around my booth and taken the bear?”
There was silence a moment, and then from the back of the hall up piped the voice of Trouble, saying: