The goat was put in his stable when the Curlytops got back to Cherry Farm; and then, as it was egg-gathering time, a chore with which they always helped, they went to get Trouble, for he liked to go with them.
“Trouble! oh, Trouble, where are you?” called Jan, as she came out of her room with her “chore” clothes on. These garments were an old dress, stockings and sunbonnet, for sometimes the hens laid their eggs away under the barn, and to get them one had to crawl on hands and knees. “Come and get the eggs, Trouble!”
“I tan’t tum now!” answered Baby William.
“Can’t come—why not?” asked Jan. “Where are you?”
“Up de stairs where de softy-softy bed is.”
“Oh, he means in the spare bedroom,” explained Grandma Martin, who heard what Trouble said.
This room was one seldom used. It had in it a big feather bed, of the old-fashioned kind, and Baby William always called it the “softy-softy,” because he sank away down in it when his mother sometimes, in fun, laid him on it.
“I’ll come and get you,” offered Jan. “You like to come with brother and me after the chickie eggs, don’t you?”
“Yes. Me like chickie eggs—me sit in some!”
“But you mustn’t do it again. Come with sister now, Trouble, and to-morrow we’ll go to see Hal kick the football some more.”