“Ker-choo!” she went, and Trouble laughed.
Then he sneezed:
“Ker-choo-choo!”
“Dat’s just like a choo-choo train!” he laughed, and he tried to sneeze again. But this time it was the turn of Grandma Martin, and, as the feathers tickled her nose, and then Mother Martin’s, they both gave loud “aker-choos!”
Trouble seemed to think this funnier than cutting open the feather bed, for he laughed and clapped his hands in glee. But at last they got him out of the room and closed the door so the stuffing of the “softy-softy” bed would not be scattered all through the house.
Then Jan, Ted and Baby William went to gather the eggs. They each carried a basket—the two Curlytops did, but Trouble was too little they thought. He might drop his and break the eggs.
“But me want a basket!” he cried. “Me go after eggs too!”
He made such a fuss about it, and seemed to be so unhappy because he could not carry something in which to gather eggs, that Grandma Martin said, with a smile:
“I’ll make it all right for him.”
She got a little basket, and in it put some white china eggs, the kind some farmers leave in hens’ nests to make the chickens believe they have laid more eggs than really they have. At least, maybe that is the reason they leave them there, and maybe it is for some other reason.