The box was about six feet wide, almost as long, and quite as high, so there was plenty of room for Janet to stand up in it and walk about.
“It would make a nice play-house,” she thought to herself.
But she did not feel at all like playing now. All she wanted to do was to get out of this box trap prison. So well had it been concealed in the bushes back of the clump of ferns that Jan had not noticed it at all until she had entered.
“I guess a wild animal would do the same thing,” thought Janet. “He’d run right in here and be caught. I must have jiggled something that made the door slide down. And I guess there’s been a wild animal in here not long ago. It smells so.”
On the floor of the trap were dried leaves and grass; and the whole place smelled like the inside of the animal tent at a circus, a queer, wild smell which most of you know, I am sure.
“But if there was a wild animal in here, how did he get out?” thought the little girl, who, now that her eyes were accustomed to the semi-darkness, could see about her quite plainly. “If he got out, maybe I can.”
She pushed against the sides of the box as hard as she could and she pounded with her little fists, but the box seemed very solid. Then she tried to raise the sliding door that had dropped shut behind her as soon as she entered the trap. But though this door rattled and moved a little in the grooves in which it slid up and down, Jan could not raise it. It seemed to be fastened in place.
“Maybe the wild animal that was caught here didn’t get out,” thought the little Curlytop girl. “Maybe Mr. Dawson had to come and let it out; or maybe some of the movie people. I guess that was it—they caught a moving picture animal in this trap, and now they’ve caught me and I can’t get out!”
Janet cried a little as she thought of this. It would soon be dark, she feared, and she did not want to stay in the trap all night.
“I know what I’ll do,” thought Janet, as she dried her tears, for she knew crying did no good. “I’ll yell as loud as I can. I’ll call and shout and somebody will hear me and come and let me out. Maybe Ted will come, or that funny flip-flop man.”