“There, you see!” exclaimed Mary, “it’s a good thing we didn’t let him take us home, or we’d never get there.”
“I think so myself,” said the man. Then he led them on a little farther, and, pretty soon, they met the pieman, and Simple Simon was with him, coming from the fair, and the pieman and Simple Simon wanted to take the Trippertrot children home, but they said the hat man had better do it.
And then they met the old fisherman, and the nice old lady, and the pink-cow man, and the dancing-bear man, and each and every one wanted to take the Trippertrot children home, but Mary and her brother said they had rather go with the man whose hat the wind had blown off. So they did, and pretty soon, what do you think?
In a little while the man came to a long, wide street, and he looked at his watch, and said:
“Now I needn’t go any farther, for there is your house right down there. Besides, I haven’t time. I have to catch a train.”
“Do you catch a train just like you catch a ball?” asked Tommy, who wanted to know about lots of things.
“Well, yes,” said the man, with a laugh; “that is, you have to run to catch a train, and sometimes you have to run to catch a ball, so it is much the same thing. But, tell me, can you go home now, when your house is in plain sight?”
“Oh, yes,” answered Mary, and Tommy and Johnny said the same thing, for there, right down the street, they could see their house, and they knew they could easily walk to it.
So they held their toys tightly under their arms, thanked the kind man, said good-by to him, and walked toward their house. And just when they were almost there, and when they could look ahead, and see Suzette, the nursemaid, waving her hand to them, what should happen but that along came a wagon, all loaded with Christmas trees.
