And Down They Sat Right on the Soft Branches
You know the kind—nice, tall, green trees, with soft, stickery branches; and on Christmas morning presents grow on the trees, and if the presents are too big they fall down, and you find them on the floor under the tree. Oh, Christmas trees are very wonderful, indeed!
“Oh, see the Christmas trees!” cried Mary, as she and her brothers stopped to look.
“Oh, aren’t they fine!” exclaimed Tommy. And then, all of a sudden, one of the trees fell off the wagon.
“Quick! We must tell the driver man!” shouted Johnny. “He doesn’t know he’s lost a tree.”
“Oh, maybe we can pick it up, and take it around to the front of the wagon to him,” said Mary. So the three Trippertrot children ran up to the tree. But, as it happened, the tree was fast to the wagon by a rope, and when the horses kept on going, of course they pulled the tree along the street with the wagon, like a boy hitching his sled on behind the milkman’s sled.
And then, bless your hearts! just as Mary and Tommy and Johnny ran up to the tree they all stumbled and fell, and down they sat right on the soft branches, and they were being dragged along by the wagon.
“Mercy on us!” cried Suzette, the nursemaid, who was waiting for the children, and who had seen what happened. “Mercy! There they go off once more!”
Then she was so afraid that the children would be carried off, and lost again, that she ran after the wagon and the moving Christmas tree. She grabbed up Mary and her doll, and set the little girl on her feet. Then she ran on a little more and grabbed up Johnny and his music-box, and she set him on his feet, and then she grabbed up Tommy and his ship, and set him on his feet, and then the nursemaid ran to the sidewalk with the three children.
“My! That was a narrow escape!” she exclaimed, all out of breath. “You might all have been lost again. Come into the house at once. Where have you been? Your mamma is waiting for you.”