“There she goes—down the street!” cried Mary. “Keep after the fairy mouse, Tommy and Johnny!”
So Tommy and Johnny and Mary kept on running, and they forgot that they were never to go away again—in fact, they forgot about everything, except that they were chasing the fairy mouse.
Faster and faster ran the mousie down the street, around the corner, in and out among the legs and feet of the people, faster and faster. But still the Trippertrots kept on after the little creature, running as hard as they could run, until, all of a sudden, the mouse saw a hole in a fence and ran through the hole, and when Mary and Tommy and Johnny got there, why—there wasn’t any mouse to be seen.
“She—she’s gone!” cried Mary.
“Disappeared!” gasped Tommy, who could use big words, sometimes.
“Maybe she’s run home, and is sleeping under the chair again,” suggested Johnny.
“Oh, then, we must go right back!” said Mary. “I want to get my hair ribbon, and we must soon go to school, and I guess maybe the fairy mouse is doing tricks now. Yes, let’s hurry back home, boys.”
“All right,” said Tommy and Johnny together, like twins, you know, only they weren’t. Well, then a funny thing happened. The Trippertrot children started to go home, but what do you think? They were lost! They looked all around, but they didn’t know any of the streets, and they didn’t see anybody whom they could ask where their house was, for all the people had suddenly gone away.
“Oh, dear!” cried Mary. “It’s happened again.”
“What has?” asked Tommy.