My, I can’t tell you how excited the three little Trippertrots were that night! They could hardly sleep, waiting for next day to come, and Jiggily Jig and the jolly sailorman stayed at the children’s house, in order to be there early the next morning.
So they started out, and Mary took her doll along, and Tommy took his toy ship with him. Of course, Johnny had his music-box, and oh! he played the nicest tunes!
I wish I could play some of them for you, but I don’t know much about music, except that I love it, just as much as you do. They went from house to house, Johnny playing all the tunes in his music-box, and say, I just wish you could have seen Jiggily Jig dance! It was as good as going to the circus. Sometimes he would stand on one leg, and wave the other in the air, and then, all of a sudden, he would bounce up, and turn a double somersault, and then he would stand on his head, and all the while Johnny would be playing tunes.
And then the jolly sailor! Well, say, he was too nice for anything! And he sang jolly songs, all about the ocean blue, and sailing away to distant lands, and about how storms came up, and made the sky dark, and how the sunshine came out again. Oh! it was really very fine. And Mary made-believe her doll danced, and Tommy pretended that his ship was sailing over the ocean blue, and then——
Well, the people in the houses, and the children, too, just loved the funny dances of Jiggily Jig, and the music that Johnny played, and the songs the sailorman sang, and they tossed out lots and lots of pennies to the Trippertrots.
“Oh, thank you! Thank you!” cried the children, as they picked them up, and put them in their pockets. “Now we can buy lots of Christmas presents.”
So they went on from street to street, playing and dancing and singing, until, at last, along came the man who had the three trained dancing bears—the big one, the middle-sized one, and the little one. And when he heard what the Trippertrots were doing, he said:
“I’ll come with you, and let my bears dance when Johnny plays his music-box, and perhaps we will get more pennies.”
So he did that, and, when the people saw the dancing bears, they threw out more pennies than ever, until Johnny and Tommy and Mary had as many as they could carry.
“Now I must take you back home again, so you won’t get lost,” said the jolly sailorman, and so he did. Then he was going away again, but Mr. Trippertrot asked him to stay and have his Christmas dinner with them, and the sailor said he would.