“I’m sure you’re welcome, as long as you like to stay,” said the poor lady, kindly.
“But what has become of Jiggily Jig?” asked Johnny. “He might know his way to our house by this time.”
“Jiggily Jig went dancing off after the auto,” said the poor man of the hungry family.
“Then I don’t see what has happened to the jolly sailorman,” spoke Mary. “He ought to be along soon.”
And now I am going to tell you what happened to him. As he was stumping along on his wooden leg trying to catch up to the auto with the Trippertrots in it, all of a sudden, he stepped into a mud-hole under some snow, and his wooden leg went away down in, and he couldn’t get it out again.
“Oh, dear! I’m stuck here, and I can’t keep on after Mary and Tommy and Johnny,” he cried. “Oh, what bad luck!”
Then he tried harder and harder to get his wooden leg out of the hole, but he couldn’t. He was stuck fast. So that’s the reason he couldn’t go get the Trippertrots, for, you see, he knew he could find the place where they were, as he was a sailor, and had sailed all over the world, and could find any place. But the Trippertrots didn’t know why the jolly sailor didn’t come.
ADVENTURE NUMBER NINETEEN
THE TRIPPERTROTS AND THE ELEPHANT
“Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, me! Oh, my!” cried the jolly sailorman, as he pulled and struggled and twisted this way and that, trying to get his wooden leg loose. “Whatever shall I do?”
He looked all around to see if any one was coming to help him, but he could see no one, for it was still Christmas day, you remember, and I suppose most of the people were in their houses, sleeping after dinner, and the children were playing with their toys, and even the policemen must have had some presents to look at, for none of the officers were around to help the jolly sailorman.