“Well, now I’ll take another look and see if I can find your house.” So once more he looked out of the knot-hole in the drygoods box, and then he asked Mary: “Could your house possibly be a purple one? I see a nice purple one just ahead of us.”
“No, our house is green!” exclaimed Mary, as politely as she could. “I told you that before.”
“Oh, so you did!” cried the newsboy. “How very careless of me to forget so often. I don’t suppose you’d like to live in a purple house, would you?” and he looked at Johnny and Tommy.
“I don’t think I would,” said Johnny.
“No, green is our color,” spoke Tommy.
“I was afraid so,” went on the newsboy, with a sigh. “Well, all I can do is to float along with you until we get to a green house. Then you’ll be home.”
“But it might be some other green house than ours,” said Mary. “Many houses are painted green.”
“You don’t say so!” cried the newsboy. “I never thought of that. I haven’t seen any green houses to-day, though, and maybe the first one we come to will be yours. It’s very strange. I never thought there would be so much trouble in finding the house of the Trippertrots. But never mind. Have some more molasses cookies,” and he took a number of them out of his pockets, and the children were very glad to get them, for they were hungry again.
Then they sailed on some more, and some more, and they were wondering if they would ever get home, and they began to wish that they hadn’t chased out after the fairy mouse, for they had not been so far away from home since the time they went on a train after seeing the pink cow.
And then, all at once, just as the drygoods box-ship was sailing around the corner of the street, and the Trippertrot children and the newsboy were down under the papers on top, so the rain wouldn’t get them—all at once, I say—there was a bumpity-bump noise.