“Ah, little ones,” he said, “I see you are sitting on the stoop to get the fresh air. That is right, but don’t go away, or you might get lost.”
Then the fireman hurried on to the engine house, and Tommy laughed very softly and said:
“Ha, ha! He doesn’t know we are lost, either.”
And many other people passed by, and either spoke to the Trippertrot children, or laughed at them, or smiled, and still Tommy and Mary and Johnny sat on the steps waiting, and waiting, and waiting, for the grocery boy to come back with the horse and wagon.
And then, somehow or other, before she knew it, Mary began to feel sleepy.
“I will just close my eyes for a minute or two,” she said. “You boys can make-believe you are out camping in the woods, and you can sit up on guard, while I sleep.”
Well, Tommy and Johnny thought that would be fun, so they kept their eyes very wide open, but nothing happened, and pretty soon they felt sleepy, but they wouldn’t go to sleep, for they knew that soldiers never slumbered while they were on guard.
Well, it was getting toward evening now, and it was becoming somewhat cold, and still that grocery boy hadn’t come. You see, he was lost himself, and he couldn’t find the stable where the horse was, and he couldn’t find his way back to where the children were, and there they waited, and waited, and waited.
And then something happened. All at once, along came a boy with a big basket of clothes on a little wagon. Oh, it was a very large basket, and a very small wagon, but it was quite strong, and the boy was also quite strong, so he could pull it very easily. But, when he came to the stoop where the children were, he sat down on the curbstone to rest. And the basket of clothes was so big that he didn’t see the Trippertrot children because they were behind it.
But Tommy and Johnny, who hadn’t gone to sleep, but who still sat beside their sister Mary, they saw the basket of clothes. And they knew Mary was very tired, for her head had fallen over on Tommy’s shoulder. Then Tommy thought of something.