“I know what we can do!” cried Tommy. “We can be the postman ourselves, and take the letter where it belongs. We’ll ask the first person we meet where the right house is, and we’ll go there. Then to-morrow we can tell the postman, and he’ll be very glad the letter wasn’t lost.”
Johnny and Mary thought this a fine plan, so they walked along, and pretty soon they met a man.
“If you please,” asked Tommy, “where does this letter belong?” and he showed him the lost one.
“Ha! You are very little children to be out delivering letters,” said the man. “Be careful you don’t get lost yourselves.”
“We won’t!” exclaimed the three little Trippertrots, like two twins, and part of another one, you know. Then the man said that if they went down to the corner, and turned to their right for about four houses they would come to the one where the letter belonged, for the man had read the address.
Then he gave the children each a penny, for he loved little ones, and Mary and Tommy and Johnny walked on to deliver the letter for the postman.
Well, as true as I’m telling you, instead of turning to the right when they got to the corner, they turned to the left. Then, of course, when they went to the fourth house the lady there said the letter didn’t belong to her. So they tried the first house and the second and the third and the fifth, up to over a dozen, on both sides of the street, but they couldn’t find where that letter belonged.
“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Mary, when they had walked on for some distance more. “I just knew this would happen.”
“What has happened?” asked Tommy. “We haven’t lost the letter.”
“No, but we’re lost ourselves,” went on Mary. “Do you boys know which way to go home?”