“What’s the matter?” asked her brother, as he began gathering up the Tin Soldiers.
“Why, look at my Lamb on Wheels!” went on Mirabell. “I left her over by the door, and now she has rolled over near the table.”
“I guess the wind must have blown her,” said Arnold.
“But the door wasn’t open, nor the windows,” went on Mirabell. “So how could the wind blow her? Oh, Arnold, once before my Lamb moved when I left her alone! Wouldn’t it be wonderful if she could really be alive and move by herself?”
“Yes, it would,” admitted Arnold. “But your Lamb can’t move by herself any more than my Tin Soldiers can.”
However, he little knew what went on after dark, when he and Mirabell were asleep in bed, did he?
“Now we’ll go out on the porch and have some fun,” said Arnold, putting his Soldiers back in their box.
It was a warm, sunny day, and soon the two children were having a good time out on the porch of their house. Arnold set his Soldiers in two rows, with the Captain at the head of one row and the Sergeant at the head of the other. Then the boy put some paper bullets in his toy, wooden cannon, and Mirabell wheeled her Lamb to a safe place.
Arnold was just going to shoot his cannon and pretend to have the tin guns of the Soldiers go bang-bang when, all at once, a shower of hard, dried beans fell on the porch. Some struck the Soldiers, some hit the Red Cross Doll, and some pattered on Mirabell and Arnold.
“Oh, some one is shooting bean bullets at us!” cried the little girl. “This is a bean battle! Are your Tin Soldiers shooting bean bullets, Arnold?”