“A lot of rough boys! Look! They, have bean-blowers!”
As she spoke more shouts sounded and more beans came flying swiftly over the porch.
“Shoot the Tin Soldiers! Shoot the Tin Soldiers!” cried the rough boys. There were three of them, and, as Mirabell had said, they had long tin bean, or putty, blowers. They were blowing the beans at the boy and his sister on the porch.
Rattle and bang went the hard dried beans, but the Bold Tin Soldier Captain and his men stood bravely up under the shower of bean bullets. The Red Cross Nurse Doll was brave, too, and did not run away, while the Lamb on Wheels stood on her wooden platform and never so much as blinked an eye as bean after bean struck her.
“Shoot the Tin Soldiers! Shoot the woolly Lamb!” cried the bad boys, as they, blew more beans.
“Here! You stop shooting beans at us!” cried Arnold. “Do you hear me? You stop it!”
“Ho! Ho! We won’t stop for you! You can’t make us!” shouted the boys, and they were going to blow more beans, but just then Patrick, the gardener next door, came along with some seeds he had been down to the store to buy.
“Patrick!” called Mirabell.
Patrick saw the bad boys blowing beans at Mirabell and Arnold, and, with a shout, the gardener chased the unpleasant lads away.
“Be off out of here and let my children alone!” cried Patrick, for he considered Dorothy and Dick and Arnold and Mirabell as his special “children,” and was always watching to see that no harm came to them. And once Patrick had saved the Lamb on Wheels, as you may read in the book written specially about that toy.