"The very same one!" declared Mirabell. "I was in the store once with Dorothy, the little girl who lives next door. She has a Sawdust Doll that came from the same store. And we were there the other day, before I was taken ill, and I saw a woolly lamb—this very same one, I'm sure—and I wanted it so much! But Mother said I must wait, and I'm glad I did, for now you gave it to me."
"Yes, I'm giving you the Lamb for yourself—to keep forever," said the sailor. "I wouldn't dream of taking her on a sea voyage with me."
So you see the Lamb need not have been uneasy after all. But of course she did not know that when the sailor bought her.
Mirabell stroked the soft wool of her new toy Lamb. She wheeled it across the floor again, and the sailor watched her. Then, all of a sudden, the door of the playroom was opened with such a bang that it struck the Lamb and sent her spinning across the floor, upside down, into a corner.
"Oh, Arnold!" cried Mirabell to her brother, who had come in so roughly.
"Look what you did! You've broken my Lamb on Wheels!"
CHAPTER IV
SLIDING DOWNHILL
Arnold, who was a boy about as old as Dick, the brother of Dorothy, stopped short after slamming open the playroom door. He looked at his sister, then at the Lamb lying upside down in a corner, and then he looked at the jolly sailor.
"What did I do?" asked Arnold, who was taken by surprise by the way his sister called to him.
"You broke my new toy, the Lamb on Wheels," answered the little girl. "Oh, I hope she isn't killed!" and running to the corner, she picked up her new toy.