And Mother did. Soon the two children were running up and down in front of the house, Mirabell pulling her Lamb along by a string, and Arnold pretending to be an expressman with his wagon.
"Oh, there comes a man to put some coal in Dorothy's house!" called
Arnold, as a big wagon, drawn by two strong horses, stopped in front of
the place where the Sawdust Doll and the White Rocking Horse lived.
"Let's go down and watch!" he said.
"All right," agreed Mirabell. So she pulled her Lamb on Wheels down the sidewalk, and Arnold hauled his express wagon along.
At Dorothy's house the coal bin was partly under the pavement, and to put in coal a round, iron cover was lifted up from a hole in the sidewalk, and the coal was dumped through this hole. As the children watched, and as Dorothy, who was now better, stood at the window with her brother Dick, also looking on, the coal man took the cover off the hole in the sidewalk, so he could dump the black lumps through the opening into the bin.
"I wouldn't want to fall down there!" said Mirabell to her brother.
"I should say not!" exclaimed Arnold. "You'd get all black!"
The coal man, after opening the large, round hole in the sidewalk, climbed back on his wagon to shovel off his load. And just then Carlo, the dog belonging to Dorothy, ran barking out of the side entrance of the house where he lived. Carlo always became excited when coal was being put in the sidewalk hole.
"Bow-wow! Wow!" barked Carlo.
"Look out you don't fall down the hole!" cried Mirabell.
Just then Carlo gave a jump around behind the little girl, and, somehow or other, he became entangled in the string that was tied on the Lamb.