"I guess some one must have come along the street when you weren't looking, Mirabell," said Dorothy's mother, "and carried your Lamb away."
"I—I guess so," sobbed Mirabell. "Oh, but I wish I had her back. Uncle Tim gave her to me, and now he is away far out on the ocean! Oh, dear!" and the little girl felt very bad indeed.
She did not give up the search, and Dorothy, Dick and Arnold also helped. They looked in the two yards, across the street, and in other places, but the Lamb could not be found.
[Illustration: The Boys Leave Lamb on Wheels on the Raft]
The reason Mirabell could not find her toy, as you and I know very well, was because the Lamb on Wheels was riding down the brook on a raft with the two boys.
At first the Lamb was much frightened when she looked over the edge of the flat boat of planks and boards, and saw water on all sides of her.
"I really must be at sea, as that jolly sailor was," thought the Lamb. "I am on a voyage at last! Oh, I hope I shall not be seasick! Oh, how wet the ocean is!" she thought, as some water splashed up near her, when the little boy shoved the raft along with his pole.
The Lamb, not knowing any better, thought the brook was the big ocean.
But as the raft sailed on down and down and did not upset and as the
Lamb grew less frightened and was not made ill, she began to feel better
about it.
"Perhaps I am more of a sailor than I thought," she said to herself. "I never knew I would be brave enough to go to sea. I wish the Bold Tin Soldier and the Calico Clown could see me now. I'm sure they never had an adventure like this!"
So the Lamb on Wheels stood on her wooden platform in the middle of the raft and looked at the water of the brook. Now and then little waves splashed over the edge of the raft, but only a little water got on the toy, and that did not harm her.