Fan stood beside it, gazing out anxiously through a crack between the high, rough boards till the boys returned all breathless with running, to report, "No Toy and no dolls to be seen anywhere."
"But don't cry," added Cyril, seeing Fan's lips tremble ominously; "she'll come back when she wants her supper; you bet."
"It's wicked to bet," remarked Don virtuously.
"I didn't," said Cyril, "come let's go play in the grove. I'll bend down a tree and give you a nice ride, Fan."
Gotobed Lightcap had just finished a job, and pausing a moment to rest, was wiping the perspiration from his brow with a rather dilapidated specimen of pocket-handkerchief, when a cat darted in at the open door, ran round the smithy in a frightened way, then lay down on the floor and rolled and squirmed kicking its feet in the air in the evident effort to rid itself of something tied to its back.
With a single stride Gotobed was at the side of the struggling animal.
He took it up and in a few seconds had relieved it of its hated incumbrance.
"It's them Keith children's pet cat," he said half aloud, "and they've been a tyin' some of their doll babies onto it. There you kin go, puss; don't take up yer lodgin' here; for we've cats enough o' our own.
"Eh! what's this?" as his eye fell on the letter and he recognized his own awkward, ill-shaped hieroglyphics.