"Well, we didn't get anything but mittens and caps," said Rachie, in the baldest of candor.
"Go ahead and enjoy the things," instructed Jim. "Skeezucks, do you want the little girls to play with all the things?"
The little fellow nodded. He was happier far than ever he had been in all his life.
"But they ought to play with one thing at a time, and not drop one after another," said the mild Mrs. Stowe, blushing girlishly.
"I like to see them practise at changin' their minds," drawled the miner, philosophically. "I'd be afraid of a little gal that didn't begin to show the symptoms."
But all three of the bright-eyed embryos of motherhood had united on a plan. They sat the grave little Carson in the red-painted wagon, with his doll held tightly to his heart, and began to haul him about.
Tintoretto, who had dragged off an alphabetical block, was engrossed in the task of eating off and absorbing the paint and elements of education, with a gusto that savored of something that might and might not have been ambition. He abandoned this at once, however, to race beside or behind or before the wagon, and to help in the pulling by laying hold of any of the children's dresses that came most readily within reach of his jaws.
The ride became a romp, for the pup was barking, the wheels were creaking, and the three small girls were crying out and laughing at the tops of their voices. They drew their royal coach through every room in the house—which rooms were five in number—and then began anew.
Back and forth and up and down they hastened, the pup and tiny Skeezucks growing more and more delighted as their lively little friends alternately rearranged him, kissed him, crept on all fours beside him, and otherwise added adornments to the pageant. In an outburst of enthusiasm, Tintoretto made a gulp at the off hind-wheel of the wagon, and, sinking his teeth in the wood thereof, not only prevented its revolutions, but braced so hard that the smallest girl, who was pulling at the moment, found herself suddenly stalled. To her aid her two sturdy little sisters darted, and the three gave a mighty tug, to haul the pup and all.
But the unexpected happened. The wheel came off. The pup let out a yell of consternation and turned a back somersault; the three little Stowes went down in a heap of legs and heads, while the wagon lurched abruptly and gave the tiny passenger a jolt that astonished him mightily. The three small girls scrambled to their feet, awed into silence by their breaking of the wagon.