“Why! Why!” exclaimed Toto to himself. “That’s the same little girl I saw on the ice! Only she’s different now. She hasn’t any red things on her paws.”
Of course, Toto thought the little girl’s hands were her paws. And the “red things” were her mittens. But, as it was summer now, she did not wear mittens. It really was the little girl who had been skating that Toto now saw come out of the house in the woods. The little girl had come to get her grandmother and take her for a visit to the little girl’s house.
Toto stayed hiding under the bush until the little girl and her grandmother were out of sight. Then, just as he was about to travel on, he heard some voices coming from behind a big stump. And, somehow or other, Toto seemed to know those voices. Carefully he looked up over the top of the bush.
“Now’s our chance!” said one of the voices, though of course Toto did not know what the words meant. “Now’s our chance! The old lady and the little girl have gone out! Now we can break into the house and take whatever we want!”
“Yes, we might as well be burglars while we’re at it,” said another voice. “We can’t get any work, so we’ll take things that other people work for!”
And then, to the surprise of Toto, he saw, bobbing up from behind the stump, some of the very same ragged tramps that had gone away when the tree smashed their shack. They were now near the home of Millie’s grandmother.
“I heard there was some jewelry in that house,” said the red-haired tramp. “We can take it and sell it and then we can buy good things to eat.”
“That’s right,” said a black-haired one. “We’ll break in and get the jewelry. Nobody is at home to stop us.”
And then and there, as Toto watched, the bad tramps went toward the house to take the little girl’s grandmother’s jewelry.
“Oh, if Don were only here now!”