The girls went to work at housekeeping. They had dishes, and pots, and pans, some made of china, some of wood, and some of pewter. There were hardly two whole ones in the lot. Nearly all were either cracked, or broken, or bent.
Alice had a very nice set of china dishes, and Maggie had a set of smaller ones, which had been given to them by Uncle Fred for their last Christmas present. But these they kept on the corner stand in the parlor, and did not very often use.
After a while the boys got tired of carrying blocks in a cart with only one wheel, so they hunted around for something else.
They found some of the animals belonging to Noah's ark, and two or three of the people. But whether Noah and his wife were among them I cannot say.
They also found a tin trumpet and a wooden whistle. The trumpet was bent, and the whistle a little cracked; but still there was enough squeak left in them to make a noise. But such a noise! It sounded as if both trumpet and whistle had been out in the rain, and had become hoarse with a cold.
Mark and Jimmie marched up and down the garret, making all the noise they could, and scraping their feet across the floor. By and by they sat down for a moment on a small trunk to rest.
When they rose from the trunk, Mark moved it a little with his foot. He stooped to put it back in its place, and as he did so he saw something on the floor behind it, and cried out:
"Hey! Jimmie, look here! Isn't this the wheel that belongs to the cart?"
As he said this, he picked up from the floor the missing wheel. How it ever got behind the trunk I don't know; but there it was, and the boys were not long in putting it on the axle.
Abby found a small nail on the floor, and put it in the end of the axle to keep the wheel on. Then the old cart had two wheels, and did the work much better than when it went dragging along with only one.