Three little Trippertrots on their travels

The three little Trippertrots had not done any traveling for some days now, and they were beginning to get a bit tired of staying in the house so much. They were almost wishing something would happen.

One day they were in the front parlor of their home, looking out of the window, for it was Saturday, I think, and they didn’t have to go to kindergarten school. Suddenly the doorbell rang, and Mary said:

“Oh, I wonder who that is?”

“I’m going to look,” spoke Tommy.

“Mamma said we mustn’t do that,” said Mary. “It isn’t polite.”

“It sounds like company ringing the bell,” spoke Johnny. “And there goes Suzette to answer it,” he added, as the nursemaid hurried down to the hall to the front door.

“Oh, I remember now!” exclaimed Mary. “I saw mamma putting on her new silk dress a while ago, so she must be going to have company. Come on, boys, we’d better get out of the front room, for mamma doesn’t allow us in there when she has visitors.”

“I know what we can do,” said Tommy, as he crawled under a big chair to get his rubber ball, which had rolled there.

“What?” asked Mary, eagerly.

“We can go upstairs to our playroom,” went on her brother, “and then we can look down in the street, and see whose carriage or automobile is there. Then we’ll know what company mamma has, without looking out of the windows down here.”

“That’s the very thing!” cried Johnny. “And maybe it’s some of those ladies who play or sing in such high voices. We can hear them upstairs, and it will be lots of fun.”

So the Trippertrot children started to go up to their playroom, and in the hall they met Suzette.

“Where are you going?” the nursemaid asked them, as she paused on her way to answer the bell.

“Just upstairs to look out of the window,” replied Mary.

“Very well, but don’t go away,” cautioned Suzette.

“No, not unless it’s a very special, extra-extraordinary occasion,” answered Johnny.

Once they were upstairs they all ran to the window and looked down into the street below. There, in front of their house, was a great big automobile, all enclosed with glass windows, so the people in it wouldn’t get cold. And the man who sat in front had on a big fur coat, like a shaggy bear, so he wouldn’t get frosty.

“Oh, I know whose car that is!” cried Mary. “It belongs to Mrs. Robertson Dudleyshire, and she doesn’t sing or play, so we can’t hear her. It won’t be any fun at all. I wish we had something to do.”

“Wait, maybe she will do something funny, so we can hear it and laugh,” proposed Tommy, so they waited until Mrs. Robertson Dudleyshire was sitting in the parlor below them. They could hear her voice, a deep, rumbling one, and they could hear their mother answering, but, as Mary had said, there was “no fun,” and the Trippertrot children didn’t know what to do.

“Hark! What’s that?” suddenly exclaimed Tommy, as he heard a loud whistle out in the street. “Is that a policeman?”

“Oh! Maybe he’s chasing a dog, with a tin can tied to his tail?” suggested Johnny.

“Why, you silly boys!” cried Mary. “That’s the postman’s whistle. Perhaps he has some letters for us—maybe invitations to some party. Let’s look out of the window.”

So they ran from the middle of the room, where they had been sitting to listen to the rumble of Mrs. Robertson Dudleyshire’s voice, to the front windows, and stuck their little noses flat against the panes of glass, so they could look down to the street.

“Oh, dear! He isn’t coming to our house at all!” cried Mary, as the letter-man passed by, with his bag over his shoulder. “He’s gone next door.”

Once more the postman’s whistle sounded, and then Tommy, who was watching him eagerly, hoping that perhaps there might, after all, be a letter for the Trippertrot home, uttered a cry.

“See!” Tommy exclaimed. “The postman has dropped a letter from his bag, and he doesn’t know it. He’s going right on.”

“Oh, we must tell him about it!” decided Mary. “Knock on the window, boys, and call to him. He’ll understand.”

So Tommy and Johnny knocked on the pane of glass with their fingers, and Mary helped them, but they couldn’t make noise enough so that the postman could hear them. On he hurried, blowing his whistle, and he never thought that he had lost a letter in the street.

“Raise the window and call to him!” said Mary.

So Tommy and Johnny tried to do this, but the window was stuck fast, and they couldn’t open it. And all this time the postman was getting farther and farther away.

“Well, we’ve got to do it!” sighed Mary, at last.

“Do what?” asked Tommy and Johnny together.

“We’ve got to run after the postman, and give him the letter he lost,” said the little Trippertrot girl. “We’ve tried every way we knew to make him hear us, but he didn’t. Now we’ve got to go out. It’s a special, extra-extraordinary occasion, anyhow, I guess.”

“Shall we tell mamma we’re going?” asked Tommy.

“No, she wouldn’t want to be bothered, when she has company,” decided Mary. “Besides, we’ll be right back. It’s only a step. Get your hats and coats, boys, for it’s quite cold.”

“We’ll go down the back stairs,” suggested Tommy, when they were all ready. “Then Suzette won’t see us, and ask questions about where we’re going.”

So they did this, and soon they were running softly along the narrow passageway at the side of the house, that led from the back stoop. Out into the street they scampered and they eagerly looked toward the place where they had seen the letter fall.

Surely enough, it was still there, and Tommy, running to it, eagerly picked up the envelope.

“It’s a real one, all right,” he said, “for it’s got a postage stamp on it, and really-truly writing, with ink.”

“Does it say who it is to?” asked Mary.

“It does, I guess,” answered her brother, “but I can’t read writing.”

“If we could, it would save us the trouble of running after the postman and giving it to him,” spoke Johnny. “Where is he, anyhow?”

They looked up the street and down the street and all over, but they couldn’t see the letter-man. I guess he had gone around the corner.

“Oh, what shall we do?” asked Mary. “We can’t keep the letter, and it wouldn’t be right to take it home. Oh, I wish the postman hadn’t walked so fast!”

“I know what we can do!” cried Tommy. “We can be the postman ourselves, and take the letter where it belongs. We’ll ask the first person we meet where the right house is, and we’ll go there. Then to-morrow we can tell the postman, and he’ll be very glad the letter wasn’t lost.”

Johnny and Mary thought this a fine plan, so they walked along, and pretty soon they met a man.

“If you please,” asked Tommy, “where does this letter belong?” and he showed him the lost one.

“Ha! You are very little children to be out delivering letters,” said the man. “Be careful you don’t get lost yourselves.”

“We won’t!” exclaimed the three little Trippertrots, like two twins, and part of another one, you know. Then the man said that if they went down to the corner, and turned to their right for about four houses they would come to the one where the letter belonged, for the man had read the address.

Then he gave the children each a penny, for he loved little ones, and Mary and Tommy and Johnny walked on to deliver the letter for the postman.

Well, as true as I’m telling you, instead of turning to the right when they got to the corner, they turned to the left. Then, of course, when they went to the fourth house the lady there said the letter didn’t belong to her. So they tried the first house and the second and the third and the fifth, up to over a dozen, on both sides of the street, but they couldn’t find where that letter belonged.

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Mary, when they had walked on for some distance more. “I just knew this would happen.”

“What has happened?” asked Tommy. “We haven’t lost the letter.”

“No, but we’re lost ourselves,” went on Mary. “Do you boys know which way to go home?”

“No,” answered Tommy, “I don’t.”

“Me either,” said Johnny. “We surely are lost again, and we have the postman’s letter, and that’s lost, too.”

“Oh, we must be very careful of that letter,” said Mary. “We must keep it safe. Here, Tommy, you had better let me carry it. Boys are such careless creatures. I’ll put it in my pocket.”

“Huh! We’ve got more pockets than you have,” declared Johnny, but Mary took the letter and put it in her coat pocket.

“Now we must decide what to do,” the little Trippertrot girl said. “It will soon be night, and we ought to be home, but we can’t find where we live. So let’s sit down on this doorstep, and maybe a policeman will come along and take us back to papa and mamma.”

So down they sat on the cold stone steps, and they looked up and down the street for a kind policeman, but they saw none. And they were—lost again—with a lost letter. Oh, wasn’t it dreadful? But don’t worry. I’ll help them all I can. You just wait for the next story and see what happens.