Three little Trippertrots on their travels

“Well, well!” exclaimed the sailor, as he stumped on along behind the automobile, trying to catch it, but he couldn’t, of course. “Well, well,” he said. “This is certainly very strange. I never saw such odd children, always tripping and trotting off some place or other. I wonder where they’ll land now? I must keep on after them, for it’s partly my fault that they went to give a Christmas dinner to the poor boy and girl, so I must bring them safely back home.”

Well, the automobile kept going faster and faster, for the kind man in it had promised to take the children to where the poor boy and girl lived, and he was doing it. And now I will start and tell you what happened to the children, and then, later, I will tell you what happened to the jolly old sailor.

“Do you live very far from here?” asked Tommy Trippertrot, of the poor boy, as he helped him hold the big basket of turkey, and other good things to eat.

“Oh, not very far,” replied the poor boy. “And we will soon be there, if this auto keeps on going as fast as this.”

“Oh, I will surely do that,” said the man who owned it.

“And didn’t you really have any Christmas dinner?” asked Mary, of the poor girl.

“Oh, my, no!” exclaimed the poor girl. “We haven’t had a Christmas dinner in so long that I’ve forgotten how one tastes. Papa hasn’t any work, you know, and mamma isn’t very well, and—and——”

“And we don’t have even ordinary every-day dinners very often!” exclaimed the poor boy.

“Hush!” said his sister, softly; “you mustn’t tell all your troubles.”

“Well, aren’t we often hungry?” he asked. “You know we are!”

“Yes,” replied his sister, “but we’re going to have something to eat now,” and she looked at the basket of good things that Mary and her brothers had packed for them.

“Where do you want me to take you?” asked the auto man. “Do you know where your house is?”

“Do you mean us, or them?” asked Tommy, as he looked at the poor boy and girl.

“Because, if you mean us,” went on Johnny, “we don’t know where our house is. We’re lost again, I can easily tell that.”

“How?” asked the man.

“Because we are always getting lost,” spoke Mary. “And, besides, we’ve never been on this street before, or in this part of the city. Oh, there’s no doubt of it—we’re lost, but we don’t care. It happens so often that we’re used to it by this time.”

“Besides,” said Johnny, “some one is sure to come for us. Either the old fisherman, or the pink-cow man, or Jiggily Jig, the funny boy, or Simple Simon, or the pieman. Oh! some one will find us and take us home.”

“Besides, there’s the jolly sailor,” remarked Mary.

“That’s so!” cried Johnny. “We forgot him. I wonder where he is?”

“You left him behind,” replied the poor boy. “I heard him calling after us, but I thought he wanted to stop us from having a Christmas dinner, or for going too fast, so I didn’t say anything.”

“Oh, the poor, jolly sailorman!” cried Mary. “I hope he is all right.”

“Oh, I guess he can take care of himself,” said the auto man, with a smile. “But now can you tell me where you live?” he asked of the poor boy and girl. “I do hope you aren’t lost.”

“No, indeed,” answered the poor girl. “We live away at the other end of the city, and it’s not in a very nice place. If you don’t want to take your auto there, you can stop at the corner, and we can walk the rest of the way.”

“I guess my auto isn’t afraid of poor streets, as long as there aren’t any tacks in them, to make holes in the tires,” spoke the man, with a laugh.

Then they went on for quite some distance farther, and, all of a sudden, the man cried out:

“Oh, look! What is that funny thing? It keeps jumping up and down, and then turning over. What can it be?”

“Where?” asked all the children, as they looked around, and the man pointed right ahead of his auto.

“Why, it’s Jiggily Jig!” exclaimed Mary, in surprise, as she saw the funny boy doing his funny dance in the street and turning his funny somersaults. “How in the world did he ever get here?”

“I danced all the way,” answered Jiggily Jig, as he heard Mary speak. “I was paying a visit to Simple Simon, and the pieman, but they had to go to the fair, to sell the pieman’s pieware, and so I went off dancing by myself. But I’m very glad to meet you all again,” and he made such funny little bows, and sang such a queer little song, and was altogether so happy and jolly, that he was almost as good as the sailor with the wooden leg, and the poor boy cried out:

“Oh, I wish we had some one jolly like that at our house.”

“Why, Jiggily will come; won’t you?” asked Mary. “Won’t you come and help us make a jolly Christmas for these new friends of ours?” and she pointed to the poor boy and girl.

“Of course I will!” answered Jiggily, quickly. “I’ll sing and dance and turn somersaults. I can somersault all the way there, if you want me to.”

“Oh, no, get into the auto,” invited the man, and soon Jiggily was riding along with the others. And in a little while they came to the place where the poor family lived. And it was also a very hungry family, as well as very poor, for none of them had had anything to eat that day, and the papa had no work to earn money, and the mamma was sick, and there were some other children besides the poor boy and girl.

“Oh, mamma!” cried the poor girl, as she rushed into the house with the big basket of good things to eat, which her brother helped carry, “we have a Christmas dinner at last!”

“And real turkey,” said the boy, his eyes opening very big, as he thought of the good things in the basket.

Well, I can’t tell you how pleased the poor, hungry family was at what the Trippertrots had brought. They almost cried, they were so happy, and then they began to eat, and Jiggily Jig did some of his funny dances, and made them all laugh. Of course, he and Tommy, Mary and Johnny, didn’t eat, because they had had their Christmas dinners that day, and so weren’t hungry.

Then, all of a sudden, there was a noise outside, and the auto man called:

“Well, good-by, I’m going!”

“Wait! You must take the Trippertrots home!” called the poor girl after him.

“Oh, that would be of no use,” spoke Mary, quickly. “We don’t know where we live, and it would take too much time riding around trying to find our house.”

“But what will you do?” asked the poor man, who was the head of the hungry family, as the auto puffed off.

“Oh, some one will be sure to come for us,” said Mary.

“That’s right,” agreed Tommy and Johnny, and they looked around the room, where the hungry family lived. It wasn’t a very nice room, but it was clean. And as for the hungry family, they weren’t hungry any more, because they had eaten nearly all the things in the basket. It was like when the Trippertrots took the Thanksgiving dinner to the poor family, you know.

And, all of a sudden, ten cute, little, tiny mice peeked out from a hole in the floor, and they made their whiskers go backward and forward, and they sniffed with their sharp little noses, and their bright eyes looked all around.

“Oh, aren’t they too dear for anything!” exclaimed Mary. “I wonder what they want?”

“I guess they want to be fed, too,” spoke the poor boy. “They live in this house, and they’re hungry, too. Nearly everybody around here is hungry, I guess, the same as we were.”

“Well, we’ll give them some crumbs,” suggested Johnny, and the children did this, and I just wish you could have seen the mice eat them up. It was Christmas for them, too.

So Mary and Tommy and Johnny Trippertrot stayed all that afternoon at the house of the hungry family, and they played games, and had a good time. But still no one came for the runaways.

“I wonder if no one is ever coming?” said Mary. “We can’t stay here forever.”

“I’m sure you’re welcome, as long as you like to stay,” said the poor lady, kindly.

“But what has become of Jiggily Jig?” asked Johnny. “He might know his way to our house by this time.”

“Jiggily Jig went dancing off after the auto,” said the poor man of the hungry family.

“Then I don’t see what has happened to the jolly sailorman,” spoke Mary. “He ought to be along soon.”

And now I am going to tell you what happened to him. As he was stumping along on his wooden leg trying to catch up to the auto with the Trippertrots in it, all of a sudden, he stepped into a mud-hole under some snow, and his wooden leg went away down in, and he couldn’t get it out again.

“Oh, dear! I’m stuck here, and I can’t keep on after Mary and Tommy and Johnny,” he cried. “Oh, what bad luck!”

Then he tried harder and harder to get his wooden leg out of the hole, but he couldn’t. He was stuck fast. So that’s the reason he couldn’t go get the Trippertrots, for, you see, he knew he could find the place where they were, as he was a sailor, and had sailed all over the world, and could find any place. But the Trippertrots didn’t know why the jolly sailor didn’t come.