Three little Trippertrots

“Oh, this is fine!” cried Tommy, after they had ridden some distance.

“It’s the best yet,” said Johnny. “I like this kind of running away!”

“But we’re not running away,” said Mary. “We only ran after the pink cow belonging to Mr. Jones, and now the train is taking us home.”

“I hope we get in before mamma comes back from her call across the street,” said Johnny. “She told us not to go out.”

“Oh, but she only said not to go out after a little tame dancing bear, as we once did,” said Tommy. “This time we went out after the pink cow.”

“Well, I hope it will be all right,” spoke Mary. “Oh! look out of the windows, boys, and see all the pretty fields and trees and—and——”

“And telegraph poles,” added Tommy. “My, what a lot of them.”

“And look! There is the pink cow!” suddenly cried Johnny, and, sure enough, the pink animal was running along beside the train in a green field. But pretty soon the train got going so fast that the cow was left behind.

“I hope she gets back home all right,” said Tommy; and Mary and Johnny hoped the same thing.

Well, the train kept going faster and faster, and the children were looking out of the windows, having a good time, when the conductor, with his blue coat all covered with brass buttons, came in.

“Where do you children want to go?” he asked.

“Home,” said Mary.

“Home,” said Johnny.

“Home,” said Tommy.

“Ha, so you all want to go home,” exclaimed the conductor, with a jolly laugh. “Well, where might your home be?”

“Why, don’t you know?” asked Mary in surprise.

“No, I am sorry to say I don’t!” answered the conductor.

“He—doesn’t—know—where—we—live!” exclaimed Tommy and Johnny together, slowly.

“Why, I thought papa sent this train to take us home,” went on Mary.

“Well, it may take you to your home, if you tell me where your home is,” went on the conductor. “Let me see your tickets, and I can tell where you want to go.”

“But we haven’t any tickets,” spoke Mary.

“No tickets!” cried the conductor. “Then why did you take this train?”

“We didn’t take it,” replied Mary slowly. “It took us, and it’s taking us now. But if it doesn’t take us home I don’t want to stay on it.”

“Me either,” said Tommy and Johnny, as they started to leave their seats.

“Wait a moment!” called the conductor. “Why did you get into this railroad car?”

“Because you told us to,” answered Mary. “We were chasing after the pink cow, that belongs to Mr. Jones, but she got away from us, and then your train came along, and you told us to get on board, and we did. It isn’t our fault.”

“Well, well! This is quite a puzzle,” said the conductor, shaking his head, and scratching his nose with his ticket puncher. “And so you haven’t any tickets at all, eh?”

“Wait!” cried Tommy, with his jolly little laugh, “I think I have a ticket.” He looked in all his pockets, and as he had a number of things in them, it took him some time to find his ticket. There were balls of cord, an old knife, some wheels from an alarm clock, and a piece of chewing-gum. Then there was a red stone and a broken lead-pencil, and when Tommy had all these articles out on the seat the conductor said:

“Oh, I am afraid you have no ticket.”

“Oh, yes, I have, just wait a minute, please,” said Tommy. And then he pulled out a little tin can that he used to take with him when he went fishing, and inside of that was a piece of paper. “There is our ticket!” cried Tommy, with another jolly laugh. “It’s a ticket I made for a magic-lantern show that I had, and it cost two pins to come in to it. Now we can go home, can’t we, Mr. Conductor?”

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear!” cried the conductor, again scratching his nose with his ticket puncher, “that isn’t the kind of a ticket I meant at all. ‘A ticket to a magic-lantern show! Admission two pins!’” he read from the piece of paper as he looked at it.

“What kind of a ticket did you mean?” asked Mary, politely.

“A railroad ticket,” answered the conductor. “That is what I meant. This one is no good.”

“And can’t—can’t we ride on your train?” asked Mary, and, somehow or other, a few tears came into her pretty eyes. Tommy and Johnny felt like crying, also, but they happened to remember that boys never cry—that is, hardly ever—so they didn’t.

“I’m afraid you can’t ride on that ticket,” said the conductor slowly, as he gave it back to Tommy. “I shall have to put you off——”

“Wait, I’ll pay their fare!” interrupted a nice fat man, in the seat behind the children.

“Oh, I’m not going to put them off here,” said the conductor kindly, and it is a good thing he wasn’t, for just then the train was going through the woods. “But I’ll put them off at the next station,” he said. “Then I will send word back to the place where they got on, and some one can come for them. It would not be right to take them as far off as where this train is going.”

“No, indeed!” exclaimed Mary. “We want to go home.”

“But some one will have to come for you when I put you off at the station,” said the conductor.

“Oh, no one ever comes for us,” exclaimed Mary. “We always have to go home by ourselves, don’t we, boys?”

“Of course,” answered Tommy and Johnny together. “We are the Trippertrots, and we are always getting lost, but this time we didn’t mean to. It was the pink cow’s fault.”

“Oh, dear! I don’t know what in the world to do!” exclaimed the conductor, and for the third time he scratched his nose with his cap—I mean with his ticket puncher.

“Well, I know what to do,” said a voice on the other side of the car. “I am going to give those children something to eat. I know they must be hungry—children always are.”

And, would you ever believe it? there was the nice little old lady to whose house the Trippertrots once went when they were lost, and she had a cat, you remember, who purred as it lay asleep in the middle of the floor.

“Oh, that lady knows us!” exclaimed Mary. “You can tell where our home is, can’t you?”

“I’m afraid I can’t,” said the little old lady. “You know you were at my house, but when I went to get a policeman, to show you the way home, the queer little old man came, and you went away with him, and so I never found your home.

“But don’t worry now, I will give you something to eat, and then I will get off at the next station with you, and I’ll see if I can’t find some one to take you home.”

So the little old lady opened her satchel and she took out some nice chicken sandwiches, and some jam tarts, and some oranges, and gave them to the Trippertrot children to eat.

Well, the train kept going on and on, and lots of the passengers watched the Trippertrots eating the lunch which the little old lady gave them, and the children themselves were having a nice time, though of course they were sorry that the pink cow had gotten lost.

And then, all of a sudden, the train conductor called out:

“Here’s where you get off, children. Come along; step lively, please.”

So they hurried out of the car, and the little old lady went with them, and there the children saw a nice little railroad station, like an umbrella, built under a tree. It was right in the middle of a field.

“My, this is a queer place,” said the little old lady, as she looked around. “I don’t see how we are going to get away from here,” for, would you believe me? as soon as they had gotten off the train, the cars and the choo-choo engine puffed away and left them all standing there.

“Maybe we’ll find the pink cow, and she can take us home,” said Mary, so she and her brothers looked all around, but they couldn’t see the cow. But they heard a funny buzzing, humming noise, and, all at once, along came a trolley car.

“Oh, that’s the very thing!” cried the little old lady. “I’m sure you can get home in that.”

“Perhaps we can, if the conductor knows us,” said Mary.

And when the trolley car buzzed up, with a lot of electric sparks coming out of the roof, the conductor leaned out over the platform and said:

“Who wants to go home?”

“We do!” cried Mary and Tommy and Johnny.

“Then hop on!” said the trolley-car conductor, with a jolly laugh; so they hopped on, and the car went off before the little old lady could get aboard.

“Oh!” cried Mary. “She’s left behind! Now we can never find our way home.”

“Oh, yes, you can,” exclaimed the trolley-car conductor. “I know you children. You are the Trippertrots, and my car goes right past your house. I’ll see you there safely.”

So off the car started, with the three Trippertrots inside, and the little old lady, who was left behind, waved good-by to them. And the children didn’t have to pay any car-fare, either.

Inside the car were many people. And there was one very slim boy, who was very tall, and he kept going to sleep all the while, until finally the conductor came in and hung him up across one of the straps, just as if he was a clothes-pin. And there the tall thin boy slept just as well as if he had been home in bed.

And then, pretty soon, the car stopped right in front of the Trippertrot home, and Tommy and Mary and Johnny ran up the steps of their house, very glad indeed to get back, I do assure you.