Part 9

And then, of course, there were presents for papa and mamma, and for Suzette, and--there, if I nearly didn’t forget the jolly sailorman. But Santa Claus didn’t forget him. The night before Christmas, Mary had loaned him one of her stockings, and so had Tommy and Johnny, so there were three stockings hanging up for the jolly sailorman. But he said he ought only to hang up one, for his wooden leg never had a stocking on it. However, they made him hang up all three, and now every one was filled!

There was a nice knife for him, so he could whittle out ships for girls and boys, and there was a warm scarf, to put around his neck, and warm mittens, when he had to sail the ship in the cold, and a warm coat; not all these in the stockings, you understand, of course, but on the floor under them. And then there was some money, so he could buy a new wooden leg when his old one wore out.

“Oh, but this is a fine Christmas!” cried the jolly sailorman, and he danced a jig on one leg nearly as well as Jiggly Jig could on his two legs. And the children laughed, and were happier than ever.

And, let me see, there’s something else I forgot. There were candies, and nuts, and oranges, and white grapes, and figs, and oh! I can’t tell you what else, for there was so much! And the sailorman was glad he had stayed at the Trippertrots’ for Christmas.

“Well, now, after you have seen all your toys,” finally said Mrs. Trippertrot, “you children must get dressed, and have breakfast. Then you may play some more.”

And after breakfast what fun they had with the jolly sailorman! Oh, he was the nicest sailor I have ever known. I wish you could see him, but it’s not allowed, you know, and besides, he might knock some splinters off his wooden leg if he came around to see you all, for there are so many of you children.

Well, along in the afternoon of Christmas day, when the Trippertrots had eaten turkey, and cranberry sauce, and lots of good things, they were looking out of the window of their nursery-room, for they were a little tired from playing with all their toys.

“Let’s play our choosing game again,” suggested Mary. “I choose the first thing that comes along.”

“All right,” agreed Tommy and Johnny, and they stuck their little stubby noses close against the window glass, as they could see out better that way.

“And may I play your game, too?” asked the jolly sailorman.

“Of course,” answered Tommy and Johnny, “but we always let Mary have first choice because she’s a girl, and that’s polite, you know.”

“Right you are, my hearties!” cried the sailor. And then Mary, looking from the window, exclaimed:

“Oh, see what I got! I was to choose the first thing that came along, and make-believe it was mine, and look! It’s a boy and a girl!”

And, as truly as I’m telling you, it was. Along down the street they were slowly walking; a boy and a girl, holding hands, and they didn’t look very happy, I’m sorry to say.

Their clothes were rather ragged, and the three little Trippertrots could see that the boy’s shoes had big holes in them, where the snow could come through, for there was snow on the ground, you know. And the girl’s stockings had holes in them, where the wind could blow through, and she had only a thin shawl over her head. And the boy had no overcoat on, only a thin, little jacket.

[Illustration: _She Handed the Basket to the Poor Boy_]

“Oh, dear!” exclaimed Mary. “I--I don’t think I quite like what I picked out. You--you may have ’em, Tommy. I’ll take next choice, and maybe I’ll get a red automobile, and we can go for a make-believe ride.”

Before Tommy could answer, the sailorman said in a soft sort of voice:

“May I have that little boy and girl?--make-believe, you know; the same as you play.”

“Oh, of course,” answered Mary. “You may have them.”

“But what are you going to do with them?” asked Johnny.

“I--I think I’m going to try to make them happy,” said the jolly sailor, only his voice wasn’t quite so jolly now, though it was very kind. “I don’t think they look very happy, do you? I don’t believe they’ve had any Christmas at all,” and the sailorman’s voice was low and gentle, and he blew his nose very hard, almost like a horn.

“I don’t believe they’ve had any Christmas, either!” exclaimed Mary.

“Nor I! Nor I!” added Tommy and Johnny.

“But I know what I’m going to do!” went on the little Trippertrot girl. “I’m going down and get a whole basketful of good things to eat, and I’m going to take some of my toys, and some of the music-box money, and I’m going to give them to those poor children that I choose. I’m going to make-believe keep ’em,” she said, to the sailorman, “and I’m going to try to make ’em happy!”

“So am I!” cried Tommy. “So am I!” cried Johnny.

“I thought you would!” said the sailorman, and now his voice was as happy again as heart could wish, and he was smiling, as he stumped all around the room on his wooden leg.

And then the Trippertrot children, and the sailorman, filled a fine big basket of good things to eat, and they put in some toys for the girl and boy, and some money, and then they hurried out to give it to them--the sailor stumping along behind, and blowing his nose like a Christmas trumpet.

“Here!” cried Mary, as she handed the basket to the poor boy.

“What--what’s this for?” he asked.

“It’s for you!” exclaimed Mary. “For your Christmas--to make you happy!”

“For our Christmas! To make us happy!” repeated the girl, slowly. “Oh, I--I didn’t think we’d ever have a Christmas--or be happy again.”

“Nor me,” said her brother. “Oh, how kind you are!”

“It was the jolly sailor who thought of it,” said Tommy.

“And we’re going home with you, and make you happier yet,” added Johnny, and then, before the jolly sailorman could stop them, Mary had seen a big red auto coming down the street.

“Here,” she cried, “we’ll all get into this. I know the man will let us.” And, when the auto came rumbling up, Mary said to the man who was steering it:

“Please take us, and this boy and girl, home to their house so we can help them have Christmas.”

“Why, certainly I will,” said the man, kindly. Then he helped Mary and Tommy and Johnny and the poor boy and girl into his auto, and he put in the big basket of good things, and away they all went.

“Here! Here! Come back, if you please!” called the jolly sailor, trying to stump along after them with his wooden leg. “You Trippertrots will be lost again, sure pop!”

But Tommy and Mary and Johnny were so interested in going to make a Christmas for the poor boy and girl, that they forgot the jolly sailor, and never heard him calling to them. And they went on and on, farther and farther away, and what happened when they got to the poor boy’s and girl’s house I shall have to tell you in the next story.

ADVENTURE NUMBER EIGHTEEN

THE TRIPPERTROTS AND THE HUNGRY FAMILY

“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.

ADVENTURE NUMBER NINETEEN

THE TRIPPERTROTS AND THE ELEPHANT

“Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Oh, me! Oh, my!” cried the jolly sailorman, as he pulled and struggled and twisted this way and that, trying to get his wooden leg loose. “Whatever shall I do?”

He looked all around to see if any one was coming to help him, but he could see no one, for it was still Christmas day, you remember, and I suppose most of the people were in their houses, sleeping after dinner, and the children were playing with their toys, and even the policemen must have had some presents to look at, for none of the officers were around to help the jolly sailorman.

I suppose you wonder how he could be jolly when he was in such trouble--his wooden leg stuck in the mud, and night coming on, when it would soon be cold and dark. And then, too, he was worried about what might happen to the Trippertrots, for he was sort of responsible for their having run away this time.

But, in spite of all that, the sailorman was real jolly, even as he pulled and tugged to get his wooden leg loose from the mud-hole. He laughed and he joked, even though there was no one there to hear him, and he even sang a little song that went something like this:

“Here I am, stuck hard and fast. But surely I’ll get out at last. And when I do I think I’ll take And boil myself a chocolate cake!”

Then he whistled and sung the second verse, which tells about roasting a lemon pie, and once more he cried out:

“Oh, dear, will I ever get out of here?”

“Why, yes, I think so,” said a pleasant voice behind him, and there stood a great, big, kind elephant, with his trunk all packed ready to take a journey, and there was no man with him, only just the big elephant, all alone by himself.

“Did--did you speak?” asked the sailorman of the elephant, wondering whether he was dreaming or not.

“Why, yes, I did,” answered the big animal. “Have you any objections? For if you have----”

“Oh, no, not any, I do assure you,” spoke the sailor, quickly. “Only I didn’t know that elephants could speak.”

“Neither did I until I tried,” said the elephant. “One seldom does know what one can do until one tries. However, I’m glad I can speak, because I want to help you, but there are two things I’d like to mention before I do.”

“What are they?” asked the sailor. “Please ask them as quickly as you can, for my wooden leg is freezing fast in the mud, and I fear I shall never get loose in time to go get the Trippertrot children.”

“Well, my first question,” said the elephant, “is why did you sing about boiling a chocolate cake? A cake is baked, never boiled, you know.”

“Well,” said the sailor, “that just shows how little I _do_ know. I never made a chocolate cake, though I am very fond of them, and I supposed boiling them was as good as baking.”

“Never,” spoke the elephant through his long nose. “Never!”

“Well, what is your second question?” asked the jolly sailor, thinking how strange it was for the big animal to talk.

“For my second question,” spoke the elephant, “I should like to know how you could roast a lemon pie?”

“Well, I suppose I was wrong about that, too, just as I was about the cake,” admitted the sailor.

“You were,” said the elephant, flagging his big ears, “but no matter. You will know better next time you sing. Now I am going to help you out of the mud.”

And with that, the big, kind elephant put his trunk around the sailor’s wooden leg, close to where it was stuck in the mud, and he gave a long, strong pull, that brave elephant did, and up came the wooden leg, not a bit the worse from having been stuck in the mud, and the sailor was able to stump around on it once more as well as ever.

“Ah, thank you very much,” the sailorman said to the elephant. “Now I can go get the Trippertrot children.”

“And I’ll go with you!” exclaimed the elephant. “I will let you ride on my back, and the children can ride there, too.”

“Oh, that will be fine,” cried the jolly sailor. “But how does it happen that you are going about by yourself, and are not in the circus? Especially on Christmas day.”

“That is easily explained,” said the elephant. “You see, I am so well trained that the circus men trust me to go about all alone by myself. I am a trick elephant, you know, and I go to houses and do tricks for the people, and for the children. Shall I do some tricks for you?”

“One or two, if you please,” answered the sailor, “and then we must start after those children, for it is growing late.”

So the elephant did the funny trick of standing on one leg, and waving his trunk in the air, and then he stood up on the end of his trunk and waved his four feet in the air, and that was really very good. Indeed it was!

“Now get up on my back,” the elephant said to the sailor, “and away we’ll go after those children, for I just love children.”

And then, as easily as the baby can cry when it’s hungry, or when a pin sticks in it, which I hope never happens--as easily as that, I say--the elephant lifted the sailor in his trunk, and set him upon his back.

Away they started, and that sailor knew just where to look for the Trippertrot children, for he remembered which way the auto had gone with the poor boy and girl, and, in a little while, there they were--the sailor and the jolly elephant--oh, I mean the jolly sailor and the elephant were at the house of the poor family.