The Story of a Bold Tin Soldier Part 5

"Why, look at my Lamb on Wheels!" went on Mirabell. "I left her over by the door, and now she has rolled over near the table."

"I guess the wind must have blown her," said Arnold.

"But the door wasn't open, nor the windows," went on Mirabell. "So how could the wind blow her? Oh, Arnold, once before my Lamb moved when I left her alone! Wouldn't it be wonderful if she could really be alive and move by herself?"

"Yes, it would," admitted Arnold. "But your Lamb can't move by herself any more than my Tin Soldiers can."

However, he little knew what went on after dark, when he and Mirabell were asleep in bed, did he?

"Now we'll go out on the porch and have some fun," said Arnold, putting his Soldiers back in their box.

It was a warm, sunny day, and soon the two children were having a good time out on the porch of their house. Arnold set his Soldiers in two rows, with the Captain at the head of one row and the Sergeant at the head of the other. Then the boy put some paper bullets in his toy, wooden cannon, and Mirabell wheeled her Lamb to a safe place.

Arnold was just going to shoot his cannon and pretend to have the tin guns of the Soldiers go bang-bang when, all at once, a shower of hard, dried beans fell on the porch. Some struck the Soldiers, some hit the Red Cross Doll, and some pattered on Mirabell and Arnold.

"Oh, some one is shooting bean bullets at us!" cried the little girl. "This is a bean battle! Are your Tin Soldiers shooting bean bullets, Arnold?"

CHAPTER V

THE CAPTAIN AND THE LAMB

For a few seconds Arnold did not know what to answer. One of the hard, dried beans had struck him on the nose, and, while it did not hurt very much, it made his eyes water and he could not see what was happening.

But the beans kept on falling about the porch, and one struck a Tin Soldier and knocked him over. This Soldier was a very small chap. He was, in fact, the drummer boy.

"But who is shooting the beans at us?" cried Mirabell, as she lay down on the porch behind her Lamb on Wheels.

"I don't know who is pegging beans at us," said Arnold, looking around and out toward the street. "It isn't my Soldiers, for their tin guns can only make believe shoot."

Just then some shouts were heard and more beans came rattling across the porch, some, once more, hitting the Lamb, Arnold, and the Tin Soldiers.

"Oh, look, Arnold!" suddenly called his sister. "I see who is doing it!"

"Who?" he asked.

"A lot of rough boys! Look! They, have bean-blowers!"

As she spoke more shouts sounded and more beans came flying swiftly over the porch.

"Shoot the Tin Soldiers! Shoot the Tin Soldiers!" cried the rough boys. There were three of them, and, as Mirabell had said, they had long tin bean, or putty, blowers. They were blowing the beans at the boy and his sister on the porch.

Rattle and bang went the hard dried beans, but the Bold Tin Soldier Captain and his men stood bravely up under the shower of bean bullets. The Red Cross Nurse Doll was brave, too, and did not run away, while the Lamb on Wheels stood on her wooden platform and never so much as blinked an eye as bean after bean struck her.

"Shoot the Tin Soldiers! Shoot the woolly Lamb!" cried the bad boys, as they, blew more beans.

"Here! You stop shooting beans at us!" cried Arnold. "Do you hear me? You stop it!"

"Ho! Ho! We won't stop for you! You can't make us!" shouted the boys, and they were going to blow more beans, but just then Patrick, the gardener next door, came along with some seeds he had been down to the store to buy.

"Patrick!" called Mirabell.

Patrick saw the bad boys blowing beans at Mirabell and Arnold, and, with a shout, the gardener chased the unpleasant lads away.

"Be off out of here and let my children alone!" cried Patrick, for he considered Dorothy and d.i.c.k and Arnold and Mirabell as his special "children," and was always watching to see that no harm came to them. And once Patrick had saved the Lamb on Wheels, as you may read in the book written specially about that toy.

"Did they hurt you, Mirabell or Arnold?" asked the gardener, as he came back from chasing the boys.

"No, thank you, not much," Arnold answered. "One bean struck me on the nose, but it didn't hurt--hardly any."

"And one bean knocked over one of your Soldiers, Arnold," said Mirabell.

"He's the drummer boy--I guess he isn't hurt any," returned the boy, and he set the Tin Drummer on his feet again.

"Well, well! You have a fine regiment of soldiers, there!" said Patrick. "A fine regiment. What are you going to do with 'em, Arnold?"

"We're going to have a make-believe battle, now that the boys with the beans have gone away," Arnold replied.

"And my Wooden Doll is going to be a Bed Cross Nurse," added Mirabell. "And if any of the Soldiers get hurt I'll give them a ride on the back of my Lamb."

"Oh, sure and you'll have dandy times!" laughed Patrick.

Then Arnold and Mirabell had fun playing on the porch with the Tin Soldiers, the wooden cannon, the Doll and the Lamb on Wheels. Back and forth Arnold marched his two companies of Soldiers, firing the make-believe guns in regular bang-bang style.

Sometimes he would pretend a Soldier was wounded, though, of course, none of them really was, and Mirabell would make the Red Cross Nurse Doll look after the injured. And when the battle was nearly over Arnold made believe that a dozen or more of his Tin Soldiers were hurt.

"Oh, my Doll nurse can't look after so many hurt soldiers!" objected the little girl. "There's too many!"

"Put 'em on the back of your Lamb and make believe it's an ambulance," said Arnold, and Mirabell did this.

So the two children continued to play together with Arnold's new soldier toys. And then, just as the last bang-bang gun was fired, Susan, the jolly, good-natured cook, called:

"Come, children! I have a little pie I baked especially for you two.

It is just out of the oven! Come and get some while it is hot!"

And you may well believe that Mirabell and Arnold did not wait--they ran at once, leaving their toys on the porch.

"Well, now we have a chance to rest," said the Bold Tin Soldier Captain to his men. "Whew! that battle was surely as lively as the one we had in the store the other night."

"I should say so!" agreed the Sergeant. "The bayonet on my gun is bent."

"Well, that shows you have been to war," said the Captain. "And now we must thank the Red Cross Doll and the Lamb on Wheels for what they did for us during the make-believe fight."

"Oh, I didn't do much," cried the Wooden Doll, with a laugh. "None of you was really hurt, you know."

"That is true," agreed the Captain. "But if we had really been wounded you would have helped us, I am sure."