ides, we'll fix it up all right."

"Can you really, Schlorge?" asked Sara. There were tears in her voice,
but, by trying very hard, she did keep from bursting into them.

"Of course I can!" said Schlorge, speaking quite crossly to conceal
his sympathy. "Here--you Gunki! A stretcher!"

So the Gunki came running with a stretcher made out of a large
mullein-leaf, and they put the Kewpie and his legs tenderly upon it.
He was a trifle pale, but still smiling, and insisted that he did not
suffer at all.

"Only it's inconvenient, you know, not to be able to walk," he
explained, "and I didn't want to miss the fun. Would it be too much
trouble--could you take me this way? These gentlemen, now--"

"Sure!" said the four Gunki at once, in tenor, baritone, bass, and
second bass. Sara, even in her distress, was charmed; for that was the
first time she had heard a Gunkus speak.

"Are you sure you won't faint from loss of air?" asked Schlorge
looking at the patient anxiously; and indeed the air was pouring in a
steady stream out of the Kewpie's inside.

"I'll be all right--only take me along," maintained the Kewpie,
valiantly.

So they all started on again across the rough, uncharted country.

Now, all this time they had not had so much as a glimpse of Sara's
laugh. The Snimmy ran along ahead with his long, quivering,
debilitating nose to the ground; and two or three times he raised it,
and said in an excited undertone, to Schlorge, "It touched here." And
then they would all look anxiously about, under every rock, and behind
every stump, without finding a trace of it.

But after they had gone a long way, and were all getting tired and
thirsty (not to say hungry) they came to a most inviting little grove
around a spring; and here, with one accord, they all threw themselves
down to rest. The Teacup, with an arch look, dropped down to the
spring, filled herself with water, and fluttered up to Sara's lips,
saying softly, "Allow me, my dear!" Sara drank, in delight and wonder,
and found that the spring was not made of water, but of a sort of
super-lemonade, the most delicious beverage she had ever tasted. After
she had drunk, the Teacup took a drink to the Plynck, explaining to
her with an apologetic smile, "I served her first, my dear, because
she was the guest of honor--so to speak," and the Plynck assented most
graciously. Then the kind-hearted and democratic little Teacup
performed the same gracious office for the whole comp