ng tireder and tireder! Can't you make that box
skip that song?" she begged. "If I hear it another time I just can't
stand it! I'll _have_ to turn around and go back home."

Phil glanced anxiously at the clouded sky. The sun was so low it was
hidden by the tall buildings, and the darkness was coming on rapidly.

"Well, come along!" he said, impatiently. "I s'pose I'll have to take
you home, cry-baby, but I'm not going in myself. We haven't any
money at all, hardly; not enough to take me even a tweety, weenty part
of the way to that place I'm going to, let alone enough to buy you
that doll. But that's the way with girls. They always spoil
everything."

[Illustration: "ALL WENT WELL UNTIL WE REACHED AN ALLEY CROSSING."]

Little Elsie rubbed her sleeve across her eyes and swallowed hard. "I
wouldn't ask to go back, brother, really and truly I wouldn't, but I'm
so cold and mizzible I feel most like I'm going to be sick."

Phil looked at her little bare red hands and tear-stained face, and
said, gruffly, "Well, then, get on the wheelbarrow. You can sit on the
music-box and hold Dago in your lap, and I'll wheel you a piece until
you get rested."

Elsie very willingly climbed up and took me in her lap. It was hard
work for Phil. He grew red in the face, and his arms ached, but he
kept bravely on, although he was out of breath from the hard pushing.
All went well until we reached an alley crossing. Phil, whose
attention was all on the wheel of his barrow, which he was trying to
steer safely between the cobblestones, did not see a long string of
geese waddling down the alley on their way home from the commons,
where they had been feeding all day. They came silently along in an
awkward, wavering line, as quietly as a procession of web-footed
ghosts, until they were almost upon us. Then the leader shot out his
wings with a hoarse cry, every goose in the procession followed his
example, and with a rush they flapped past us, half running, half
flying. It was done with such startling suddenness that it caused a
general upsetting of our party. Phil veered to one side, and over we
went in a heap, music-box, Elsie, barrow, and all, with myself on top.
There was a frightened scream from Elsie, followed by a steady
downpour of tears as Phil picked her up. She had struck her forehead
on a cobblestone, and a big blue bump was rapidly swelling above one
eye. Her nose was bleeding a little, too. Phil was so occupied in
trying to comfor