“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 company, one after the other—­even the Baby doll and the Gunki who bore the stretcher.  But the Billiken did look very funny drinking out of the Teacup; and it was just at that moment that they were startled by a little gurgling sound in the tree above them (as if a Brownie had overturned a blue honey-pitcher, and the little drops were tumbling over each other upon a silver floor) and Sara’s lost laugh sprang from the top of the tree to the ground, and went tinkling off again among the rocks.  They all looked after it with their mouths open, as a fisherman gazes at the hook from which he has just lost the largest fish that ever was on sea or land.

“There, now!  If we had only been more watchful!” exclaimed the Japanese doll.  The pink tulle lady-doll hat had slipped far back on his perspiring head; he looked as if he had come a long way.

“I thought I saw something moving up in the tree—­I was just going to speak about it,” said the plucky little Kewpie, who, being compelled to lie on his back, had been gazing straight up into the branches.

“Well!” said Schlorge grimly.  “It won’t do that again.”

They all saw that Schlorge had something on his mind, and began to watch him as he took his gimlet out of his pocket and began to cut a small willow wand.