“Oh, my Lamb!  My Lamb!” cried Mirabell.  “She’ll break her legs if she falls down the steps!”

Down the back steps, bumpity-bump went the Lamb on Wheels.  But she did not break any of her four legs, I am glad to say.

Just how it happened I do not know, but when Mirabell and Arnold ran out to pick up the Lamb on Wheels the children found that the toy was not in the least hurt, except, maybe, the wool was ruffled up a little.

“Dear me, what a lot of adventures I am having!” thought the Lamb, as Mirabell picked her up.  “I wish I could tell the Calico Clown or the Bold Tin Soldier something about them.  They are quite remarkable, I think!”

“Is she hurt?” asked Arnold, as he saw his sister holding her new toy.

“No, she seems to be all right,” replied Mirabell.  “But I’m not going to slide her down the ironing-board hill any more to-day.  She must go to sleep.”

So the board was hung away, and soon the Lamb was put in a little stable Mirabell made for her out of a pasteboard box.  The stable was set in a corner of the playroom, near a little Wooden Lion that had once lived in a Noah’s Ark.  He was the only one of the Ark animals left.  Arnold or Mirabell had lost all the others.

“Don’t be afraid of me!  I won’t bite you,” said the Wooden Lion to the Lamb on Wheels, when they were left alone in the playroom.  The children had gone downstairs to supper with Uncle Tim, and the sailor was telling them many jolly stories of the sea.

“Oh, I’m not afraid of you,” said the Lamb on Wheels to the Wooden Lion.  “I am much larger than you, even if you are like the jungle animals.”

“It isn’t my fault that I am small,” said the Wooden Lion, a little crossly, the Lamb thought.  “I had to be made that way to fit in the Ark.  You ought to see the Elephant.  He isn’t much larger than myself!”

“Did he have on roller skates?” asked the Lamb.

“Roller skates!” exclaimed the Wooden Lion.  “Why! who ever heard of such a thing?  A Noah’s Ark Elephant on roller skates!  The idea!”

“Oh, you needn’t get so excited,” said the Lamb, as she wiggled her short tail the least bit.  “In the toy store, where I came from, we had an Elephant who put on roller skates and raced with a White Rocking Horse.”

“I wish I could have seen that,” said the little Wooden Lion.  “It must have been funny.”

“It was,” said the Lamb on Wheels.  “The Elephant wanted to race with me, after the Horse was taken away.  But I was sold, too, and brought here.”

“I am glad to see you,” said the Noah’s Ark Lion.  “I have been quite lonesome.  There used to be a number of us—­there was a Tiger, a Camel, a Monkey, a Hippopotamus, and, oh! ever so many others, besides the Elephant.  But we are all scattered.  I am the only one left.  Tell me, were you ever in a Noah’s Ark?”

“I never was,” admitted the Lamb.  “Is it nice?”