The boy had grabbed up the Calico Clown and had thrown the Elephant down so hard that the Celluloid Doll was knocked over.

“Be careful, little boy, if you please,” gently said the girl clerk.

“Oh, I’ve got to have this Clown!” went on the rude boy.  “I don’t care for other toys.  Does this fellow do anything?” he asked of the clerk, while his mother looked on, hardly knowing what to say.  Archibald had just been to the dentist’s to have a tooth pulled, so perhaps we should forgive him for being a little rough.

“The Clown plays his cymbals when you touch him here,” and the clerk pointed to the spring hidden in the chest of the gay fellow, under his speckled, striped and spotted calico jacket.

“Oh, I’ll touch him all right!  I’ll punch him!” cried the boy, and he jabbed the Calico Clown so hard in the chest that the cymbals rattled together like marbles in a boy’s pocket.

“He’s dandy!  I want him!” cried the boy.  “What else does he do?” he asked.

“He moves his arms and legs when you pull these strings,” was the answer, and the clerk showed the boy how to do it.

“Oh, he’s a jolly toy!” cried Archibald.  “I’ll have some fun with him when I show him to the other fellows.  Hi!  Look at him jig!” and he pulled the strings so fast that it seemed as if the poor Clown would turn somersaults.

“I can see what will happen to me,” thought the Clown.  “I shall come to pieces in about a week, and be thrown in the ash can.  Why can’t he be nice and quiet?”

But Archibald was not that kind of boy.  He seemed to want to make a noise or do something all the while.  Most of his toys at home were broken, and that is why his mother had to promise to get him another before he would let her take him to the dentist’s to have an aching tooth pulled.

“I want this Clown!” cried Archibald, making the cymbals bang together again and again.

“Very well, you may have it,” his mother replied.

“I’ll wrap it up for you,” said the clerk, and the poor Clown was quickly smothered in a wrapping of paper around which a string was tied.

“Here is your toy, Archibald,” said his mother, when the plaything came back ready to be taken out of the store.  The mother had taken it from the clerk, and now she handed it to her little boy.

And so he carried the Calico Clown away, without giving the poor, jolly fellow a chance to say good-bye to the Elephant, the Camel or the Celluloid Doll.

“Now our good time for to-night is spoiled,” sadly thought the Elephant.  “Our jolly comrade is gone!”

All the way home in the automobile Archibald kept punching the red and yellow Clown in the chest and banging the cymbals together until the boy’s mother said: 

“Oh, Archibald, please be quiet!  My head aches!”

“All right, I’ll make my Clown jiggle!” said the boy, who really loved his mother, though sometimes he was rude.