“Please let us go!” cried the little rabbit girl.
“No, I will not!” growled the bad old skillery-scalery alligator.
Then Susie and Beckie tried as hard as they could to get away, but the alligator only wound his double-jointed, stretchy, rubbery tail the more tightly about them. Then he began to drag them off to his dark cave, to keep them forever and a day, and then—and then——
All of a sudden something happened. Beckie felt her new wax doll wiggling in her arms, and the doll seemed to be trying to get away. Beckie held the doll tightly, but the wax creature only wiggled the more.
Then all at once that doll grew up into a great big giant lady, as tall as a tree in the woods, taller and bigger and stronger than the old alligator, and then that wax doll just took her two strong arms, and with them she unwound the alligator’s tail from about Beckie and Susie. And then the doll lady cried:
“There you go, you bad creature, and don’t let me ever catch you bothering Susie or Beckie again!” And with that the doll lady just tossed the alligator into one peppersault after another over the tree tops, and away he sailed, turning over and over through the air, and if he hasn’t stopped he may be sailing yet for all I know unless he has reached the moon.
Beckie and Susie were so surprised that they did not know what to do, but while they looked the doll lady shrank down to her regular wax size again, and she blinked her eyes and said “Mamma” and “Papa” just like any phonograph doll can do.
“Well, what do you know about that?” cried Beckie. “What a wonderful doll I have, to be sure!”
But that was the only time Beckie’s wax doll turned herself into a giant lady, and she wouldn’t have done it that time only to save Beckie and Susie from the alligator.
The two little animal girls were very glad indeed to get away from the skillery-scalery alligator, and they hurried home as fast as they could, and played house with the wax doll, and had a lot of fun.
And in the next story, if the baby carriage doesn’t fall down stairs and bump the rubber tires off the wheels, for the puppy dog to chew for gum, I’ll tell you about Neddie and the lemon pie.
“Ho, Neddie boy!” called Uncle Wigwag, the gentleman bear, to the little boy bear who was coming home from school, swinging his books in a strap that dangled from his paw. “Ho, Neddie boy, your mamma wants you!”