THE NEW TIN GUTTER
All day Saturday the men had worked out upon the eaves of the house andthe dolls facing the window could see them.
The men made quite a lot of noise with their hammers, for they wereputting new gutters around the eaves, and pounding upon tin makes agreat deal of noise.
Marcella had not played with the dolls all that day, for she had gonevisiting; so when the men hammered and made a lot of noise, the dollscould talk to each other without fear of anyone hearing or knowing theywere really talking to each other.
"What are they doing now?" Raggedy Andy asked.
He was lying with his head beneath a little bed quilt, just as Marcellahad dropped him when she left the nursery; so he could not see what wasgoing on.
"We can only see the men's legs as they pass the window," answered UncleClem. "But they are putting new shingles or something on the roof!"
After the men had left their work and gone home to supper and the housewas quiet, Raggedy Andy cautiously moved his head out from under thelittle bed quilt and, seeing that the coast was clear, sat up.
This was a signal for all the dolls to sit up and smooth out thewrinkles in their clothes.
Lifting the penny dolls]
The nursery window was open; so Raggedy Andy lifted the penny dolls tothe sill and climbed up beside them.
Leaning out, he could look along the new shiny tin gutter the men hadput in place.
"Here's a grand place to have a lovely slide!" he said as he gave one ofthe penny dolls a scoot down the shiny tin gutter.
"Whee! See her go!" Raggedy Andy cried.
All the other dolls climbed upon the window sill beside him.
"Scoot me too!" cried the other little penny doll in her squeeky littlevoice, and Raggedy Andy took her in his rag hand and gave her a greatswing which sent her scooting down the shiny tin gutter, "Kerswish!"
Then Raggedy Andy climbed into the gutter himself and, taking a fewsteps, spread out his feet and went scooting down the shiny tin.
The other dolls followed his example and scooted along behind him.
When Raggedy Andy came to the place where he expected to find the pennydolls lying, they were nowhere about.
"Perhaps you scooted them farther than you thought!" Uncle Clem said.
"Perhaps I did!" Raggedy Andy said, "We will look around the bend in theeave!"
"Oh dear!" he exclaimed when he had peeped around the corner of theroof, "the gutter ends here and there is nothing but a hole!"
"They must have scooted right into the hole," Henny, the Dutch dollsaid.
Raggedy Andy lay flat upon the shiny tin and looked down into the hole.
"Are you down there, penny dolls?" he called.
There was no answer.
"I hope their heads were not broken!" Raggedy Ann said.
In the gutter]
"I'm so sorry I scooted them!" Raggedy Andy cried, as he brushed hishand over his shoe button eyes.
"Maybe if you hold to my feet, I can reach down the hole and find themand pull them up again!" he added.
Uncle Clem and Henny each caught hold of a foot of Raggedy Andy and lethim slide down into the hole.
It was a rather tight fit, but Raggedy Andy wiggled and twisted untilall the dolls could see of him were his two feet.
"I can't find them!" he said in muffled tones. "Let me down farther andI think I'll be able to reach them!"
Now Henny and Uncle Clem thought that Raggedy Andy meant for them to letgo of his feet and this they did.
Raggedy Andy kept wiggling and twisting until he came to a bend in thepipe and could go no farther.
"I can't find them!" he cried. "They have gone farther down the pipe!Now you can pull me up!"
"We can't reach you, Raggedy Andy!" Uncle Clem called down the pipe."Try to wiggle back up a piece and we will catch your feet and pull youup!"
Raggedy Andy tried to wiggle backward up the pipe, but his clothescaught upon a little piece of tin which stuck out from the inside of thepipe and there he stayed. He could neither go down nor come back up.
"What shall we do?" Uncle Clem cried, "The folks will never find himdown there, for we can not tell them where he is, and they will neverguess it!"
The dolls were all very sad. They stayed out upon the shiny new tingutter until it began raining and hoped and hoped that Raggedy Andycould get back up to them.
Then they went inside the nursery and sat looking out the window untilit was time for the folks to get up and the house to be astir. Then theywent back to the position each had been in, when Marcella had left them.
And although they were very quiet, each one was so sorry to lose RaggedyAndy, and each felt that he would never be found again.
Down the spout]
"The rain must have soaked his cotton through and through!" sighedRaggedy Ann. "For all the water from the house runs down the shiny tingutters and down the pipe into a rain barrel at the bottom!"
Then Raggedy Ann remembered that there was an opening at the bottom ofthe pipe.
"Tomorrow night if we have a chance, we dolls must take a stick and seeif we can reach Raggedy Andy from the bottom of the pipe and pull himdown to us!" she thought.
Marcella came up to the nursery and played all day, watching the rainpatter upon the new tin gutter. She wondered where Raggedy Andy was,although she did not get worried about him until she had asked Mamawhere he might be.
"He must be just where you left him!" Mama said.
"I cannot remember where I left him!" Marcella said.
"I thought he was with all the other dolls in the nursery, though!"
All day Sunday it rained and all of Sunday night, and Monday morningwhen Daddy started to work it was still raining.
As Daddy walked out of the front gate, he turned to wave good-bye toMama and Marcella and then he saw something.
Daddy came right back into the house and called up the men who had putin the new shiny tin gutters.
"The drain pipe is plugged up. Some of you must have left shavings orsomething in the eaves, and it has washed down into the pipe, so thatthe water pours over the gutter in sheets!"
"We will send a man right up to fix it!" the men said.
So along about ten o'clock that morning one of the men came to fix thepipe.
But although he punched a long pole down the pipe, and punched andpunched, he could not dislodge whatever it was which plugged the pipeand kept the water from running through it.
Raggedy Ann and the dolls]
The man finds Raggedy Andy]
Then the man measured with his stick, so that he knew just where theplace was, and with a pair of tin shears he cut a section from the pipeand found Raggedy Andy.
Raggedy Andy was punched quite out of shape and all jammed together, butwhen the man straightened out the funny little figure, Raggedy Andylooked up at him with his customary happy smile.
The man laughed and carried little water-soaked Raggedy Andy into thehouse.
"I guess your little girl must have dropped this rag doll down into thedrain pipe!" the man said to Mama.
"I'm so glad you found him!" Mama said to the man.
"We have hunted all over the house for him! Marcella could not rememberwhere she put him; so when I get him nice and dry, I'll hide him in anice easy place for her to find, and she will not know he has been outin the rain all night!"
So Mama put Raggedy Andy behind the radiator and there he sat allafternoon, steaming and drying out.
And as he sat there he smiled and smiled, even though there was no oneto see him.
He felt very happy within and he liked to smile, anyway, because hissmile was painted on.
And another reason Raggedy Andy smiled was because he was not lonesome.
Inside his waist were the two little penny dolls.
The man had punched Raggedy Andy farther down into the pipe, and he hadbeen able to reach the two little dolls and tuck them into a safe place.
"Won't they all be sur
prised to see us back again!" Raggedy Andywhispered as he patted the two little penny dolls with his soft raghands.
And the two little penny dolls nestled against Raggedy Andy's softcotton stuffed body, and thought how nice it was to have such a happy,sunny friend.
Raggedy Andy sitting]
Medicine]
Four dolls]