The Wallypug of Why

IT was a very warm afternoon, and Girlie was sitting by the play-room window watching the gold fish idly swimming about in her little aquarium. She was feeling very “sigh” as she called it, that is, not very happy, for her brothers were all away from home, and she had no one to talk to. Even Boy, her youngest brother, was staying with some friends at Broadstairs, and she thought it very hard that she should have to wait at home for another week before joining him there. Her aunt, with whom she was staying, had received a letter from him that morning and had brought it up to Girlie to read.

“But it will only make me more sorry than ever that I am not there,” thought poor Girlie. She had the letter in her hand and was trying to decide whether she should read it or not when she caught sight of a few words at the bottom of the first page, which was half drawn out of the envelope:— “I have found a goo” was written in Boy’s big, sprawling handwriting.

“Whatever is a Goo?” thought Girlie; and, instead of reading the rest of the letter as most people would have done, she shut her eyes and tried to think whether she had ever heard of, or seen such a thing. She was trying hard to remember whether there was such a creature mentioned in her Natural History book, and had just come to the conclusion that she had never read of one, when she heard a little cough from the other end of the room, and, opening her eyes, she saw Dumpsey Deazil, her favourite doll, struggling up from the very uncomfortable position in which she had been lying, with her head in a domino box and her feet on Noah’s Ark.