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Anyhow, she sent me back to the store, only she sent me here instead of to the store where the Calico Clown and the other toys lived, and the mistake was never found out. Mr. Mugg and his daughters took me in, and I have been here ever since." "Do you ever see your friend, the Monkey on a Stick, or hear from the Sawdust Doll?" asked the Donkey. "Once in a while," was the answer.
Oh, I'd just love that Nodding Donkey!" For a minute or two longer the lame boy and his mother stood in front of the show window of the toy shop of Mr. Horatio Mugg and his two daughters. The lame boy looked at the Nodding Donkey and the Nodding Donkey bobbed his head in such a funny fashion that the lame boy smiled. "I'm glad I could make him do that," thought the Donkey.
"But something seems to be the matter with his head. It is loose!" "Tut! Tut! Nonsense! It is made that way, just the same as the moving head of the Fuzzy Bear," said the old gentleman, whose name was Horatio Mugg. At first the Nodding Donkey had taken this old gentleman for a relative of Santa Claus, for he had the same white hair and whiskers and wore almost the same sort of glasses.
You may pick out anything you please." "Oh, Aunt Clara! How lovely of you!" cried Jennie Moore, for that was her name. "Let me see now. What would I like best?" While Jennie was looking along the shelves of toys her aunt said in a low tone to Mr. Mugg: "Jennie has been such a good girl, helping her mother who was ill, that I promised her any toy she wished."
"Be sure it is the Nodding Donkey you want, and not some other toy," said the boy's mother, as they looked at the things in the window. "Yes, Mother, I'd rather have him than anything else," the boy answered, and into the store they went. Mr. Mugg came out from behind the counter. "Would you like to look at some toys?" asked the storekeeper.
Mugg, as his two daughters entered the rear room to see what had caused all the racket. "Sometimes I feel that these toys know more than we think they do," he went on. "Take that new Plush Bear," he added, pointing to the other room where Bruin was sitting on a shelf. "See how wise he looks? He seems about to speak. And if he ever should come to life I think he would enjoy a ride in a toy train."
Its wax was cracked and blistered, its head was badly damaged, and the bargain costume was dusty, soiled and much bedraggled. For the mischief-loving Tanko-Mankie had flown by and breathed once more upon the poor wax lady, and in that instant her brief life ended. "It's just as I thought," said Inspector Mugg, leaning back in his chair contentedly. "I knew all the time the thing was a fake.
"Heat me the pot of glue, Geraldine," he called to his daughter, "and get me some paint and varnish. When I mend the broken leg I'll paint over the splintered place, so it will not show." The Nodding Donkey was taken to a work bench. Mr. Mugg, wearing a long apron and a cap, just like the workmen in the shop of Santa Claus, sat down to begin.
Mugg said to Mrs. Richmond: "I am very sorry to see that your boy has to go on crutches." "Yes, his father and I feel very sad about it," Joe's mother answered. "We have already had the doctors do almost everything they can to cure him, but now we fear he must have another and worse operation. I dread it, and that is why I would get him almost anything to make him happy.
She was as clean and white as a new snowball. "Oh, how glad I am!" she said to herself. She looked all around. There in the window with her were most of the toys she had known for a long time. They did not seem to have been burned or scorched by the fire. In fact, though some of his playthings were damaged, Mr. Mugg did not, of course, put any of these in his show window.
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