"bldtn10" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hope Laura Lee)

boys. There were three of them, and, as Mirabell had said, they had
long tin bean, or putty, blowers. They were blowing the beans at the
boy and his sister on the porch.

Rattle and bang went the hard dried beans, but the Bold Tin Soldier
Captain and his men stood bravely up under the shower of bean
bullets. The Red Cross Nurse Doll was brave, too, and did not run
away, while the Lamb on Wheels stood on her wooden platform and
never so much as blinked an eye as bean after bean struck her.

"Shoot the Tin Soldiers! Shoot the woolly Lamb!" cried the bad boys,
as they, blew more beans.

"Here! You stop shooting beans at us!" cried Arnold. "Do you hear
me? You stop it!"

"Ho! Ho! We won't stop for you! You can't make us!" shouted the
boys, and they were going to blow more beans, but just then Patrick,
the gardener next door, came along with some seeds he had been down
to the store to buy.

"Patrick!" called Mirabell.

Patrick saw the bad boys blowing beans at Mirabell and Arnold, and,
with a shout, the gardener chased the unpleasant lads away.

"Be off out of here and let my children alone!" cried Patrick, for
he considered Dorothy and Dick and Arnold and Mirabell as his
special "children," and was always watching to see that no harm came
to them. And once Patrick had saved the Lamb on Wheels, as you may
read in the book written specially about that toy.

"Did they hurt you, Mirabell or Arnold?" asked the gardener, as he
came back from chasing the boys.

"No, thank you, not much," Arnold answered. "One bean struck me on
the nose, but it didn't hurt--hardly any."

"And one bean knocked over one of your Soldiers, Arnold," said
Mirabell.

"He's the drummer boy--I guess he isn't hurt any," returned the boy,
and he set the Tin Drummer on his feet again.

"Well, well! You have a fine regiment of soldiers, there!" said
Patrick. "A fine regiment. What are you going to do with 'em,
Arnold?"

"We're going to have a make-believe battle, now that the boys with
the beans have gone away," Arnold replied.