A BEAN BATTLE


"Well, Arnold, do you think you will like your Bold Tin Soldier and
his men?" asked the boy's father.

"Oh, yes, Daddy! I'm sure I shall!" was the answer. "I'll take them
over to Dick's house, and we'll have a make-believe battle on the
floor in the playroom."

"That is strange," thought the tin Captain, as the girl clerk was
wrapping him and his men up in a large paper. "Very strange! Where
have I heard those names before--Dick and Arnold? I wonder--I
wonder----"

But just then the girl turned the box upside down to tie a knot in
the string she was putting around it, and the Captain and his men
had all they could do to keep in their places.

"Stand fast, every one of you!" said the Captain in a low voice to
his tin men. "We are perhaps going on a long trip."

The boy paid over his dollar of pocket money, his father added
another dollar, and then the box of toy Tin Soldiers was taken away.

Just what happened on their trip from the store of course the
Captain and his men did not know. They could feel themselves being
jiggled about, and at one time they were put on the seat of an
automobile, though they did not know it. And finally they were set
down with a jingle and a jangle, the guns of the men rattling