Of course, Lulu wondered how the tiny creature got into the meal box, and she wondered if she might tell Alice and Jimmie about having seen her, but she decided¹ she had better not.

 

Now it was about a week after Lulu had taken Grandfather Goosey-Gander the hot tea and the cold potatoes, that something happened to Jimmie Wibblewobble.

 

It was one afternoon when he was on his way home from school, and he was all alone, for he had been kept in for missing his spelling lesson, and all the other children had gone on. You see he couldn't spell "vinegar." Of course that's an easy word, I know, but Jimmie didn't like sour things, and I suppose that's why he missed vinegar. He put the "x" and a "k" of the word in the wrong places. Anyway he was kept in, and he had to write "ketchup²" on his paper fifty times.

 

Well, after he was let out Jimmie started off through the woods and over the fields. Pretty soon, right after he was passing along a deep, dark, dingly dell, which is a sort of little valley, with flowers and ferns growing in it, he heard a bell ring. "Ding-dong! Ding-dong! Ding-dong!" went the bell. At first Jimmie thought he was near a church, but just then the bell rang differently.

 

This time it went: "Tinkle-tankle! Tinkle-tankle! Tinkle-tank—" just like that.

 

"Why!" exclaimed Jimmie. "I wonder what that can be?"

 

Then he went on a little farther, and he came out of the deep, dark dingle-dell, and he heard the bell more plainly still. This time it rang very rapidly, and right after it Jimmie heard a loud voice calling: "Moo! Moo! Moo! Help me, will you; will you?"

 

"Why!" cried Jimmie. "That's a cow!"

 

Then, in another moment he came from behind a big tree, and what should he see but a big, black cow, standing³ in a swamp. The cow was shaking her head and shaking her horns at the same time, and ringing the bell, which was fastened around her neck by a

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