The Bunker children watched the lights of the fleet until quite late in the evening and thought the sight very pretty indeed. They would have liked to have gone aboard at least one of the Government vessels preferably, of course, the one to which their sailor friend belonged, but there was no opportunity for such a visit. For early the next morning theKammerboysteamed out of the harbor of Charleston again on the last lap of her voyage to Savannah.
"You can't do it, Russ—ever!" declared Rose, with confidence.
"Well," said the oldest of the six little Bunkers, puffing very much, "I can try, can't I? I do wish I could cut that pigeon wing just as Sam did it."
They were on the sunshiny deck of theKammerboy, which was plowing now toward the headlands near Savannah Harbor. But the little folks had been seeing the blue line of the shore ever since leaving Charleston, so they were not much interested in it. As Laddie said, they knew it was there, and that was enough.
"We know the continent of North America didn't get lost while we were out there in the Gulf Stream," said the boy twin, with satisfaction. "So it doesn't matter what part of it we hit—it will be land!"
"If we hit it most any old place," said Vi, "we would be shipwrecked and be castaways like the game we started to play that time and Russ wouldn't let us finish. I wonder why?"
She had ended with a question. But Laddie could not answer it. He was watching Russ trying to do that funny dance.
"Uncle Sam's nephew could do it fine," Laddie said to Russ. "But you don't get the same twist to it."
"Me do it! Me do it!" cried Mun Bun excitedly, and he began to try to dance as Russ had. He looked so cunning jumping aboutand twisting his chubby little body that they all shouted with laughter. But Mun Bun thought they were admiring his dancing.
"Me did it like Sam," he declared, stopping to rest.
"You do it fine, Mun Bun," Russ said.
It was a fact, however, that none of them could cut that pigeon wing as Sam, the colored boy, had cut it in Aunt Jo's kitchen in Boston.
Now that they were nearing the end of the voyage there were many things besides pigeon wings to interest the little Bunkers. In the first place the big sea-eagle had to be released from the turkey coop. The quartermaster called him Red Eye. And truly his eye was very red and angry all the time. And he clashed his great beak whenever anybody came near him.
"I guess you couldn't tame him in a hundred years," Russ said thoughtfully. "He can't be tamed. That is why we have an eagle for a symbol, I guess. We can't be tamed."
It was decided to let Red Eye out of the cage when the ship entered Savannah Harbor.
"He's come a long way with us. He has come away down here to Georgia," said Rose thoughtfully. "If he lives in Maine, do you s'pose he will ever find his way back?"
"If he doesn't, what matter? It's a fine country," said the quartermaster.
"But he will want to see his relations," said the little girl. "Maybe he's got a wife and children. He will be dreadfully lonesome away down here."
"Maybe you had better take him back with you on theKammerboy," said Russ thoughtfully, to the quartermaster.
But the officer could not do that. There had been some objection made already to the big sea-eagle caged on deck. Besides, the bird's wing was better, and if he was kept much longer confined, the quartermaster said, he might forget how to fly!
So they all gathered around (but at a good distance from the cage you may be sure), and the eagle was released. He had to be poked out of the cage, for it seemed as though he could scarcely believe that the door was open and he was free.
He stalked out upon the deck, his greatclaws rattling on the planks. He turned his head from side to side, and then opened his beak and, so Vi said, he hissed at them!
"At any rate," admitted Russ afterward, "he did make a funny noise."
"He was clearing his throat," said Laddie, with scorn of his twin. "How could an eagle hiss? He isn't a goose."
Laddie knew all about geese, for Grandma Bell had geese. But he did not know all about eagles, that was sure! Whether Red Eye hissed, or growled, or whatever he did in his throat, he certainly showed little friendliness. He raised his wings and flapped them "to see if they worked right." Then he uttered a decided croak and jumped a little way off the deck.
Evidently this decided him that he was really free and that his great wings would bear him. He leaped into the air again, spreading his wings, and wheeled to go over the stern of the steamship. The spread of his wings when he flapped them was greater than most of the onlookers had supposed.
"Oh! Oh! Look out, Laddie!" shouted Rose.
Her warning came too late. The end ofthe great pinion swept Laddie off his feet! He went rolling across the deck, screaming lustily.
"Oh! I'm going overboard! Daddy!" he cried.
But it was Russ who grabbed him and stood him on his feet again.
"You're not going overboard at all," said the older brother. "You couldn't. You'd have to climb over the rail to do it."
"We-ell!" breathed Laddie. "It's a wonder he didn't take me right with him!"
Then he, like everybody else, became interested in the passage of the great bird as it mounted skyward. It went up in a long slant at first, and then began to spiral upward, right toward the sun, and presently was out of sight.
"It can look the sun straight in the face," said Daddy Bunker. "Which is something we cannot do."
"No wonder its eye is red, then," said Rose.
"I guess it's sunburnt," said Margy. "I got sunburnt at Captain Ben's."
That night they docked at Savannah and went to a hotel in two taxicabs, for one would not hold all the Bunkers and their baggagetoo. The hotel was a nice one, and Rose thought the negro waiters and chambermaids very attentive and very pleasant people.
"They are the smilingest people I ever saw," she confessed to Mother Bunker. "I guess they are thinking of funny things all the time."
"Perhaps," granted her mother. "But they are trained to politeness. And you children must be just as polite."
They all tried to be polite, and Russ grew quite friendly with one of the bellboys who brought them ice water. He asked that boy if he knew how to cut the pigeon wing, and the boy grinned very broadly.
"I sure does!" he declared. "But if the boss heard of me doin' it around dishyer hotel, he'd bounce me."
"Are you made of rubber?" asked Vi, who was standing by.
"What's dat?" he demanded, rolling his eyes. "Is I made of rubber? Course I isn't. I's made of flesh and blood and bones, same as you is, little Miss. Only I isn't w'ite like you is."
"But you said the man would bounceyou. Rubber balls bounce," explained Vi.
At that the bellboy went away laughing very heartily, but Vi could not understand why. And, of course, as usual, nobody could explain it to Vi's satisfaction.
"I know a riddle!" cried Laddie, after a moment. "What looks like a boy, but bounces like a rubber ball? Why! A bellboy!"
And he was highly delighted at this and went around telling everybody his new riddle.
In the morning Mr. Frane Armatage appeared at the hotel and was shown up to the Bunker rooms. Mr. Armatage, as the little Bunkers knew, was an old school friend of Daddy Bunker's; but one whom he had not seen for a long time.
"Why," said Mr. Armatage, who was a slender man with graying hair and a darker mustache, "Charley was only a boy when I last saw him." He was a very jovial man, and red-faced. Rose thought him handsome, and told Mother Bunker so. "No, Charley was only a sapling then. And look at him now!"
"And look at the sprouts that have sprung from that sapling," laughed Daddy Bunker, with a sweeping gesture towards the six little Bunkers.
"Was he only as big as I am?" Russ asked.
"Well, no, come to think of it; he was some bigger than you. We were graduating from college when we parted. But it seems a long time ago, doesn't it, Charley?"
Daddy Bunker agreed to that. Then he and Mr. Armatage talked business for a while. The owner of the Meiggs Plantation wished to get more land and hire more hands for the next year, and through Mr. Bunker he expected to obtain capital for this. Aside from business the two old friends desired very much to renew their boyhood acquaintance and have their wives and children become acquainted.
"I've got half as many young ones as you have, Charley," said Mr. Armatage. "You've beat me a hundred per cent. I wonder if we keep on growing if the ratio will remain the same?"
Russ knew what "ratio" meant, and heasked: "How can it keep that way if we grow to be seven little Bunkers? You can't have three and a half little Armatages, you know."
"That's a smart boy!" exclaimed the tall man, smiling. "He can see through a millstone just as quick as any boy I know. We'll hope that there will be no half-portions of Armatages. I want all my children to have the usual number of limbs and body."
"If you have little girls, and one was only half a little girl," said Rose, "she would be worse off than a mermaid, wouldn't she?"
"She certainly would," agreed the planter.
"Why?" demanded Vi, who did not understand.
"Because half of her would be a fish," said Russ, laughing. "And you would have to have all your house under water, Mr. Armatage, or the mermaid could not get up and down stairs."
"I declare, Charley!" exclaimed the visitor, "these young ones of yours are certainly blessed with great imaginations. I don't believe our children ever thought of such things."
The next day the party went out to the Meiggs Plantation. It was a two-hours' ride on a branch railroad and a shorter and swifter ride in an automobile over the "jounciest" road the children had ever ridden on, for part of the way led through a swamp and logs were laid down side by side to keep the road, as Mr. Armatage laughingly said, from sinking quite out of sight.
But the land on which the Armatage home stood was high and dry. It was a beautiful grassy knoll, acres in extent, and shaded by wide-armed trees which had scarcely lost any leaves it seemed to the little Bunkers, though this was winter. On the wide, white-pillared veranda a very handsome lady and two little girls and a little boy stood to receive the party.
The children did not come forward to greet the visitors, or even their father, until the latter spoke to them. Mr. and Mrs. Bunker were quite sure by the actions of Phillis and Alice and Frane, Junior, that they were not granted the freedom of speech and action that their little ones enjoyed. Mother Bunker pitied those children from the start!
THE SIX LITTLE BUNKERS WERE AMAZED AT THE NUMBER OF COLORED CHILDREN.
THE SIX LITTLE BUNKERS WERE AMAZED AT THE NUMBER OF COLORED CHILDREN.Six Little Bunkers at Mammy June's.Page115
But what amazed the six little Bunkersmore than anything else was the number of colored children hanging about the veranda to see the newcomers. Rose confided to Russ that she thought there must be a colored school near by and all the children were out for recess.
And there were so many house-servants that smiling black and brown faces appeared everywhere.
"I guess," said Rose to her mother, "that there must be an awful lot of work to do in this big house. It's lots bigger than Aunt Jo's or Grandma Bell's. It's like a castle, and all these servants are like retainers. I read about retainers in a story. Onlythese retainers aren't dressed in uniforms."
From the very beginning, although they said nothing about it even to each other, the six little Bunkers found the three little Armatages "funny." "Funny" is a word that may mean much or little, and often the very opposite of humorous. In this case the visitors from the North did not understand Phillis and Alice and Frane, Junior. They were not like any boys and girls whom the Bunkers had ever known before.
Phillis was twelve—quite a "grown up young lady" she seemed to consider herself. Yet she broke out now and then in wild, tomboyish activities, racing with Russ and Frane, Junior, climbing fences and trees, and riding horses bareback in the home lot. It seemed as though Phil, as they called her, "held in"just as long as she could, trying to put on the airs of grown-ups, and then just had to break out.
"If you tell mother I did this I'll wish a ha'nt after you!" she would say to her brother, who was the age of Vi and Laddie, and her sister Alice, who was two years younger than herself, but no bigger than Rose. Alice had a very low, sweet, contralto voice, like Mrs. Armatage, and a very demure manner. Rose became friendly with Alice almost at once.
And the way they treated the colored children of their own age and older was just as strange as anything else about the three Armatages. They petted and quarreled with them; they expected all kinds of service from them; and they were on their part, constantly doing things for the children of "the quarters" and giving them presents. Wherever the white children went about the plantation there was sure to be a crowd of colored boys and girls tagging them.
After the first day Mother Bunker was reassured that nothing could happen to her brood, because there were so many of the coloredmen about the grounds to look after them. As in the house, a black or brown face, broadly a-smile, was likely to appear almost anywhere.
The quarters, as the cabins occupied by the colored people were called, were not far from the house, but not in sight of it. Even the kitchen was in a separate house, back of the big house. After bedtime there was not a servant left in the big house unless somebody was sick.
"Mammy used to live here," Mrs. Armatage explained, in her languid voice, "while the children were small. I couldn't have got along without mammy. She was my mammy too. But she's too old to be of much use now, and Frane has pensioned her. She has her own little house and plot of ground and if her boy—her youngest boy—had stayed with her, mammy would get along all right. She worries about that boy."
The Bunker children did not understand much about this until, on the second day after their arrival, Phillis said:
"I'm going down to see mammy. Want to come?"
"Is—isn't your mammy here at home?" asked Vi. "Dora Blunt calls her mother 'mammy'; but we don't."
"I've got a mother and a mammy too," explained the oldest Armatage girl. "You-all come on and see her. She'll be glad to see you folks from the North. She will ask you if you've seen her Ebenezer, for he went up North. We used to all call him 'Sneezer,' and it made him awfully mad."
"Didn't he have any better name?" asked Russ.
"His full name is Ebenezer Caliper Spotiswood Meiggs. Of course, their name isn't really Meiggs, like the plantation; but the darkies often take the names of the places where they were born. Sneezer was a real nice boy."
"He isn't dead, is he?" asked Russ.
"Reckon not," said Phillis. "But Mammy June is awful' worried about him. She hasn't heard from him now for more than a year. So she doesn't know what to think."
"But she has got other folks, hasn't she?" Rose asked.
"You'd think so! Grandchildren by the score," replied the older Armatage girl, laughing. "Sneezer had lots of older brothers and sisters, and they most all have married and live about here and have big families. The grandchildren are running in and out of mammy's cabin all the time. I have to chase 'em out with a broom sometimes when I go down there. And they eat her pretty near up alive!"
Even the smaller Bunkers knew that this was a figure of speech. The grandchildren did not actually eat Mammy June, although they might clean her cupboard as bare as that of Old Mother Hubbard.
They followed a winding, grass-grown cart path for nearly half a mile before coming to Mammy June's house. The way was sloping to the border of a "branch" or small stream—a very pretty brook indeed that burbled over stones in some places and then had long stretches of quiet pools where Frane, Junior, told Russ and Laddie that there were many fish—"big fellows."
"I'll get a string and a bent pin and fish for them," said Laddie confidently. "I fished that way in the brook at Pineville."
"Huh!" said Frane Armatage, Junior, in scorn. "One of these fish here would swallow your pin and line and haul you in."
"Oh!" gasped Vi, with big eyes. "What for?"
"No, the fish wouldn't!" declared Laddie promptly.
"Yes, it would. And swallow you, too."
"No, the fish wouldn't," repeated Laddie, "for I'd let go just as soon as it began to tug."
"Smartie!" said Phillis to her brother. "You can't fool these Bunker boys. Let Laddie alone."
Of course the troop of white children, walking down the cart path to Mammy June's, was followed by a troop of colored children. The latter sang and romped and chased about the bordering woods like puppies out for a rample. Sometimes they danced.
"Can you cut a pigeon wing?" Russ asked one of the older lads. "I want to learn to do that."
"No, I can't do that. Not good. We've got some dancers over at the quarters that does it right well," was the reply.
"You ought to've seen Sneezer do it!" cried another of the colored children. "Sneezer could do it fine. Couldn't he, Miss Phil?"
"Sneezer was a great dancer," admitted the oldest Armatage girl. "Come on, now, Bunkers, and see Mammy June. Keep away from this cabin," she added to the colored children, "or I'll call a ha'nt out of the swamp to chase you."
"I wonder what those 'ha'nts' are, Russ," whispered Rose to her brother. "Do they have feathers? Or don't they fly? They must run pretty fast, for Phil is always saying she will make one chase folks."
"I asked Daddy. There isn't any such thing. It's like we say 'ghosts.'"
"Oh! At Hallowe'en? When we dress up in sheets and things?"
"Yes. Maybe these colored children believe in ghosts. But of course we don't!"
"No-o," said Rose thoughtfully. "Just the same I wouldn't like to think of ha'nts if I was alone in the woods at night. Would you, Russ?"
Russ dodged that question. He said:
"I don't mean to be alone in the woods around here at night. And neither do you, Rose Bunker."
Of course neither of them had the least idea what was going to happen to them before they started North from the Meiggs Plantation.
Mammy June's cabin was of white-washed logs, with vines climbing about the door that were leafless now but very thrifty looking. There were fig trees that made a background and a windbreak for the little house, and a huge magnolia tree stood not far from the cabin. The front door opened upon a roofed porch, and an old colored woman of ample size, in a starched and flowered gingham dress and with a white turban on her head, was rocking in a big arm chair on this porch when the children appeared.
"Lawsy me!" she exclaimed, smiling broadly to show firm white teeth in spite of her age. "Is this yere a celebration or is it a parade? Miss Philly, you got a smooch on dat waist, and your skirt is hiked up behind. I declar' I believe you've lost a button."
"Why, so I have, Mammy June," answeredPhillis. "And more than one. Nobody has time to keep buttons sewed on up at the house, now that you're not there."
"Shiftless, no-count critters, dem gals up dere. Sho, honey! who is all dese lil' white children?"
"Bunkers," explained Frane, Junior.
"What's dem?" asked Mammy June, apparently puzzled. "Is dey to play with, or is dey to eat? Bunkers! Lawsy!"
Rose giggled delightedly.
"They are to play with," laughed Alice suddenly. "That is what they are for, Mammy June."
"You see you play pretty with them, then," said the old woman, shaking her head and speaking admonishingly.
Rose and Russ Bunker at least began to understand that this pleasant old colored woman had had the chief care of the three young Armatages while they were little. Perhaps she had trained them quite as much as their mother and father. And they seemed to love Mammy June accordingly.
That the old woman loved little folks and knew how to make friends with themwas soon apparent. She had Mun Bun and Margy both together in her ample lap while Laddie and Vi leaned against her and listened to the tale she was telling the little folks.
Phillis and Alice meanwhile showed Rose the interior of the cabin and all its comforts and wonders. Meanwhile Frane, Junior, took Russ down to the stream with some of the colored children to show him some of the big fish he had threatened Laddie with. Here it was that Russ Bunker engaged in his first adventure at the Meiggs Plantation.
"If Sneezer was here," said Frane, Junior, "he'd show you more fish than I can. Sneezer used to just smell 'em out. But come on. I know where some of the big ones stay."
"I don't want to dive in after them," declared Russ Bunker, laughing. "The way you promised Laddie. And I haven't any hook and line at all."
"We won't go fishing. Not really. Mostly the darkies fish. We don't bother to. They bring us plenty to eat when we want them at the house."
"You—you don't do much of anything, do you?" asked Russ doubtfully. "Not for yourselves, I mean."
"Don't have to," returned Frane, Junior. "The darkies do it all for us. But Phil and Alice and I have to do our own studying."
Russ saw that he was in fun, but he was curious enough to ask the smaller boy:
"Do you and the girls go to school?"
"School comes to us. There is a teacher comes here. Lives at the house. But it's vacation time now till after New Year's. I hope she never comes back!"
"Oh, is she mean to you?"
"Course she is," declared Frane, Junior. "She makes us study. I hate to."
"Well, sometimes I don't like what they make us learn in school," admitted Russ slowly. "But I guess it's good for us."
"How do you know, it is?" demanded the other. "I don't feel any better after I study. I only get the headache."
Russ could not find an immediate answer for this statement. Besides, there was something right in front of him then that aroused his interest. It was a big log spanning the stream, with a shaky railing nailed to it, made of a long pole attached to several uprights.
"That is the funniest bridge I ever saw," he declared. "Will it hold you?"
"Look at that log. It would hold a hundredelephants," declared Frane, Junior, who was inclined to exaggerate a good deal at times.
"Not all at once!" cried Russ.
"Yes, sir. If you could get 'em on it," said Frane. "But I don't s'pose the railing would stand it."
When the boys went out on the bridge and Russ considered the railing he was very sure that this last statement of his little friend was true, whether any others were or not. The railing "wabbled" very much, and Russ refrained from leaning against it.
"Now, you folks keep back!" whispered Frane shrilly to the colored children who had followed them. "I want to show him the big fellow that sleeps down here."
Somewhere he had picked up a piece of bark more than a foot long, which was rolled into a cylinder. He lay down on the log near the middle of the brook and began to look down into the brown and rather cloudy water through this odd spyglass.
"What can you see through that thing?" asked Russ.
"Sh! Wait. Don't let 'em hear you,"warned Frane, Junior. Then he added: "Get down here 'side o' me. When I spot him I'll let you squint through this too."
Russ understood now that his companion was trying to see one of the fish that lived in the stream—perhaps the "big fellow" Frane had spoken of. Russ grew quite excited and he took off his jacket and rolled up his sleeves. He knelt down beside Frane, and finally lay right down on his stomach and likewise peered over the side of the log.
The log-bridge had been made quite flat on its upper surface with a broadaxe, and all the bark had long since worn off. It was all of thirty feet long, but it was just as firm as the arch of a stone bridge.
"There!" whispered Frane. "I saw a flicker then. Yep! He's there! Right below the edge of that stone!"
"I don't see anything but water. I can't even see the bottom," observed Russ, in a low voice, too.
"Don't you see him below the stone?"
"I don't even see the stone," complained Russ.
"Hush! He'll hear you. Isee his tail wiggle. He's a big cat."
"Now, don't tell me there's a cat in this brook!" said Russ Bunker, shortly. "I know there isn't anything of the kind. Cats hate water."
He had already learned that Frane, Junior, was apt to exaggerate. Russ thought the Armatage boy was letting his fancy run wild at this present moment.
"It is a cat," murmured Frane. "I can see his whiskers moving. Yep, a big fellow! Want to see?" and he took his eye away from the bark cylinder.
"Can you see his teeth and his claws and his fur and his tail?" demanded Russ scornfully, and without offering to take the cylinder. He did not intend to be fooled so easily.
"What are you talking about?" hissed Frane. "And speak quietly. You'll drive him away."
"Cats aren't so easily scared," said Russ. "You have to peg stones at 'em to drive 'em away."
"Huh!" sniffed Frane. "Funny cats up North. I don't believe you have any up there."
"You're right we don't," agreed Russ, and now he laughed again. "Not any cats that swim. Cats hate the water——"
"Aw, shucks! I'm not talking about cats!" exclaimed Frane. "I'm talking about catfish."
"Oh!" ejaculated the Northern boy.
"You know a catfish, don't you? It has feelers that we call whiskers. Awful nice eating, for they only have a backbone."
"Oh!" murmured Russ again. "I guess I didn't understand. Let me see the fish, will you, please?"
"You can look," said Frane passing him the cylinder of bark. "But maybe we have scared him off, talking so much."
The big catfish, however, had not been scared away. After a few moments, and with Frane's aid, Russ Bunker got the wooden spyglass focused on the proper point. He saw the imbedded rock Frane had spoken of. Then he saw the fish basking in the water below the rock's edge.
It was almost two feet long, with a big head and goggle eyes, and the "whiskers" Frane had spoken of wriggled back andforth in the slow current. Russ grew excited.
"Why!" he whispered to Frane, "I could grab it, if I tried. It is just like what we call bullheads up in Pineville. I've caught 'em in our pond. You can hardly get 'em off the hook without getting stung by 'em."
"Catfish don't sting you. But you have to knock 'em in the head when you land them, so as to make 'em behave. I've seen the boys do it."
"I'm going to make a grab for that fellow," declared Russ.
"I reckon you'd miss him. You couldn't hold him, anyway," said Frane doubtfully.
"I could so."
"No, you couldn't. He's too big. They never catch catfish that way."
"I know I never caught a bullhead that way," admitted Russ. "But one never lay so still for me. And right under this log! Here! You take the spyglass."
"You'd better take care," advised the Southern boy.
But Russ felt very daring. It seemed that the fish lay only a few inches under the surface of the brown water. If he could graspthe fish and throw it ashore, how the other children would all shout! Perhaps Russ Bunker wanted to "show off" a little. Anyway, he determined to make the attempt to land the big catfish with his hands.
"You can't do it," warned Frane, Junior, creeping back a way so as to give Russ more room.
"Don't say that till you see," returned the boy from the North. "Now, look! I know just where he lies. Look!"
Russ had rolled his shirtsleeve up to his shoulder. He balanced himself on the log, his head and shoulders overhanging the brown water. Suddenly he made a dive with his right hand. Even his head touched the water, he dipped so deep, and his cap went floating away.
And, wonderful to relate, his hand did seize upon the catfish. Perhaps the fish had been asleep down there by the edge of the imbedded stone. At any rate it was not quick enough to escape Russ Bunker's darting hand.
"I got it!" yelled Russ, in delight.
He tried to seize fast hold upon the body of the catfish, but the fish shot forward with awriggle that slapped its tail against Russ's hand. Russ plunged forward, trying to hold it.
"I—guess—he's—a—butter—fish!" he gasped. "He's so slippery——"
And then, losing his balance on the log, Russ Bunker fell right into the deep pool with splash enoughto frighten all the fishes for yards around!
Of course, Russ Bunker should not have done it. He was always ready to try new things and wasn't much afraid of anything that turned up. But trying to catch a big catfish with his hands was ridiculous.
Perhaps he realized this when he fell off the log into the stream; but it was too late then to know how foolish it was.
The chorus of screams from the children on the bank was the first announcement that Mammy June had of the mischief that was afoot. The colored children shouted and Frane, Junior, ran right off the log and came screaming to the cabin:
"He's gone down! He's gone down!"
"What is the matter with you, Frane?" demandedthe old woman, coming heavily down off the porch. "Who's gone down? Wha's he gone down to?"
"Russ has gone down," announced Frane. "He's gone down after the catfish."
"Lawsy me!" exclaimed Mammy June. "Is that li'le boy got into the branch?"
Rose and Vi and Laddie and Margy and Mun Bun, as well as the two Armatage girls, all came running, too. For the first minute none of them understood what had happened to Russ.
But when they reached the bank of the stream they saw something splashing in the middle of the pool under the bridge. They couldn't see Russ, but they knew that something was struggling there.
"Is that a fish?" demanded Laddie. "It must be a whale."
"Oh!" shrieked Rose. "It's Russ! He'll be drowned!"
"Don't let him get wet, Rose," cried Margy. "Mother won't want him to get his clothes wet."
But if there was any part of Russ Bunker that was not wet when he managed to get onhis feet and his head and shoulders appeared above the water, Rose couldn't imagine what part it could be. He was just the wettest boy she had ever seen.
Russ had got a footing finally upon the stone beside which the big catfish had lain. The water was too deep all around him for him to wade out. The bottom of the pool was so deep that it was over the boy's head. He had to stand on the rock and gasp for breath for he had swallowed a good deal of water, having gone down with his mouth open.
"What did I tell you?" demanded Frane, Junior, from the bank. "You couldn't catch that cat."
"I know it!" jerked out Russ. "I know it now."
"Lawsy me!" ejaculated Mammy June. "Is that the way you ketches catfish up Norf?"
The other little Bunkers did not understand this. Vi wanted to know at once if Russ had a kitty in the water with him. But nobody paid any attention to her questions.
"Here, you 'Lias and Henery!" commanded Mammy June to two of the older coloredboys. "What you standin' there idle for? Go out on that bridge and haul that poor chile ashore. What a state he is in, to be sure!"
It did not take long to help Russ up on to the log again. The water just poured off him; but it was not very cold and his teeth didn't chatter—much. Mammy June showed anxiety, however.
"You come right into de house, honey," she said to Russ. "Now, little Miss," she added to Rose, "yo' mustn't scold him now. Wait till we wring his clothes out and get him dry. Yo' 'Lias, bring some dry bresh and some good sticks. We'll want a hot fire."
Mammy June had no stove in her cabin, but a broad and smoke-blackened open fireplace. There was a small fire in it, over which her teakettle hung. In five minutes the negro boys made a roaring blaze. Then the old woman drove them all out of the cabin save Russ, whom she helped off with his wet clothes, rubbed dry with a big towel, and to whom she gave a shirt and trousers to put on while she wrung out his clothing and hung it all about the fire to dry.
"That shirt and them pants," she said,"b'longs to my Sneezer—my Ebenezer. If he was here this wouldn't have happened to yo', honey. He wouldn't have let no w'ite boy fall into that branch—no, sir. But these no-'count other young ones didn't know 'nough to tell yo' that that ain't the way to catch catfish."
"I found out myself," admitted Russ rather ruefully.
Rose came to the door and begged to know if Russ was all right.
"He's going to be just as soon as I get him made a hot drink," declared Mammy June.
"Has he got all over being drowned?" Margy demanded.
And even Mun Bun was a good deal troubled because Russ had got so wet. "If you had any candy in your pocket, Russ," the little boy said, "it must be all soft now. It won't be good to eat."
"I didn't have any candy, Mun Bun," Russ told him. Russ was feeling a whole lot better now. Mammy June gave him a nice hot, sweet drink. He didn't mind if it was a little "stingy" too.
"Yo' all come in yere—yo' little w'itefolks," said Mammy June, "and we'll make some 'lasses taffy. I got plenty sorgum 'lasses. We can make it w'ile this catfish boy is getting dry."
She continued to call Russ "the catfish boy" and chuckled over his adventure. But she warned him, when his clothing was dry, that he must be more careful when he was playing about the water.
"An' yo' got to tell yo' mudder and daddy about it," she instructed Russ. "Don't never hide nothin' from 'em."
"Oh, we don't!" Rose broke in. "We always tell Mother and Daddy everything."
"That's what I tell my Philly and Ally and Frane, Junior. Always must tell they parents."
"And get scolded for it," said Phillis rather crossly.
"Well, then," said Mammy June cheerfully, "you mustn't do things to get scolded for. So I tell all these grandchildren of mine. Scat, you children!" for she saw several of the smaller colored boys and girls trying to steal in at the cabin door. "Ain't room for you in here noways. Yo' shall have yo' share of the 'lasses candy when it's done."
That "taffy pull" was a famous one. The six little Bunkers thought they had never eaten such nice molasses candy as Mammy June made. Phillis Armatage made believe that she did a lot to help for she buttered the pans. But it was Mammy June who really did it all.
"I think," confessed Rose to Alice, "that it is awfully nice to have both a mammy and a mother, as you girls have. Of course, a mammy can't be just what Mother Bunker is to us; but Mammy June is nice."
"She's lots better to us than our mother, in some ways," said Alice bluntly. "Mother doesn't want us to play noisy in the house. She has headaches and stays on the couch a lot. We have to step soft and can't talk loud. But Mammy June never has the fidgets."
"What's 'fidgets'?" asked Rose, quite shocked by the way Alice spoke of her mother.
"What ladies have," explained Alice. "Don't your mother have 'em?"
"I guess not. I never heard about them," Rose answered. "Then if your mother is sick, I don't suppose she can help it. It is lucky you have got a mammy."
That first afternoon ("evening" all these Southern folks called it) at Mammy June's was a very pleasant experience. Russ did not mind his ducking—much. He only grinned a little when Mammy June called him "the catfish boy."
"Serves me good and right," he confessed to Rose. "I ought not to have gone into that brook without a bathing suit. And, anyway, I guess a boy can't catch fish of any kind with his hands."
Mun Bun and Margy and the smaller colored children managed to spread the molasses taffy over face and hands to a greater or less degree; but they enjoyed the taffy pull as much as the older children did. Finally, after Mammy June had washed his face and hands, Mun Bun climbed up into her comfortable lap and went fast asleep.
The old woman, who loved children so dearly and was so kind to them, looked at one of her older grandsons, Elias, and ordered him to "get de boxwagon to take dis bressed baby home in."
A soapbox on a plank between two pairs of wheels being produced and the box madecomfortable with a quilt and a pillow belonging to Mammy June, Mun Bun was laid, still fast asleep, in this vehicle, and Russ started to drag his little brother home.
"Yo' 'Lias!" exclaimed Mammy June, from the doorway of her cabin, "whar's yo' manners? Don't you let that w'ite visitor boy drag that boxwagon. You get busy, 'Lias."
Russ and the other Bunker children were not used to being waited on at every step and turn. But they became better used to it as the time passed. The white folks on the Meiggs Plantation seemed to expect all this aid from the colored folks, and the latter seemed willing and eager to attend.
Russ was not scolded for his involuntary plunge into the branch. In fact his father laughed immensely at the tale. But Mother Bunker had to be assured that the stream was neither deep nor boisterous before she could laugh much.
The children had all had a lovely afternoon at Mammy June's and after that day they found most of their enjoyment in running down to her cabin and playing there. This delight was shared by the Armatages too.And the latter's father and mother seemed perfectly content if the children were in mammy's care.
The days passed all too swiftly. Everybody, darkies and all, were on tiptoe about the coming festival of Christmas and New Year's. The six little Bunkers learned that these holidays were celebrated in different style on this Georgia plantation from what they were in the North.
Mun Bun and Margy were too little always to accompany the older children on their rambles; but the two smallest Bunkers could be trusted to invent plays of their own when they might be left out of the older one's parties. They had long since learned not to feel slighted if Mother Bunker decided that they were to stay near her.
There was sufficient mystery and expectation regarding the coming holiday celebrations at the Meiggs Plantation to excite the little folks in any case. There was to be no Christmas tree such as the Bunkers had had the previous Christmas in the North. Both Mun Bun and Margy could remember that tree very clearly.
But there was quite as much hiding of funnyshaped packages until the gift day should arrive, and the house was being decorated, inside and out, for the coming celebration. Mun Bun and Margy watched the servants hanging Christmas greens and mistletoe, although, unlike the older little Bunkers, they could not go into the swamps with the men to gather these greens.
"We just ought to have a Christmas tree of our own," Margy said to Mun Bun. "I know where we can get a tree, and we'll beg some wreaths and trimming from that nice colored man there."
"We can't," said Mun Bun, somewhat despondently. "We isn't got a house to put the tree in. And we had the Christmas tree last time in the house."
"I've found a house," whispered Margy. "But don't you tell anybody."
"Not even tell Muvver?" asked Mun Bun, looking almost scared. Yet the idea of a secret delighted him too.
"Not till we get it all done. Then we will show her how fine it is," said Margy.
"Where is your house?" asked Mun Bun.
"You come along and I'llshow you. I found it all by myself."
She led Mun Bun by the hand out behind the big house and toward the quarters. In a sheltered place, behind a hedge, was a little house, sure enough. And it was not so very little after all, for when they went into it they could both stand upright.
"There isn't any window," said Mun Bun. "This isn't a regular house."
"Of course, it's a house," Margy declared. "It's got a doorway, and——"
"It hasn't got any door, just the same," said Mun Bun, who might have liked the house better if he had found it himself.
"We don't need a door. We want it open so the big folks can see our tree when we get it trimmed."
"Where is the tree?" demanded the still doubtful little boy.
"Now, Mun Bun!" exclaimed Margy, "do you want to play at fixing this Christmas tree, or don't you?"
"Oh, yes," said Mun Bun, who did not really want to be left out of any fun, even if he did not think of it first himself. "Show me the tree, Margy."
"Of course I will," said his sister. "You must help me get it and carry it in here."
"Come on," urged the little boy. "Let's."
So then Margy showed him where the tree she had found stood in a green tub outside the door of a small house that was almost all glass. The lower panes of glass in this house were whitewashed, so the children could not see what was in it; but this tree with its thick, glossy leaves seemed to have been left out for anybody to take who wanted it.
They had to tug pretty hard to get the tree out of the tub. As Margy said, they didn't want the tub anyway, for it would take up too much room. And they were not strong enough to move it.
But they got the tree uprooted, and then were able to carry it to the little house that Margy had selected as their own private dwelling for the play celebration.
By dragging the tree inside, roots first, they managed to get it in without breaking off any of the glossy leaves. They stood it upright and made it steady by placing some bricks that they found about the roots. Its top reached the roof of the little house.
They begged some broken wreaths and chains of evergreen and even a spray of mistletoe with berries on it. The workmen were very kind to the smallest Bunkers. Mun Bun grew quite as excited and enthusiastic as Margy. They worked hard to trim that tree.
"But it hasn't any lights," said Mun Bun sadly. "And that other Christmas tree had lights."
You see, he remembered very clearly about that. And when Mun Bun played he always wanted the play to be as real as possible.
"We'll get candles," declared Margy. "I saw candles in the kitchen house where that nice cook lives. Let's go and ask her."
But just as they were going to squeeze out of the low door of the little house they heard a great shouting and calling, and then suddenly the snapping of explosive crackers—fire crackers—began!
"Oh!" gasped Mun Bun. "Who's shootin'?"
"It'sfirecrackers. You know, we've had 'em before. And they are in a barrel," said Margy breathlessly.
Through the doorway of the little house inwhich they had set up the "Christmas tree" the two saw their brothers and sisters, the Armatage children, and a lot of the little negroes dancing about a barrel a little way down the hill. Margy was right. Into that barrel somebody had thrown a lighted bunch of firecrackers—about the safest way in which those noisy and delightful "snappers" can be exploded.
And what a noise they made! Mun Bun and Margy almost forgot their own play for the moment as they struggled to see which should first go out of the door of the little house. Getting in each other's way, they were delayed and before they could get out a great dog came bounding toward them.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" squealed Margy, and shrank back, leaving to Mun Bun the opportunity of getting out if he wanted to.
"I'm not afraid of that dog," said Mun Bun. But, just the same, he did not go out when he might have done so. "He isn't as big as Aunt Jo's Alexis, is he, Margy?"
"But we aren't acquainted with him like we were with Alexis," whispered the little girl.
She knew his name was Bobo. But alwaysbefore when she had seen him the great hound, with his flappy ears and wide mouth, had been chained.
"Do—do you suppose he'll want to bite us?" quavered Mun Bun, admitting now that he was afraid of the dog. "And what does he want here in our house, Margy?"
Margy suddenly remembered that when she had seen Bobo before he had been chained right at this little house. Maybe it was his house, although it was bigger than any doghouse she had ever seen before.
"We don't want him in here," cried Mun Bun. "There isn't any room for him." Then he cried to the big hound: "Go 'way! You'll spoil our Christmas tree."
The big hound came nearer, but more quietly. His eyes were red, and he sniffed enquiringly at the doorway while the children crowded back against the tree. Perhaps he was the very kindest dog in the world; but to Mun Bun and Margy he appeared to be dreadfully savage!
"Go 'way!" they shouted in chorus. And Mun Bun added again: "We don't want him in here, do we, Margy?"
The dog seemed determined to thrust himself into the house. Perhaps Bobo felt about Mun Bun and Margy as they did about him—that they had no right there, and he wanted them to get out. And when he put his great head and shoulders into the doorway the little Bunkers began to shriek at the top of their voices.
Even the snapping firecrackers could not drown their voices now. Russ and Rose heard the cries coming from the doghouse, and they knew Mun Bun and Margy were in trouble. They saw Bobo, who had been with them to the swamp, seemingly stuck half way in the doorway of his kennel, and Russ cried:
"I guess that's where they are. Hear 'em, Rose? Come on, save Mun Bun and Margy."
"I'm afraid of that hound," replied Rose, but she followed her brother just the same.
Russ shouted to the dog. The hound backed out and looked around at Russ Bunker. But his red eyes did not scare the boy.
"We're coming, Mun Bun!" Russ shouted. "We're coming, Margy!"
The two little ones appeared at the door of the kennel. They were not crying much, butthey had tight hold of each other's hands.
"Russ! Rose!" cried Margy. "Take us out."
"What are you doing in that dog's kennel?" demanded Rose.
"Playing Christmas," said Margy, with quivering voice.
"I guess it isn't Christmas," said Mun Bun doubtfully. "I guess it's Fourth of July. Isn't it, Russ? They don't have shooters only on the Fourth of July."
"They do down here," said Russ, reaching the kennel and looking in while Bobo stood by as though he still wondered why Mun Bun and Margy had tried to turn him out of his house.
Just then one of the colored men, who was a gardener, came along and stooped to look into the kennel too.
"For de lan's sake!" he cried, "what you childern doin' in dat dog kennel?"
"We—we were playing Christmas tree," said Margy, grabbing hold of Rose's hand.
"For de lan's sake!" repeated the man, showing the whites of his eyes in a most astonishing way. "What dat in dere?"
"That's our Christmas tree," said Mun Bun, very bravely now.
"For de lan's sake!" ejaculated the man for a third time. "What Mistah Armatage gwine to say now? Dat's his bestest rubber plant what he tol' me to take partic'lar care of. What will you lil'w'ite childern be up to next, I'm a-wondering?"
"Why, Mun Bun!" murmured Russ.
"Why, Margy Bunker!" exclaimed Rose.
Mun Bun was staring with all his eyes (and he had two very bright ones) at the rubber plant. He did not consider the mischief he had done. He was as curious as Vi could possibly have been about an entirely different thing.
"If that's a rubber plant, Russ," he demanded, "where's the rubbers? I don't see any overshoes on it. What part of it is rubber?"
At that the black man threw back his head and laughed loudly. The children all watched his open mouth and rolling eyes and flashing teeth and finally they broke into laughter too. They could not help it.
"But," said Russ, after they had stopped laughing, "I am afraid Mr. Armatage will be angry with us."
"I dunno—I dunno, chile," said the negro, shaking his head. "He sure is partic'lar 'bout dat rubber plant. But mebbe I can repot it and fix it up all right. It's only just been uprooted, and I was gwine to change de dirt in dat tub, anyway."
"Oh! Do you think you can do it and save Mun Bun and Margy from getting a scolding?" Rose cried.
"We'll see, lil' Miss. Shouldn't wonder," and the gardener went to work at once.
Meanwhile Bobo sat on his haunches and mournfully looked at what was going on. His red eyes had a very sad expression and his drooping ears made him look, so Rose said, more mournful still.
"He looks as if he'd just come from a funeral," she said to Russ.
"What's that?" demanded Margy promptly.
But Rose and Russ dodged that question. In fact they did not know how to explain just what a funeral was. But in watching the gardener replace the rubber plant in thegreen tub, surrounded with fresh earth from the green house, the little ones forgot everything else, even Bobo.
Bobo, just as soon as he could, went into his house and smelled all around and finally lay down, his muzzle sticking out of the door.
"He looks unhappy," Rose said. "I guess he thought he wasn't going to have any home at all when he saw you two in there with the rubber plant."
"It was a good Christmas tree," was Margy's only reply to this.
"But we didn't get the candles to light it up," Mun Bun rejoined, walking away hand in hand with Russ. "So how could it be a Christmas tree if there weren't any candles?"
As Christmas Day grew closer there was less work done and more play engaged in by everybody on the plantation. Christmas Eve there was a beautiful display of fireworks on the front lawn of the big house, and everybody from the quarters came to see it, as well as the white folks. Even Mammy June came up from her cabin by the stream, walking with difficulty, for she was lame, and sat in state on the porch "with de w'ite folks" to see the fireworks.
The old woman had taken a strong liking to the six little Bunkers and she made as much of them as she did of the three little Armatages. But the latter were not jealous at all. Phillis and Alice and Frane, Junior, were likewise delighted with the children from the North.
Christmas Day dawned brilliantly, and although there was what Mr. Armatage called "a tang" in the air it was so warm that it was hard for the Bunker children to realize that this was the day that they expected up North to be "white."
"A 'white Christmas' doesn't mean anything down here in Georgia," said Daddy Bunker. "Though once in a while they have a little snow here. But they never speak of it—not the natives. It is a sort of scandal in the family," and he laughed, looking at Mother Bunker, who understood him if the children did not.
But white or green, that Christmas Day was a delightful one. Even without a gaudily lighted and trimmed tree, the Bunkers were pleased in every way. Their presents werestacked with those belonging to the Armatage children under the chimneypiece in the big front parlor, and Mr. Armatage himself made the presentations.
There were presents from "all over" for the six little Bunkers; for no matter how far they were away from their many relatives and friends, the six were fondly remembered. Even Cowboy Jack sent gifts from Texas!
With the presents from Aunt Jo came a letter particularly addressed to the children. Russ read it aloud to them all. It gave news of William's neuralgia (Vi still insisted on calling it "croup") and about Annie and Parker. Even the Great Dane, Alexis, was mentioned. But the most important thing spoken of in the letter to the children's minds was the fact that Aunt Jo said she meant to keep Sam, the colored boy Mun Bun and Margy had introduced into her Back Bay home, all winter.
"The boy is really a treasure," said Aunt Jo. "He can do something besides dance—although he does plenty of that in the kitchen to the delight of Parker, Annie and William.He has been taught to work, and is really a very good houseboy. And he looks well in his uniform."
"I'd like to see him in a uniform," said Laddie. "Is he a soldier, or a policeman?"
"He's a 'buttons,'" replied Mother Bunker, laughing. "Aunt Jo has always wanted to have a boy in buttons to answer the door and clean the knives."
"I'd rather see him dance again," said Russ, and he slyly tried to cut that pigeon wing once more. But he made a dismal failure of it.
There was dancing in plenty at the negro quarters that Christmas evening. All the white folks went down from the big house to watch the proceedings. And again Mammy June was there.
There had been a great feast for the hands, but although one grinning negro boy confessed to Russ that he was "full o' tuck," he still could dance. This boy was applauded vigorously by his mates, and one of them called out:
"'Lias! show dese w'ite folks howtocut dat pigeon wing. Go on, boy!"
"Lawsy me!" exclaimed Mammy June, "don't none of you know how to do dat like my Sneezer. If he was here he'd show 'em. Just you dance plain, honey. Double shuffle's as much as you can do."
So her grandson, 'Lias, did not try any fancy steps. Privately, however, and much to Rose's amusement, Russ Bunker often tried to copy Sam's pigeon-wing step.
"If we ever go to Aunt Jo's again—and of course we shall—I am going to get Sam to show me how to do it. I'll get it perfect some time," sighed the oldest Bunker boy.
Vi, looking on at one of her brother's attempts, asked:
"Doesn't it hurt the pigeon to cut its wing?"
But that was a silly question, and they all laughed at her. Laddie grew suddenly excited.
"Oh! I know a new riddle!" he cried. "It's a good riddle!"
"What is it?" asked his twin sister.
"It isn't a good riddle just because you made it up, Laddie," said Rose.
"It would be a good one no matter who made it up," answered Laddie decidedly."You let me tell it. I know it's good."
"What is it, Laddie?" Russ Bunker asked.
"Here is the riddle," said Laddie eagerly. "What sort of wing has no feathers on it? And the answer is, of course, 'A pigeon wing.' There! Isn't that a fine riddle?"
"Pooh!" said Vi. "I don't think so."
"Some pigeons' wings have feathers," said Rose.
"Hoh!" cried Laddie, somewhat disturbed. "That one Russ was trying to make doesn't have any feathers on it."
"That's only one kind, and it isn't really a pigeon's wing, you know."
Laddie stared at his sister, Rose, with much doubt. "You're always disappointing me, Rose," he murmured.
"But Rose is right, Laddie," said Russ. "And there are other wings that have no feathers."
"What wings?" grumbled Laddie.
"I know!" cried Vi suddenly. "Airplane wings! They haven't any feathers."
"But they are no more like real wings," complained Rose, "than Russ's dancing step."
"No," said the oldest Bunker boy. "Imean bat's wings. Don't you remember that bat we caught that time? Its wings didn't have feathers at all. It was covered with fur."
"Oh, well," sighed Laddie. "Then my riddle isn't any good."
"Not much, I am afraid," said Russ kindly but firmly.
However, Laddie and the other little Bunkers did not have many disappointing things happen to them on this lovely Christmas Day. Mr. and Mrs. Armatage tried in every way to make the stay of their guests at the Meiggs Plantation as pleasant as possible.
After the celebration at the quarters the white folks came home, and there at the big house a fine party was soon under way. People had come in their cars from far and near and the house was brilliantly lighted on the first two floors.
The children were allowed to look on at this grown folks' party for a little while, then they had to go to bed. Phillis and Alice and Frane, Junior, seemed to consider it very hard that they were not allowed to stay downstairs; but the little Bunkers were used to havingtheir own good times and did not expect to enter into the amusements of their elders.
"Let's sit on the top step of these stairs," said Phillis to Rose and Alice, "and we can see through the balustrades. There's Mrs. Campron! She's got a lovely dress on, and diamonds."
Rose remained with the two Armatage girls for a little while and Russ saw to it that the little folks went to bed. Then he came out into the hall again to see what the girls were doing. Before he could ask them he chanced to look out of the back window at the end of the long hall.
"Oh!" cried Russ Bunker. "What is that?"
"What's what?" demanded Phillis. "What do you see?"
"Is it a shooting star?" went on Russ. "See that light! I believe it must be a fire."
The girls came running to join him then, more interested in what Russ saw than theywere in what was going on at the party below.