SIX LITTLE BUNKERS ATFARMER JOEL’S
SIX LITTLE BUNKERS ATFARMER JOEL’S
“Margy, will you look out on the porch and see if she’s there?”
“Yes, Vi, I will. But you ought to say please to me, ’cause mother says——”
“All right then.Pleaselook and see if she’s there,” begged Vi, otherwise Violet Bunker. There were six of the little Bunkers. The other four will be out presently.
Margy, who had been looking at picture books with her year-older sister in a room off the porch, kindly dropped her book and started for the door.
“If she’s there bring her in—please.” Violet laughed a little as she added the last word.She remembered what Margy had started to say about politeness.
Violet was piling up the books, for she had just thought of something new to play, when Margy came hurrying back into the room.
“She isn’t there!” gasped the smaller Bunker girl.
“She isn’t?” Violet fairly gasped out the words, and you could easily tell that she was very much excited. “Are you sure, Margy?”
“No, she isn’t there, Vi! Maybe a tramp has taken her!”
“Oh!” cried Violet, in such a loud voice that Mrs. Bunker, having heard part of the talk, came quickly from the room where she had been sewing.
“Who’s gone?” demanded the mother of the six little Bunkers. “Don’t tell me Mun Bun is lost again!”
Mun Bun was the youngest of the six little Bunkers. His real name was Munroe Ford Bunker, but that was entirely too long for the little fellow, so he was called “Mun Bun.” It was a name he had made up for himself.
“Where is Mun Bun? Is he lost again?” asked Mrs. Bunker, starting to take off herapron to go in search of the “little tyke,” as she often called him, for he certainly did get into mischief very many times.
“Mun Bun isn’t lost,” answered Violet, as she hurried out on the porch with Margy. “He’s out in the yard with Laddie, digging a hole.”
“An’ he says he’s going to dig down to China,” added Margy.
“And I just put clean bloomers on him!” sighed Mrs. Bunker. “But who is gone?” she asked again. “It can’t be Rose or Russ—they’re too old to be taken by a tramp!”
There, now you have heard the names of all six of the little Bunkers, though Russ, being nearly ten, I think, wouldn’t like to be called “little.”
“No, it isn’t Russ or Rose,” said Margy. “I saw them going down the street. Maybe they’re going to daddy’s office to ask him for some money to buy candy.”
“Oh, they mustn’t do that!” exclaimed Mrs. Bunker. “This is the first of the month and daddy is very busy. They shouldn’t have gone there. Are you sure, Margy?”
“Oh, they didn’t zactlysaythey were goingthere,” announced Margy. “But I thought maybe——”
“You mustn’t tell things you aren’t sure of,” said her mother. “But who is——”
“Mother, why is daddy so busy the first of the month?” asked Vi, forgetting for the moment all about what she had sent Margy to look for. Violet Bunker was, as her father said, “a great girl for asking questions.” Her mother knew this, and, fearing that Vi would get started on a list of inquiries that would take some time to answer, Mrs. Bunker said:
“Now don’t begin that, Vi, dear. I’ll answer just this one question, but not any more. Your father is busy the first of the month more than at other times because tenants pay their rents then, and he collects the rents for a large number of people. That’s one thing a real estate dealer, like your father, does. Now, don’t ask another question!” she commanded, for she saw that Vi was getting ready, as Russ would say, “to spring another.”
“I wasn’t going to ask a question,” said Vi, looking a little hurt in her feelings. “I was going to say——”
“Wait until I find out what’s happened first,” broke in Mrs. Bunker. “Who is missing? It can’t be any of you, for you’re all present or accounted for, as they say in the army. Who is——”
“It’s Esmeralda!” exclaimed Violet. “I had her out on the porch playing with Margy. Then we went in to look at the picture books, and I forgot about Esmeralda and——”
“Russ says her name ought to be Measles ’cause she’s all spotted,” put in Margy, with a shake of her dark, tousled hair. “But it’s only spots of dirt.”
“Come on,” demanded Vi of Margy, taking her younger sister by the hand. “We’ve got to find Esmeralda!”
“Oh, it’s your doll!” remarked Mrs. Bunker, with a sigh of relief. “I thought one of you children was missing. I had quite a start. It’s only your doll. That’s different.”
“Esmeralda is mychild, even if she isonlyadoll,” and Vi marched away with Margy, her head held up proudly.
“Oh, my dear, I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t want to find your missing play child,” called Mrs. Bunker quickly, for sherealized that a little girl’s feelings might be hurt by a slighting remark about even a dirty and spotted doll. “I only meant that I was glad none of you children was missing. I’ll help you look for Esmeralda.”
“She isn’t out on the porch. I looked,” said Margy.
“We left her there, didn’t we?” asked Vi, for sometimes there was so much going on at the Bunker house that to remember where one of the many dolls or other playthings was left became a task.
“Yes, we left Esmeralda out on the porch,” agreed Margy. “But she isn’t there now. I looked. She’s—she’s gone!”
Margy felt almost as sad over the loss as did Vi, though Esmeralda, or “Measles,” as Russ called her, belonged particularly to Violet.
“Do you s’pose a tramp would take my doll, Mother?” asked Violet, for Mrs. Bunker was now walking toward the side porch with her two little girls.
“No, my dear, I don’t believe so,” was the answer. “What would a tramp want with a doll?”
This puzzled Vi for a moment, but she quickly had ready a reply.
“He—he might want to give her to his little girl,” Vi said.
“Tramps, as a rule, don’t have little girls,” remarked Mrs. Bunker. “If they had they wouldn’t be tramps.”
This gave Vi a chance to ask another question. Eagerly she had it ready.
“Why don’t tramps have little girls?” she inquired of her mother. “Do they run away? I mean do the little girls run away?”
“No, that isn’t the reason,” and Mrs. Bunker tried not to smile at Vi’s eagerness. “I’ll tell you about it some other time. But show me where you left your doll,” she added, as they reached the shady side porch. “Esmeralda certainly isn’t here,” for a look around showed no doll in sight.
“Oh, where can she be?” gasped Vi, now on the verge of tears. Margy, seeing how her sister was affected, was also getting ready to weep, but just then a merry whistle was heard around the corner of the house. It was the merry whistle of a happy boy.
“Here comes Russ!” exclaimed Violet, forshe knew her oldest brother’s habit of being tuneful. “He’ll help me look for Esmeralda.”
“Maybe he took her,” suggested Margy.
“No. If he did he wouldn’t be coming back whistling,” decided Vi.
Russ Bunker, next to his father the “man” of the family, swung around the path at the side of the house. Following him was Rose, his sister, a year younger, a pretty girl, with light, fluffy hair. And, very often, Rose had a merry song on her lips. But as Russ was now whistling Rose could not sing. She always said Russ whistled “out of tune,” but Russ declared it was her singing that was off key.
“Oh, Russ!” exclaimed his mother, “you didn’t go to daddy’s office and bother him to-day, did you, when it’s the first of the month? And he is so busy——”
“No, Mother, I wasn’t at daddy’s office,” Russ answered. “Rose and I just went to the store for some nails. I’m making a seesaw, and——”
“Oh, can I be on it?” begged Margy. “Ilove to teeter-totter! Please, Russ, can’t I——”
“I want a ride, too!” put in Vi.
“All right! All right!” agreed Russ, with a laugh. “You can all have rides—Mun Bun and Laddie too—as soon as I get it made. But it’s a lot of work and it’s got to be done right and——”
Russ paused. He could see that something was wrong, as he said afterward. Russ was a quick thinker. Also he was always making things about the house. These were mostly things with which to play and have a good time, though once he built a bench for his mother. The only trouble was that he didn’t make the legs strong enough, and when Norah O’Grady, the cook, set a tub of water on the bench the legs caved in and there was a “mess” in the kitchen.
“Has anything happened?” asked Russ, for he could see that his mother and his two small sisters had come out on the porch with some special idea in mind.
“Violet’s doll is gone,” explained Mrs. Bunker. “She left it on the porch, and shefeels sad over losing it. If you know anything about it, Russ——”
“You mean that old Measles doll?” asked the oldest Bunker boy, laughing.
“She hasn’t the measles at all—so there!” and Violet stamped her foot on the porch.
“Well, she looks so—all spotted,” added Russ, with another laugh. Then, as he saw that Violet was ready to cry and that Margy was going to follow with tears, Russ added: “I guess I know where your doll is. Henry Miller just told me——”
“Oh, did he take her?” cried Violet. “If he did I’ll never speak to him again and——”
“Now, wait a minute!” advised Russ. “You girls always get so excited! I didn’t say Henry took your doll. I just met him and he said he saw a dog running out of our yard with something in his mouth. Maybe it was the dog that took your doll, Violet.”
“Oh! Oh!” cried the little girl, and she was now sobbing in real earnest.
“Oh, the dog will eat up Esmeralda!” and Margy added her tears to those of Violet.
“I’ll go down the street and look for her,” quickly offered Russ. He was a kind boythat way. Of course he didn’t care for dolls, and he was anxious to start making the seesaw, nails for which he and Rose had gone after. But Russ was willing to give up his own pleasure to help his little sister.
“I’ll get your doll,” he said. “I guess that dog wouldn’t carry her far after he found out she wasn’t a bone or something good to eat.”
“She—she—she’s a nice doll, anyhow, so there!” sobbed Violet. “An’—an’ I—I want her!”
“I guess I can find her,” offered Russ. “Here, Rose, you hold the nails.”
Russ started on a run toward the front gate. Mrs. Bunker and the three girls followed. As yet Laddie and Mun Bun had not heard the excitement over the missing doll, for they were still in the back yard, “digging down to China.”
Russ reached the gate, looked down the road in the direction Henry Miller had told him the dog had run with something in its mouth, and then Russ cried:
“I see her! I see your doll, Vi! The dog dropped her in the street! I’ll get her for you.”
Russ started on the run toward a small object lying in the dust of the road. Before Russ could reach the doll a big automobile truck swung around the corner and came straight for poor Esmeralda.
“Oh, she’ll be run over!” screamed Violet. “My child!”
But Russ had also seen the truck and, knowing there would be little left of the doll if one of the heavy wheels went over her, he ran a little faster and darted directly in front of the big lumbering, thundering automobile.
“Russ! Russ! Be careful!” called his mother.
“Look out there, youngster!” yelled the man who was driving the truck.
On came the heavy automobile, bearing down on Russ who was now in the middle of the street, stooping over to pick up Esmeralda.