CHAPTER XXIIIA MEAN BOY
Rose dropped her bunch of wild flowers and ran toward her brother. As for Russ, he hardly knew what to do. He, also, had heard the buzzing, rattling sound and he had heard stories of how poisonous rattlesnakes are.
“Don’t let him get me! Don’t let the snake bite me!” Rose cried.
“I don’t see any snake,” Russ answered, looking down in the grass. His mother and the other children were some distance off.
“I don’t see it, but I heard it,” Rose exclaimed, very much excited.
Then Russ heard again the queer sound and at once it came to his mind what it was. He had often heard it before, back in Pineville on hot, summer days—just such a day as this was—toward the end of the season.
“That isn’t a rattlesnake, Rose,” said Russ. “Don’t be a baby!”
“What was it then?” she asked. “It sounded just like a rattlesnake. I mean like I think one would sound, for I never saw any.”
“It was a locust,” answered Russ. “I guess it’s on this tree,” and he pointed to one near which they had been gathering flowers. “Yes, it’s on this tree, I see it!” he added, as the sound came again. “Come and watch how funny it does it, Rose. It jiggles itself all over.”
“Are you sure it isn’t a snake?” she asked.
“Of course I am!” said Russ. “Why, I’m looking right now at the locust. It’s low down. I never saw one so low. Most always when they sing out like that they’re high in the trees. Come quick, before it flies away.”
Rose came over to Russ’s side. She looked to where he pointed and saw a curious winged insect that, just as Rose arrived, began to give forth its queer song. And, as Russ said, the locust seemed to “jiggle” all over. Its wings and legs trembled with the force of the noise it made.
“Will it bite?” asked Rose.
“I don’t know,” Russ answered. “I’m not going to put my finger near enough to find out. I heard Farmer Joel say the locusts ate up most of his garden one year, so I guess they must bite some things. Anyhow, it isn’t a rattlesnake.”
“I’m glad of it,” answered Rose, with a breath of relief, as she picked up her scattered wild flowers.
“Is anything the matter over there?” called Mrs. Bunker, as she saw Rose and Russ moving about the tree.
“Rose thought she heard a rattlesnake, but it wasn’t,” Russ laughed.
“What was it?” Violet wanted to know.
“A locust,” Russ replied, and then all the children wanted to see the insect, watching it vibrate itself on a tree and make that queer sound.
“I wonder what he would do if I tickled him?” said Laddie. And when he tried it, gently pushing the locust with a small twig, the insect quickly flew away.
“I guess there are no rattlesnakes around here,” said Mrs. Bunker, when the excitementhad died away. “Now go on with your flower-gathering, children. We must get some fine bouquets for Farmer Joel.”
The wild flowers made a grand display in the Sunday-school room of the church, which was decorated with them for the annual festival. The six little Bunkers attended for a short time and had lots of fun.
Mun Bun spilled his dish of ice cream in the lap of a lady next to whom he was sitting, and Margy tipped over her glass of lemonade, letting it run down the neck of her dress. This so excited her that she cried:
“Oh, I’m getting drowned! I’m getting drowned!” But of course she wasn’t. It made some excitement, though.
The lady in whose lap Mun Bun spilled the ice cream was very kind about it. She said it was a last year’s dress, anyhow, and now she would have a good reason for getting a new one.
When the six little Bunkers went home from the church festival Laddie tried to make up a riddle about Margy’s getting wet with the lemonade.
“I want to make a riddle about her but Ican’t think just how to do it,” said the little fellow to Russ.
“Why not ask, When is Margy like a goldfish?” Russ suggested.
“What would the answer be?” inquired Laddie.
“Oh, you could say when she tried to swim in lemonade,” replied Russ.
“I guess I will,” decided Laddie, and he had that for a new riddle, though it was not as clever as some he had thought up all by himself.
There were many happy days spent in the woods and fields about Farmer Joel’s by the six little Bunkers. Every morning when the children arose there was the prospect of happy times ahead of them. And nearly always these happy expectations came true. Even when it rained, as I have said, the children could play in the big barn on the pile of fragrant hay they had helped put in.
One fine day when Farmer Joel drove into town with Mr. and Mrs. Bunker, who wanted to do some shopping, the six little Bunkers were left in charge of Norah and Adam North.
Russ, Rose and the others played about the house and yard for a while, Russ putting some “improvements” as he called them, on his water wheel, and Rose helping Norah bake a cake.
Then Laddie and Violet, who had been playing with Mun Bun and Margy in the swing under the tree, came to the house asking:
“Can’t we go to the woods and have a picnic?”
“Oh, we couldn’t have a picnic without mother,” objected Rose.
“Just a little one,” begged Violet. “Couldn’t you give us a few cookies, or something like that, Norah? We could go off to the woods, near the place where we picked the wild flowers, and eat there.”
“Yes, you may do that,” Norah agreed, for she liked the children to have fun. “You had better go with them, though, Rose and Russ,” said the faithful cook.
“Oh, yes, we’ll go,” promised Rose.
A little later, with small boxes and baskets of a simple lunch, the six little Bunkers set off for the woods once more. They werelaughing, singing, and shouting, having a fine time, and they had no idea that there would be trouble.
Russ found a place where a little spring bubbled up, and it was decided they would eat their lunch there when the time came, as, from past experience, Russ knew the children would be thirsty as soon as they had eaten. And nothing so spoils a picnic in the woods as not being able to get a drink of water when you need it.
Rose and Russ put the lunch away on top of a stump and then the smaller children began playing about under the trees. Rose had brought along a partly finished dress for one of her dolls, and she was sewing on this, while Russ cut a stick and began to make a whistle.
“Though I’m not sure I can make it,” he said, puckering up his own lips to send forth a shrill tune.
“Why not?” asked Laddie.
“Well, the bark doesn’t peel off so well now as it does in the spring,” Russ answered. “But maybe if I pound it long enough I can slip it off.”
An hour or more passed pleasantly, the childrenbusy at their different means of having fun, and then Mun Bun came toward Rose, saying:
“I’m hungry now. I want to eat.”
“So do I!” added Margy, who generally wanted to do whatever she heard Mun Bun say he wanted to do.
“Well, I think we can have lunch,” decided Rose. “Ho, Russ!” she called.
A loud whistle answered her, for Russ had succeeded in stripping the bark from a tree branch and had whittled out a whistle that was louder than the one formed by his lips.
“Come, we’re going to eat!” called Rose, and soon all six little Bunkers were walking toward the stump where the lunch had been left.
But when they reached it—the lunch was gone!
“Who took it?” demanded Rose.
“I didn’t! You needn’t look at me!” declared Laddie quickly. He sometimes did play jokes like this—if you call them jokes.
“Are you sure we left it on this stump?” asked Russ.
“Of course I’m sure,” said Rose. “Look,you can see some of the crumbs. Oh, Russ, some one has eaten the lunch!”
“Maybe it was a bear!” suggested Violet, with a little shiver of mixed delight and fear.
“There are no bears here,” Russ replied impatiently.
“Then maybe it was a squirrel,” suggested Laddie.
“A squirrel couldn’t carry away the boxes, baskets, and everything!” declared Rose.
Suddenly, from behind the bushes, came a chuckle in a boy’s voice. At first Russ thought perhaps Ralph Watson and his dog Jimsie had come along, and that Ralph had hidden the lunch for fun. But a moment later the ugly face of the peddler boy looked out from the bushes.
“I took your lunch!” he said. “I ate it! I ate it all up!”