Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Playing Circus | Page 3

she found she was not quite tall enough.
"I'll get it for you," offered Bunny, kindly.
He got the peach for Sue, and she began to eat it.
"Oh, Bunny!" she cried. "It's a lovely sweet one. I hope you get a nice one."
"I will," Bunny said. Then as he looked at his sister he cried: "Oh, Sue! The juice is running all down your chin on your dress."
"Oh-oh-o-o-o!" said Sue, as she looked at the peach juice on her dress. "Oh-o-o-o!"
"Never mind," remarked Bunny. "We can wash it off in the brook."
"Yes," said Sue, and she went on eating her peach. "We'll wash it."
Bunny was looking up into the tree for a peach for himself. He wanted to get the biggest and reddest one he could find.
"Oh, I see a great big one!" Bunny cried, as he walked all around the tree.
"Where is it?" asked Sue. "I want a big one, Bunny."
"I'll get you another one. I see two," and Bunny pointed to them up in the tree.
"You can't reach 'em," asserted Sue. "They're too high, Bunny."
"I--I can climb the tree," said the little boy. "I can climb the tree and get them."
"You'll fall," Sue said.
"No, I won't, Sue. You just watch me."
The peach tree was a low one, with branches close to the ground. And, as Bunny Brown said, he did know a little bit about climbing. He found a box in the orchard, and, by standing on this he got up into the tree.
Up and up he went, higher and higher until he was almost within reach of the two peaches he wanted. Grandpa Brown was busy picking peaches at a tree farther off, and did not see the children.
"Look out, Sue. I'm going to drop a peach down to you," called Bunny from up in the tree.
"I'll look out," said Sue. "I'll hold up my dress, and you can drop the peach in that. Then it won't squash on the ground."
She stood under the tree, looking up toward her brother. Bunny reached for one of the two big, red peaches, but he did not pick it. Something else happened.
A branch on which the little boy was standing suddenly broke, and down he fell. He turned over, almost like a clown doing a somersault in the circus, and the next moment Bunny's two feet caught between two other branches, and there he hung, upside down, his head pointing to the ground.
CHAPTER II
LET'S HAVE A CIRCUS!
"Bunny! Bunny! What are you doing?" cried Sue, as she saw her brother hanging, head down, in such a funny way from the peach tree branches. "Don't do that, Bunny! You'll get hurt!"
"I--I didn't mean to do it!" cried Bunny, and his voice sounded very strange, coming from his mouth upside down as it was. Sue did not know whether to laugh or cry.
"Oh, Bunny! Bunny, is you playing circus?" she asked.
"No--no! I'm not playing circus!" and Bunny wiggled, and wiggled again, trying to get his feet loose. Both of them were caught between two branches of the peach tree where the limbs grew close together.
And it is a good thing that Bunny could not get his feet loose just then, or he would have wiggled himself to the ground, and he might have been badly hurt, for he would have fallen on his head.
"Oh, Bunny! Bunny! You is playing circus!" cried Sue again. She had finished her first peach, and now, dropping the stone, from which she had been sucking the last, sweet bits of pulp, she stood looking at her brother, dangling from the tree.
"No, I'm not playing circus!" and Bunny's voice sounded now as though he was just ready to cry. "Run and tell grandpa to help me down, Sue!" he begged. "I--I'm choking--I can't hardly breathe, Sue! Run for grandpa!"
Bunny was almost choking, and his face, tanned as it was from the sun and wind, was red now--almost as red as the boiled lobster, the hollow claw of which Bunny once put over his nose to make himself look like Mr. Punch, of the Punch and Judy show. For when boys, or girls either, hang by their feet, with their heads upside down, all the blood seems to run there if they hang too long. And that was what was happening to Bunny Brown.
"Are you sure you isn't playin' circus?" asked Sue.
"No--I--I'm not playing," answered Bunny. "Hurry for grandpa! Oh, how my head hurts!"
"You look just like the circus man," said Sue. For one of the men in the circus Bunny and Sue had seen a few days before had hung by his toes from a trapeze, upside down, just as Bunny was hanging, with his head pointing toward the ground, and his feet near the top of the tent.
But of course the circus man was used to it, and it did