Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue in the Sunny South | Page 5

stop to tell them what it's for, or
Bunny may smother."
"Oh, no'm, I guess he won't," Charlie said, as he dug away with the
little shovel that Sue had been using. "When I was under the snow I
could breathe all I wanted to."
Mrs. Brown said she was glad to hear this, but, for all that, she dug as
fast as she could with the other small shovel, and Uncle Tad, using the
one with the broken handle, did the best he could.
Helen and Sue hurried next door to see if they could borrow a broad
wooden shovel, but before they returned Uncle Tad had managed to dig

down through the pile of snow until he reached the ground and the side
of the house foundation--the upper part of the cellar wall.
"Why, Bunny isn't here!" cried Uncle Tad, in great surprise.
"Isn't he?" asked the little boy's mother, looking over Uncle Tad's
shoulder down into the hole in the snow pile.
"There isn't a sign of him," went on the soldier. "Are you sure you saw
him get covered from sight here?" he asked Charlie.
"It was right here," answered Bunny's chum. "He was rolling a
snowball to make a hat for the man when down the snow slid off the
roof. It covered Bunny and the snowball he was rolling."
"Oh, we must hurry!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown, now growing very
anxious. "He surely will be smothered, under the snow all this while!"
She began to dig again with the small shovel, and Uncle Tad was doing
his best with the broken one when Sue and Helen, coming around the
corner with a large shovel which they had borrowed next door, gave a
sudden cry.
"What is it?" asked Mrs. Brown.
"There's Bunny now!" exclaimed Sue. "Look!"
They all looked, and, surely enough, Bunny was coming up the outside
steps of the cellar. He walked up as if nothing had happened.
"Bunny Brown! what trick is this?" exclaimed his mother. "What made
you pretend to be buried under all that snow and give us such a fright
for, when you weren't there at all?"
"But I was there, Mother," Bunny said. "I was under the snow."
"Then how did you get out?" Uncle Tad asked. "It surely looks like a
trick, Bunny Brown."

CHAPTER III
ORANGE BLOSSOMS
Bunny Brown walked from the cellarway over to where his mother,
Uncle Tad, his sister, and his playmates stood. Uncle Tad and Mother
Brown looked rather reproachfully at the little boy. They really thought
he had played a joke on them, or at least that he had caused the other
children to do so, sending them to cry that he was buried under the
snow.
But Sue, Charlie, and Helen knew that Bunny had really been covered
from sight under the snow. They knew there was no trick about it,
though they did not know how it was Bunny appeared as if coming out
of the cellar when he should have been under the snow.
"I didn't play any trick, Mother. Really I didn't," said Bunny earnestly.
He had played tricks in times past, but his mother knew he always told
the truth.
"Were you really under that pile of snow?" asked the old soldier.
"Yes, Uncle Tad, I was," Bunny answered. "The snow came down off
the roof and covered me all up."
"Then why didn't I find you there when I dug all the way down to the
ground and the cellar wall?" asked Uncle Tad.
"Because," answered Bunny, with a queer little smile on his rosy face,
"when the snow piled on top of me, and knocked me down, I was right
close by a cellar window. First I didn't know what to do. Then I saw the
window, and I pushed on it, and it opened.
"I went through the window into the cellar. There was a box under the
window inside the cellar, and I got on that and then I jumped off down
to the floor.
"First I couldn't see anything, 'cause it was so dark there, but I could

after a while, and I come out by the door."
"Oh, Bunny!" exclaimed his mother. "We never thought of the cellar
windows! Of course I see how it could happen," she said to Uncle Tad.
"The pile of snow does cover a window."
She pointed toward one end of the big pile under which Bunny had
been hidden. This end did, indeed, cover one of the low cellar windows,
and when the snow was shoveled away it could be seen where the little
boy had scrambled through.
"Say, it was lucky the cellar window wasn't fastened," said Charlie.
"It surely was!" agreed Bunny. "I was glad when it opened."
"I didn't know we had left any