Six Little Bunkers at Cowboy Jacks | Page 2

of lightning, followed by a grumble of thunder.
"Oh! just like a bad, bad dog," gasped Vi, not a little frightened by the noise. "I--I am afraid of thunder."
"I'm not," declared Laddie, her twin.
But perhaps, because he was a boy, he thought he must claim more courage than he really felt. At any rate, he winced a little, too, and drew back from the window.
"Maybe we'd better go back to Captain Ben's house--and mother," suggested Margy in a wee small voice.
"W'ew!" lisped Mun Bun, the littlest Bunker, once more, but quite as bravely as before. Like Laddie (whose name really was Fillmore), Mun Bun wished to claim all the courage a boy should show.
"I guess we can't go back while it rains like this," said Russ, the oldest of the six.
"And Captain Ben thought it would maybe clear up and not rain any more, so we came," announced Rose. "Oh! There goes another thunder stroke."
The rumble of thunder seemed nearer.
"I guess," Russ said soberly, "that Norah or Jerry Simms would call this the clearing-up shower."
"But Norah and Jerry Simms aren't here," Vi reminded him. "Are they?"
"That doesn't make any difference. It can be the clearing-up shower of this equinox, just the same."
"Can it?" asked Vi.
She was always asking questions, and she asked so many that it was quite impossible to answer them all, so, for the most part, nobody tried to answer her. And this was one of the times when nobody answered Vi.
"We'd better keep on playing," Rose said, very sensibly. "Then we won't bother 'bout the thunder strokes."
"It is lightning," objected Russ. "I don't mind the thunder. Thunder is only a noise."
"I don't care," said Rose, "it's the thunder that scares you---- Oh! Hear it?"
"Does the thunder hit you?" asked Vi.
"Why, nothing is going to hit us," Russ replied bravely, realizing that he must soothe any fears felt by his younger brothers and sisters. Russ was nine, and Daddy Bunker and mother expected him to set a good example to Rose and Laddie and Violet and Margy and Munroe Ford Bunker, who, when he was very little, had named himself "Mun Bun."
"Just the same," whispered Rose in a very small voice, and in Russ's ear, "I wish we hadn't come over from Captain Ben's bungalow this morning when it looked like the rain had all stopped."
"Pooh!" said Russ, still bravely, "it thunders over there just as it does here, Rose Bunker."
Of course that was so, and Rose knew it. But nothing seemed quite so bad when daddy and mother were close at hand.
"Let's play again," she said, with a little sigh.
"What'll we play?" asked Violet. "Haven't we played everything there is?"
"I s'pose we have--some time or other," Rose admitted.
"No, we haven't," interposed Russ, who was of an inventive mind. "There are always new plays to make up."
"Just like making up riddles," agreed Laddie. "I guess I could make up a riddle about this old storm--if only the thunder wouldn't make so much noise. I can't think riddles when it thunders."
The thunder seemed to shake the house. The rain dashed against the windows harder than ever. And there were places in the roof of this attic where the water began to trickle through and drop upon the floor.
"Oh!" cried Mun Bun, on whose head a drop fell. "It's leaking! I don't like a leaky house. Let's go home, Rose."
"Do you want to go home to Pineville, Mun Bun?" shouted Russ, for he could not make his voice heard by the others just then without shouting.
"Well, no. But I'd rather be at that other house where mother is--and daddy," proclaimed the smallest boy when the noise of the thunder had again passed.
"I tell you," said Russ soberly, "we'd better go downstairs and play something till the thunder stops."
"What shall we play?" asked Vi again.
"I'll build an automobile and take you all to ride," said the oldest boy confidently.
"Oh, Russ! You can't!" gasped Rose.
"A real automobile like the one that we rode down here in from Pineville?" asked Laddie, opening his eyes very wide.
"Well, no--not just like that," admitted Russ. "But we'll have some fun with it and we won't bother about the thunder."
Rose looked a bit doubtful over that statement. But she knew it was her duty to help the younger children forget their fears. She started down the steep stairs behind Russ. Laddie and Margy came next, while Vi was helping short-legged little Mun Bun to reach the stairway.
And it was just then that the very awful "thunder stroke" came. It seemed to burst right over the roof, and the flash of lightning that came with it almost blinded the children. There was even a smell of sulphur--just like matches. Only it was a bigger smell than any sulphur match could make.
The children's cries were drowned by the crash outside.