Six Little Bunkers at Mammy Junes | Page 2

Vi's gray eyes snapped she was so vexed. "Aunt Jo said that a window got broke in--in the neu-ral-gi-a and William had to drive a long way yesterday and the wind blew on him and he got the croup."
"Was that the way of it?" said Laddie, thoughtfully. "Wait a minute, Vi. I've most got it----"
"You're not going to have the croup!" declared his twin. "You never had it! But I have had the croup, and I didn't catch it the way William did."
"No-o," admitted Laddie. "But--but I'm catching a new riddle if you'd only wait a minute for me to get it straight."
"Pooh!" said Vi. "Who cares anything about your old riddle? Br-r-r! it's cold in this room. Maybe we'll all get the croup if we can't have a better fire."
"It isn't the croup you mean, Vi," put in Rose again, but without stopping to explain to her smaller sister where and how she was wrong about William's illness.
"Say, Russ, why don't the steampipes hum any more?" broke in the voice of Margy, the next to the very littlest Bunker, who was playing with that latter very important person at one of the great windows overlooking the street.
Russ chuckled. He had just put the very last crooked piece of the puzzle into place.
"You don't expect to see humming birds in winter, do you, Margy?" he asked.
"Just the same, winter is the time for steampipes to hum," said Rose, shivering a little. "Oh! See! It's beginning to snow!"
"So 'tis," cried Russ, who was the oldest of the six. "Supposing it should be a blizzard, Rose Bunker?"
"S'posing it should!" repeated his sister, quite as much excited as Russ was at such a prospect.
"Buzzards fly and eat dead things. We saw 'em in Texas at Cowboy Jack's," announced Laddie, forgetting his riddle-making for the moment.
"That is right, Laddie," agreed Rose kindly. "But we're not talking about buzzards, but about blizzards. Blizzards are big snowstorms--bigger than you ever remember, I guess."
"Oh!" said Laddie doubtfully. "Were we talking about--about blizzards?"
"No, we weren't!" exclaimed Vi, almost stamping her foot. "We were talking about William's croup----"
"He hasn't got the croup, I tell you, Vi," Rose said wearily.
"He has. Aunt Jo----"
"In the first place," interrupted Rose quite decidedly, "only children have croup. It isn't a grown-up disease."
This announcement silenced even Violet for the moment. She stared at her older sister, round-eyed.
"Do--do diseases have to grow up, too?" she finally gasped.
"Oh, dear me, Vi Bunker!" exclaimed Rose, "I wish you didn't ask so many questions."
"Why not?" promptly inquired the smaller girl.
"We-ell, it's so hard to answer them," Rose frankly admitted. "Diseases don't grow up, I guess, but folks grow up and leave diseases like croup, and measles, and chicken-pox, behind them."
"And cut fingers and bumps?" asked Laddie, who had almost forgotten the riddle about William's croup that he was striving to make.
But Vi did not forget the croup. One could trust Vi never to forget anything about which she once set out to gather information.
"But how did William catch the croup through a broken window in the neu-ral-gi-a?" she demanded. "When I had croup I got my feet wet first."
"He hasn't got the croup!" Rose cried again, while Russ began to laugh heartily.
"Oh, Vi!" Russ said, "you got it twisted. William caught cold driving Aunt Jo's coupé with the window broken in it. He's got neuralgia from that."
"And isn't there any croup about it?" Laddie demanded rather sadly. "Then I'll have to start making my riddle all over again."
"Will that be awful hard to do, Laddie?" asked his twin. "Why! making riddles must be worse than having neu-ral-gi-a--or croup."
"Well, it's harder," sighed her brother. "It's easy to catch--Oh! Oh! Russ! Rose! I got it!"
"You haven't neuralgia, like poor William," announced Rose with confidence.
"Listen!" announced the glowing Laddie. "What is it that's so easy to catch but nobody runs after?"
"Huh! is that a riddle?" asked Russ.
"Course it's a riddle."
"A wubber ball," guessed Mun Bun, coming from the window against the panes of which the snow was now beating rapidly.
"No," Laddie said.
"A coupé!" exclaimed Violet.
"Huh! No!" said her twin in disdain.
Margy asked if he meant a kittie. She had been chasing one all over the house that morning while Russ and Rose had been to market with their aunt, and she did not think a kitten easy to catch at all.
"'Tisn't anything with a tail or claws," crowed the delighted Laddie.
"I bet it's that neuralgia William's got," laughed Russ.
"No-o. It isn't just that," his smaller brother said.
"And you'd better not say 'bet,' Russ Bunker," advised Rose wisely. "You know Aunt Jo says that's not nice."
"You just said it," Russ rejoined, grinning. "Twice."
"Oh, I never did!" cried his sister.
"Didn't you just say I'd 'better not say bet?'" demanded Russ. "Well, then count 'em! 'Bet' out of 'better' is one, and 'bet' makes