Six Little Bunkers at Mammy Junes | Page 3

two----"
"I never said it the way you did," began Rose, quite put out, when Laddie began to clamor:
"Tell me my riddle! You can't--none of you. 'What is it that's so easy to catch but nobody runs after?'"
"I don't know, Laddie," said Rose.
"I give it up," said Russ.
"Do you all give it up?" cried Laddie, almost dancing in his glee.
"What is it?" asked Vi.
"Why, the thing that's so easy to catch but nobody runs after, is a cold!" announced her twin very proudly.
"And I'm so-o cold," announced Mun Bun, hanging to Rose's skirt while the older ones laughed with Laddie. "Don't Aunt Jo ever have it warm in her house--like it is at home?"
"Of course she does, Mun Bun," said Rose, quickly hugging the little fellow. "But poor William is sick and nobody knows how to tend to the heating plant as well as he does. And so--Why, Russ, Mun Bun is cold! His hands are like ice."
"And so are my hands!" cried Margy, running hastily from the window. "We've been trying to catch the snowflakes through the windowpane."
"No wonder your hands are cold," said Rose admonishingly.
Russ began to cast about in his ingenious mind for some means of getting the younger children's attention off the discomfort of a room the temperature of which was down to sixty. In one corner were two stacks of sectional bookcases which Aunt Jo had just bought, but which had no books in them and no glass fronts. Russ considered them for a moment, and then looked all about the room.
"I tell you what," he said, slowly. "You know when they took us to the Sportsman's Show last week at Mechanic's Hall? Don't you remember about that Eskimo igloo that they had built of ice in the middle of the skating pond? Let's build an igloo like that, and get into it and keep warm."
"O-oo!" gasped Vi, "how can you do that?"
"Where will you get any ice?" Laddie demanded.
"Goodness! it's cold enough in here without bringing in ice," announced Rose with confidence.
"We won't build the igloo of ice blocks," said Russ quite calmly. "But we'll make believe it is ice."
"I'd rather do that," Laddie agreed. "For make-believe ice can't be so wet and cold as real ice, can it?"
"What you going to make your make-believe ice out of, Russ?" demanded Vi, the exceedingly practical.
Russ at once set them all to work, clearing the middle of the room and bringing up hassocks and small benches and some other articles that could be used in the construction of the indoor igloo. He brought the sections of the new bookcase, one piece at a time.
Russ really exhibited some skill in building up the walls of the hut in the middle of the floor. When it was completed it was rather a tight fit for all six of the little Bunkers to squeeze inside, but they did it. And the activities of building the igloo had warmed even Mun Bun.
"You know," said Rose thoughtfully, "Eskimos live in these igloos and eat blubber, and don't go out at all while it is snowing, same as it does now."
"Why don't they go out?" asked Vi.
"Because it is cold," said Russ.
"And why do they eat blubber?"
"Because they are hungry," said Rose.
"What's blubber, anyway?" asked the inquisitive one. "Is it like candy?"
"It's more like candles," answered Russ, laughing.
Just then Laddie kicked excitedly.
"I bet I can make another riddle!" he cried.
"Now, you see, Russ Bunker?" Rose admonished. "Laddie has got that word, too."
"Hey, stop kicking, Laddie!" cried Russ.
But in his excitement the boy twin had put his foot right through the wall of the igloo! At least, he had kicked one of the boxes out of place and the whole structure began to wobble.
"Oh! Oh! Oh!" shrieked Vi. "It's falling."
"Get Mun Bun out," gasped Rose, thinking first of all of the littlest Bunker.
But just then the heaped up boxes came down with a crash and the six little Bunkers were buried under the ruins of their "igloo."
CHAPTER II
THE SNOWMAN
A corner of one of the overturned bookcase sections struck Russ Bunker's head with considerable force--actually cutting the skin and bringing blood. Big as he was, the oldest Bunker yelled loudly.
Then, of course, everybody yelled. Quite a panic followed. When Aunt Jo and Mother Bunker came running to the front room where all this had taken place the Eskimo igloo looked very much like a pile of boxes with a young earthquake at work beneath it!
"For the good land's sake!" gasped Aunt Jo, who usually was very particular about her speech, but who on this occasion was startled into an exclamation. "What is happening?"
"Get off my head, Vi!" wailed Laddie, from somewhere under the tottering pile. "It's not to sit on."
"Oh! Oh!" cried Rose. "Russ is all bloody! Oh, dear!"
"I'm not cold any more," cried Mun