Six Little Bunkers at Mammy Junes | Page 3

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 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