Six Little Bunkers at Mammy Junes | Page 8

of an auction room, Mother Bunker said.
She had returned with Margie and the boys. They thought it better--at
least, the adults did--to leave Sam in the kitchen with Parker and Annie,
the maid.
"But I hate to see that boy go away from here in this storm," said
kind-hearted Aunt Jo. "Perhaps what he says about us Boston people in
comparison with those where he comes from, is true. The police do
arrest people for begging."
"Well, we have tramps at Pineville," Mother Bunker observed. "But the
constable doesn't often arrest any. Not if they behave themselves. But a
city is different. And this boy did not know how to ask for help, of
course. Don't you think you can be of help to him, Jo?"
"I'll see," said Aunt Jo. "Wait until he has had a chance to eat what
Parker has fixed for him."
Just then Annie, the parlormaid, tapped on the door.
"Please'm," she said to Aunt Jo, "that colored boy is goin' down in the

cellar to fix the furnace."
"To fix the furnace?" cried Aunt Jo.
"Yes'm. He says he has taken care of a furnace before. He's been up
North here for 'most two years. But he lost his job last month and
couldn't find another."
"The poor boy," murmured Mother Bunker.
"Yes'm," said Annie. "And when he heard that the house was cold
because me nor Parker didn't know what to do about the furnace, and
the fire was most out, he said he'd fix it. So he's down there now with
Parker and Alexis."
"Did Alexis come home?" cried Russ, who was very fond, as were all
the Bunker children, of Aunt Jo's great Dane. "Can't we go down and
see Alexis?"
"And see Sam again," said Margy. "Me and Mun Bun found him, you
know."
It seemed to the little girl as though the colored boy had been quite
taken away from her and from Mun Bun. They had what Mother
Bunker laughingly called "prior rights" in Sam.
"Well, if he is a handy boy like that," said Aunt Jo, referring to the
colored boy, "and can fix the furnace, we shall just have to keep him
until William is well again. Has he finished his dinner, Annie?"
"Not yet, Ma'am. And indeed he was hungry. He ate like a wolf. But
when he heard about us all being beat by that furnace, down he went.
There! He's shaking the grate now. You can hear him. He said the ashes
had to be taken out from under the grate or the fire never would burn.
Yes'm."
"Well, then," said Mother Bunker, "you children will have to wait to
see Sam--and Alexis--until he has finished eating."

"Annie," said Aunt Jo quickly, before the girl could go, "how does
Alexis act toward this boy?"
"Oh, Ma'am! Alexis just snuffed of him, and then put his head in his
lap. Alexis says he's all right. And for a black person," added the
parlormaid, "I do think the boy's all right, Ma'am."
She went out and Aunt Jo and Mother Bunker laughed. The youngsters
were suddenly excited at that moment by the stopping of a taxicab at
the door. Vi had spied it from the window, for hard as it snowed she
could see that.
"Here's Daddy! Here's Daddy!" she cried, dancing up and down.
Mun Bun and Margy joined in the dance, while the other three children
entered upon a whirlwind rush down the stairway to meet Mr. Bunker
at the front entrance.
He came in, covered with snow, and with his traveling bag. The
children's charge upon him would surely have overturned anybody but
Daddy Bunker.
"I scarcely dare come home at all," he shouted up the stairway to his
wife and Aunt Jo, "because of these young Indians. You would think
they were after my very life, if you didn't know that it was my pockets
they want to search."
He shook off the clinging snow and the clinging children until he had
removed his overcoat. Russ grabbed up the bag, and Rose and Laddie
each captured an arm and were fairly carried upstairs by Mr. Bunker.
He landed breathless and laughing with them in the middle of the big
room which Aunt Jo had given up to the six little Bunkers as their
playroom while they visited here in her Back Bay home.
"What is the news, Charles?" asked Mother Bunker, almost as eagerly
as the children themselves might have asked the question.
"I've got to see Armatage personally--that is all there is about it, and

Frank Armatage cannot come North."
"Then you are going?" said his wife, and the children almost held their
several breaths to catch Daddy Bunker's reply.
Their father looked around upon the eager little faces. Then he glanced