Six little Bunkers at farmer Joel's

Before his father could stop him Russ had run out on the porch. Laddie, too, left his seat and started after his brother.

“Charles!” exclaimed Mrs. Bunker, “are you going to let them go after that boy? He’s big and might hurt them!”

“I guess Russ and Laddie together are a match for that mean little peddler,” answered Mr. Bunker. “But perhaps I’d better trail along after them to see that they don’t get hurt,” he added, getting up. “I hardly believe, however, that they can catch that peddler. He must be a long way off by this time.”

The two oldest Bunker boys were already out in the road, looking up and down for a sight of the shoe-lace peddler.

“Which way do you think he went, Russ?” asked Laddie.

“I don’t know,” was the answer, for the boy who it was thought had taken Rose’s strawberry shortcake was not in sight. “But here comes a man driving a team,” Russ went on. “We’ll ask him if he saw this peddler down the road.”

A neighboring farmer who was known to Russ and Laddie just then approached Farmer Joel’s house. Mr. Bunker, who was slowly following his two sons, heard Russ ask:

“Did you see anything of a shoe-lace peddler down the road, Mr. Harper?”

“A shoe-lace peddler?” repeated Mr. Harper. “Um, let me see now. Yes, I did pass a boy with a pack on his back down by the white bridge,” he answered.

“That’s the fellow!” exclaimed Russ. “Come on, Laddie!”

“Charles,” said Mrs. Bunker, following her husband out to the front gate, the other little Bunkers trailing along behind, “do you really think you ought to let them go?”

“I don’t see any harm in it,” he answered. “In the first place, I don’t believe Russ and Laddie will catch that boy. But if they do, I’ll follow along to see that he doesn’t harm them.”

“And if you need help call on us!” chuckled Farmer Joel, as he and Adam North began to do the night chores around the place. Farmer Joel called it “doing his chores,” when he locked the barn, saw that the hen-house was fastened, and got in kindling for the morning fire.

“Oh, I guess there’ll be no trouble,” said Mr. Bunker.

Rose came hurrying out toward the front gate, running ahead of her father.

“Where are you going, Rose?” he asked her. “I’m going with Russ and Laddie,” she answered.

“Oh, no, Rose,” said Mrs. Bunker. “I don’t believe I would.”

“Yes, please!” pleaded Rose. “It was my shortcake that peddler boy took, and I want to bring it back. Please let me go!”

She seemed so much in earnest about it, and looked so disappointed when her mother had spoken of keeping her back, that Daddy Bunker said:

“All right, run along. But don’t get hurt. Your mother and I will come along after you.”

So it was that Russ, Laddie, and Rose hurried down the country road after the peddler who it was suspected had taken the cake. Trailing after them, but coming more slowly, were Mr. and Mrs. Bunker and the other little Bunkers.

“What shall we do to him, Russ, when we catch him?” asked Rose, as she jogged along beside her older brother.

“I’ll ask him for the cake, that’s what I’ll do.”

“And if he doesn’t give it up?”

“Then—then—I—I’ll thump him!” exclaimed Russ, doubling up his fists.

“And I’ll help,” offered Laddie excitedly.

“We-ell, perhaps,” said Rose doubtfully. It sounded to her a little too boastful.

The white bridge which Mr. Harper had spoken of was about half a mile down the road from Farmer Joel’s place, and soon after making a turn in the highway Russ, Rose, and Laddie saw the structure.

“I see some one fishing off the bridge,” remarked Russ. “Maybe it’s that boy.”

As the three Bunkers came nearer they could see a boy sitting on the bridge railing, holding a pole from which a line was dangling in the water that flowed under the bridge. And when the children drew a little nearer they could make out that the fisher was the shoe-lace peddler boy.

Almost at the same time that they recognized him, the boy knew them, and he sprang down from the bridge railing, began winding up his line and started to pick up his box and basket.

“Here, you! Wait a minute!” ordered Russ.

“I don’t have to wait!” sneered the peddler. “There’s no fish here, so why should I wait?”

“You’ve got something that we want!” went on Rose, drawing nearer with Russ, while Laddie began looking about for a club or a stone.

“You said you didn’t want anything,” grumbled the peddler. “I was up by your house, and you wouldn’t buy any shoe laces nor collar buttons yet, so why should it be you come running after me now?”

“Because you have my shortcake!” burst out Rose indignantly. “You took my strawberry shortcake and I want it back.”

“I should have taken your shortcake, little girl?” cried the boy, as if greatly surprised. “You are mistaken! Why should you say I have your shortcake?”

“Because you were the only one around the house after the shortcake was set in the pantry window to cool,” said Russ boldly. “And my father saw your footprints under the window.”

“And my father’s coming, and so is my mother, and if you don’t give my sister back her cake they’ll have you arrested!” threatened Laddie.

“Oh, your father and mother—they is coming, are they?” asked the boy, who did not speak very good English. He was not quite so bold and defiant as at first.

“Yes, they’re coming,” said Russ, looking over his shoulder down the road. “But if you give up the shortcake there won’t be any trouble.”

“Why should I have your cake?” cried the boy. “Look you and see—it is not in mine pockets!” He turned one or two pockets inside out as he stood on the bridge.

“Pooh! Just as if you could put my big strawberry shortcake in your pocket!” scoffed Rose.

“It’s in your box or your basket, that’s where it is!” declared Laddie. And then another thought came to him as he added: “Unless you’ve eaten it!”

“Oh!” cried Rose, in distress at the thought of her good strawberry shortcake having been eaten by the shoe-lace peddler.

“I should eat your cake? No! No!” cried the boy, raising his hand in the air over his head.

“Well, I’m going to have a look in your basket!” threatened Russ, walking toward the place on the bridge where the peddler boy had set down the things in which he carried his wares.

“Don’t you touch my basket!” yelled the peddler. “If you open it I shall a blow give you on the nose!”

He said it in such a funny, excited way that Rose had to laugh, and Russ said:

“I can give you a hit on the nose, too!”

“You don’t dast!” sneered the peddler.

“Yes, I dare!” insisted Russ.

“And I’ll help him!” added Laddie, who had found a stick.

The peddler boy, who was almost a head taller than Russ, closed his fists and was walking toward the three Bunker children. Rose felt her heart beating very fast. She looked back down the road and saw her father and mother coming, followed by Margy, Mun Bun, and Violet.

“Oh, here come daddy and mother!” cried Rose.

Instantly a change came over the peddler boy. His fists unclenched and he smiled in a sickly, frightened sort of way.

“Oh, well, maybe your shortcake did get in my box by mistake,” he said. “I takes me a look and see.”

Quickly he opened his box, and there, wrapped in a clean paper, was the strawberry shortcake Rose had made.

“Oh!” cried the little girl, in delight. “Oh, my shortcake has come back!”

“Huh! I thought you said you didn’t have it!” exclaimed Russ, as the peddler lad lifted out the cake and handed it to Rose.

“Well, maybe I make a mistake and forget,” said the other.

“Huh, I guess you forgot on purpose!” declared Laddie.

By this time Mr. and Mrs. Bunker had come up. They saw that Rose had her shortcake again.

“Look here, young man,” said Mr. Bunker sternly to the peddler, “you mustn’t go about the country stealing things, you know! You may land in jail if you try that again.”

“It was all a mistake, I tell you!” said the shoe-lace peddler, who was really older in experience than a boy of his years should have been. “It was a mistake.”

“What do you mean—a mistake?” asked Mr. Bunker.

“Well, I saw the shortcake on the window, and I thought maybe it was to be thrown away, so I picked it up. I didn’t know anybody wanted it.”

“Well, you know now,” said Mr. Bunker grimly. “And you had better not try any more tricks like that. Are you sure you didn’t take anything more by mistake?”

“No, I take nothing more,” answered the boy sullenly, as he fastened his box again, and, slinging that and his basket of wares over his shoulder, away he walked. He was quite angry at being caught, it appeared.

“Oh, I’m so glad I got my shortcake back!” cried Rose. “Now we can eat it when we get back to the house.”

“Do you think it was kept clean?” asked her mother.

But they need not have worried on that score. Whatever else he was, the peddler boy seemed clean, and he had wrapped a clean paper about the short cake before putting it in his box. To be sure some of the strawberries on top were crushed and a little of their red juice had run down the sides of the cake.

“But that doesn’t matter, ’cause we got to smash it a lot more when we eat it,” said Laddie.

Which, of course, was perfectly true.

So Rose’s shortcake came back to Farmer Joel’s and they sat down to the table again and ate it. Dessert was a little late that evening, but it was liked none the less.

“Busy day to-morrow, children!” said Farmer Joel, as the six little Bunkers went up to bed.

“What doing?” asked Russ.

“Getting in the hay!” was the answer. “Those who can’t help can ride on the hay wagon.”

There were whoops of delight from the six little Bunkers.

“Could I drive the horses?” asked Russ.

“Well, we’ll see about that,” answered Farmer Joel slowly.

“I want to ride on the rake that makes the hay into heaps like Eskimo houses,” announced Laddie.

“You’d better not do that,” his mother said. “You might fall off and get raked up with the hay.”

“I’ll look after them, and so will Adam North!” chuckled Farmer Joel. “So to bed now, all of you. Up bright and early! We must get the hay in before it rains!”