Six little Bunkers at farmer Joel's

“Margy, will you look out on the porch and see if she’s there?”

“Yes, Vi, I will. But you ought to say please to me, ’cause mother says——”

“All right then. Please look and see if she’s there,” begged Vi, otherwise Violet Bunker. There were six of the little Bunkers. The other four will be out presently.

Margy, who had been looking at picture books with her year-older sister in a room off the porch, kindly dropped her book and started for the door.

“If she’s there bring her in—_please_.” Violet laughed a little as she added the last word. She remembered what Margy had started to say about politeness.

Violet was piling up the books, for she had just thought of something new to play, when Margy came hurrying back into the room.

“She isn’t there!” gasped the smaller Bunker girl.

“She isn’t?” Violet fairly gasped out the words, and you could easily tell that she was very much excited. “Are you sure, Margy?”

“No, she isn’t there, Vi! Maybe a tramp has taken her!”

“Oh!” cried Violet, in such a loud voice that Mrs. Bunker, having heard part of the talk, came quickly from the room where she had been sewing.

“Who’s gone?” demanded the mother of the six little Bunkers. “Don’t tell me Mun Bun is lost again!”

Mun Bun was the youngest of the six little Bunkers. His real name was Munroe Ford Bunker, but that was entirely too long for the little fellow, so he was called “Mun Bun.” It was a name he had made up for himself.

“Where is Mun Bun? Is he lost again?” asked Mrs. Bunker, starting to take off her apron to go in search of the “little tyke,” as she often called him, for he certainly did get into mischief very many times.

“Mun Bun isn’t lost,” answered Violet, as she hurried out on the porch with Margy. “He’s out in the yard with Laddie, digging a hole.”

“An’ he says he’s going to dig down to China,” added Margy.

“And I just put clean bloomers on him!” sighed Mrs. Bunker. “But who is gone?” she asked again. “It can’t be Rose or Russ—they’re too old to be taken by a tramp!”

There, now you have heard the names of all six of the little Bunkers, though Russ, being nearly ten, I think, wouldn’t like to be called “little.”

“No, it isn’t Russ or Rose,” said Margy. “I saw them going down the street. Maybe they’re going to daddy’s office to ask him for some money to buy candy.”

“Oh, they mustn’t do that!” exclaimed Mrs. Bunker. “This is the first of the month and daddy is very busy. They shouldn’t have gone there. Are you sure, Margy?”

“Oh, they didn’t zactly say they were going there,” announced Margy. “But I thought maybe——”

“You mustn’t tell things you aren’t sure of,” said her mother. “But who is——”

“Mother, why is daddy so busy the first of the month?” asked Vi, forgetting for the moment all about what she had sent Margy to look for. Violet Bunker was, as her father said, “a great girl for asking questions.” Her mother knew this, and, fearing that Vi would get started on a list of inquiries that would take some time to answer, Mrs. Bunker said:

“Now don’t begin that, Vi, dear. I’ll answer just this one question, but not any more. Your father is busy the first of the month more than at other times because tenants pay their rents then, and he collects the rents for a large number of people. That’s one thing a real estate dealer, like your father, does. Now, don’t ask another question!” she commanded, for she saw that Vi was getting ready, as Russ would say, “to spring another.”

“I wasn’t going to ask a question,” said Vi, looking a little hurt in her feelings. “I was going to say——”

“Wait until I find out what’s happened first,” broke in Mrs. Bunker. “Who is missing? It can’t be any of you, for you’re all present or accounted for, as they say in the army. Who is——”

“It’s Esmeralda!” exclaimed Violet. “I had her out on the porch playing with Margy. Then we went in to look at the picture books, and I forgot about Esmeralda and——”

“Russ says her name ought to be Measles ’cause she’s all spotted,” put in Margy, with a shake of her dark, tousled hair. “But it’s only spots of dirt.”

“Come on,” demanded Vi of Margy, taking her younger sister by the hand. “We’ve got to find Esmeralda!”

“Oh, it’s your doll!” remarked Mrs. Bunker, with a sigh of relief. “I thought one of you children was missing. I had quite a start. It’s only your doll. That’s different.”

“Esmeralda is my child, even if she is only a doll,” and Vi marched away with Margy, her head held up proudly.

“Oh, my dear, I didn’t mean that you shouldn’t want to find your missing play child,” called Mrs. Bunker quickly, for she realized that a little girl’s feelings might be hurt by a slighting remark about even a dirty and spotted doll. “I only meant that I was glad none of you children was missing. I’ll help you look for Esmeralda.”

“She isn’t out on the porch. I looked,” said Margy.

“We left her there, didn’t we?” asked Vi, for sometimes there was so much going on at the Bunker house that to remember where one of the many dolls or other playthings was left became a task.

“Yes, we left Esmeralda out on the porch,” agreed Margy. “But she isn’t there now. I looked. She’s—she’s gone!”

Margy felt almost as sad over the loss as did Vi, though Esmeralda, or “Measles,” as Russ called her, belonged particularly to Violet.

“Do you s’pose a tramp would take my doll, Mother?” asked Violet, for Mrs. Bunker was now walking toward the side porch with her two little girls.

“No, my dear, I don’t believe so,” was the answer. “What would a tramp want with a doll?”

This puzzled Vi for a moment, but she quickly had ready a reply.

“He—he might want to give her to his little girl,” Vi said.

“Tramps, as a rule, don’t have little girls,” remarked Mrs. Bunker. “If they had they wouldn’t be tramps.”