Selected Works of Laura Lee Hope

"Oh, Bunny! Here comes Bunker Blue!" "Where is he? I don't see him!" Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue were playing on the shady side porch of their house one morning, when the little girl, looking up from a cracker box which had been made into a bedÑwhere she was putting her doll to sleepÑsaw a tall boy walking up the path. "There's Bunker!" went on Sue to her brother, Bunny, at the same time pointing. "Maybe he's come to take us for a ride in one of daddy's fishing boats!" "Have you, Bunker?" asked Bunny, standing up and brushing some shavings from his little jacket, for he had been using a dull kitchen knife, trying to whittle out a wooden boat from a piece of curtain stick. "Oh, Bunker, have you?" "Have I what?" asked the tall boy, who worked on the dock where Mr. Brown, the father of Bunny and Sue, carried on a boat and fish business. "Have I what?" Bunker asked again, and he stood still and gazed at the two small children who were anxiously looking at him. "Have you come to take us for a ride?" asked Bunny. "In one of daddy's boats?" added Sue, who generally waited for her brother to speak first, since he was a year older than she. "Not this time, messmates," answered Bunker Blue with a laugh, calling the children the name one sailor sometimes gives to another. "Not this time messmates. I've come up to get the ark." "Oh, the ark!" cried Bunny. "Did you hear that, Sue? Bunker has come up to get the ark!" "Oh! Oh!" and Sue fairly squealed in delight. "Then we'll have a nice ride in that. Wait, Bunker, till I put my doll away, and I'll come with you. Wait for me!" "And I'll come, too," added Bunny. "I can bring my boat with me. 'Tisn't all done yet," he added, "but I can whittle on it when we ride along, and then I can sail it when we get to the dock." "Now avast there and belay, messmates!" cried Bunker Blue with a laugh, using some more of the kind of talk he heard among the sailors that came to Mr. Brown's dock with boats of fish. "Wait a minute! I didn't say I had come to give you a ride in the ark. I just came to get it." "But you will let us ride, won't you, Bunker?" asked Bunny, smiling at the tall boy. "'Cause we'll sit just as still as anything," added Sue. "And I won't touch the steering wheelÑnot once!" promised Bunny. "I guess you'd better notÑnot after you once got almost run away with in the big ark," said Bunker. "I should say not!" "Oh, please let us come with you!" begged Sue. "We want awful much to ride in the ark, Bunker!" While the two children were talking to the tall boy another little girl had crawled under the fence from the street, and was now standing near Bunny and his sister. She was Sadie West, one of Sue's chums, and when she heard Bunny's sister begging for a ride in the "ark" Sadie said: "Oh, Sue! is he going to take your Noah's ark away? I wouldn't let him if I were you!" "It isn't Noah's ark at all," Sue explained. "We call the big automobile, that we had such a long ride in, the ark. It looks a little like a Noah's ark, but it's bigger, and we can all get in it," she added. "Oh!" exclaimed Sadie. "I thought Bunker meant he was going to take your little ark, and all the wooden animals, away," she added. "Not this time," said Bunker Blue. "Your father sent me up, Bunny, to get the big autoÑthe ark, as you call it. It's got to be fixed, and I'm to drive it to the shop over at East Milford. That's why I came up. Where's your mother? I want to tell her I'm taking away the ark, so she won't think some tramps or some gypsies have run off with it." "I'll call her," Sue said, while Bunny kept on brushing the tiny whittlings from his jacket and short trousers. And there was a queer look on the face of Bunny Brown.