Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue Keeping Store Part 14

"Oh, dear!" sighed Sue. "Now after my dress is dry and I brush the mud off mother will see the red paint. Course I'd tell her, anyhow, but I wish she wouldn't see it first!"

However, there seemed no help for it. All three of the children had red paint on their clothes, and paint, you know, can't be brushed off. When it's on it stays, unless turpentine, or something like that, is used to take it off.

Sue, and the boys, too, had hoped that Mrs. Brown would not know what had happened. It wasn't that they wanted to deceive, or fool, her, but Sue wanted to tell of the accident at the brook in her own way and time.

She really did not want to cause her mother worry when Mrs. Brown had company. And Mrs. Brown would certainly begin to ask questions when she saw those red spots on Sue's dress.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Sue again, and she seemed about to burst into tears.

Neither Bunny nor Charlie knew what to do.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Sue for the third time.

Suddenly the three children saw the upper end of the ladder--the part that was raised up over the roof of the sun parlor. They saw this part of the ladder moving.

"Oh, somebody's coming up!" exclaimed Charlie.

"Maybe it's mother!" wailed Sue. "Oh, help me get in the window! I don't want her to see me this way!"

"Mother wouldn't be coming up the ladder!" declared Bunny. "What would she be coming up the ladder for?"

"That's so!" agreed Charlie. "I guess she wouldn't."

"But somebody's coming up!" declared Sue, and this was very plain to be seen. The ladder shook more and more.

Wonderingly the children watched it, and then there came into sight, above the roof of the sun parlor, the head and shoulders of the painter. He looked surprised as he saw the children, and then a cheerful smile spread over his face as he said:

"Well, you've been getting daubed up, I see!"

"Ye-yes," faltered Bunny. "We got some of your paint on us!"

"'Tisn't my paint!" laughed the painter. "It's your father's, Bunny. I got this paint down at his boat dock to paint the roof of this sun parlor. I don't mind how much of it you daub on yourselves. 'Tisn't my paint, you know!"

"But we don't want it on us!" exclaimed Sue. "Oh, I fell in the brook and I got all muddy and now I'm all covered with paint! Oh, dear!"

Sue was almost crying again, and the painter who at first had thought the children were merely playing, now began to understand that something was wrong.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

Then the story was told, of why the boys had helped Sue climb up the ladder to get into her room so her mother and the company would not see her in her soiled dress.

"But now we're all paint!" wailed Sue.

"Well, never mind!" said the good-natured painter. "I can take those paint spots out for you, if that's all you're worrying about."

"Oh, can you?" eagerly cried Sue.

"How?" asked Charlie Star, who was a rather curious little chap.

"Will you?" asked Bunny Brown, which was more to the point.

"I can and will!" said the painter. "Wait until I get some clean rags and my turpentine."

He want back down the ladder, but soon came up again, with a can of something with a strong, but not unpleasant smell. Bunny remembered that smell. Once when he was little, and had a bad cold, his mother had rubbed lard and turpentine on his chest.

"This turpentine will take the paint out when it's fresh," said the painter. "Stand still now."

He wet the rag in some turpentine, which, as you know, is the juice, or sap, of the pine and other trees. It is used to mix with paint, which it will dissolve, or melt away after a fashion. It also helps the paint to dry more quickly when spread on a house or bridge.

With the turpentine rag the painter rubbed at the red spots on Sue's dress, and then, having taken those out, he began on Bunny and Charlie.

But the boys wanted to take out their own paint spots, and the painter let them do it.

"There you are," he finally said. "I guess they won't show now."

"And my dress is nearly dry!" exclaimed Sue. "Oh, I'm so glad. Mother won't know until I tell her. And of course I'll tell her," she quickly added.

Sue was as good as her word. After she got into her room and the boys had climbed down the ladder to go back and play with Bunny's little ship, Sue changed into dry clothes.

Then, after the company had gone, she told her mother all that had happened.

"I suppose it couldn't be helped," said Mrs. Brown with a smile. "I mean about falling into the brook. But it would have been just as well to come and tell me at once, Sue, instead of climbing the ladder. You might have fallen."

"I didn't want the company to know about it, Mother!"

"That was thoughtful of you. But if you had fallen off the ladder the company would have known about that, and it would have been much worse than just being seen in a wet and muddy dress."

"Oh, I couldn't fall with Bunny and Charlie to help me!" declared Sue.

That evening, just before supper, after Charlie Star had gone home and Bunny and Sue were playing out in the side yard, Mary called to them, asking:

"Do you children want to run to the store for me?"

"Yes," answered Bunny, and Sue inquired:

"What do you want?"

"A little pepper," was the answer. "I forgot that we were out and didn't order any when the grocery boy called to-day."

"We'll get it at Mrs. Golden's corner store!" said Bunny. "She keeps pepper."

"All right," Mary agreed. "Wait and I'll get you the money. We don't charge things at her store."

A little later Bunny Brown and his sister Sue, hand in hand, entered Mrs. Golden's little store.

"Well, my dears, what is it to-day?" asked the old lady, with a smile.

"Some pepper, if you please," answered Sue.

"Red or black?" asked Mrs. Golden.

Bunny and Sue looked at one another. This was something they had not thought about. Which did Mary want--red or black?