Six Little Bunkers at Grandpa Ford's Part 29

"If it snows we can go coasting," said Russ.

"Well, it looks and feels like snow," said Grandpa Ford, who came in from the barn just then, having gone out to see that the horses and cows were all right.

The grown folks sat about the fire after supper, talking and telling stories while the children were asleep in their beds.

"Hark!" suddenly exclaimed Mrs. Bunker.

"What is it?" asked her husband.

"I thought I heard one of the children," she answered.

And just then, through the house, there sounded, as from some distance away, the rattle of a drum.

"Another queer noise!" exclaimed Grandma Ford in dismay. "What will happen next?"

CHAPTER XXI

MR. WHITE

Rattle and bang-bang and rattle sounded the noise of the drum in Grandpa Ford's house, and yet, as the grown folks downstairs in the sitting-room looked at one another, they could not imagine who was playing at soldier. And yet that is what it sounded like--children beating a drum.

"Are any of those little ones up?" asked Mother Bunker. "Could they have gotten out of their beds to beat a drum?"

"I didn't know they had a drum with them," said Daddy Bunker.

"They didn't bring any from home," returned his wife.

"There is an old drum up in the attic," said Grandpa Ford. "It used to belong to Mr. Ripley, I think. Could Russ or Laddie have gone up there and be beating that?"

"The noise has stopped now," remarked Grandma Ford. "Let's go up and see which of the six little Bunkers did it," and she smiled at Mrs. Bunker.

It took only a glance into the different rooms to show that all six of the little Bunkers were in bed. Margy and Mun Bun had not been awakened by the drumming or the talk, but the other four were now waiting with wide-open eyes to learn what had happened.

"There it goes again!" exclaimed Daddy Bunker.

Surely enough the rub-a-dub-dubbing sounded again, this time more loudly than before, because the grown folks were nearer the attic.

"We must see what it is," said Grandpa Ford.

"We surely must," at once agreed Daddy Bunker.

As he and Grandpa Ford started up the stairs to the attic the drumming noise stopped, and all was quiet when the two men went into the attic.

It was not dark, as Daddy Bunker took with him his electric flashlight, which he flashed into the different corners.

"Where is that drum you spoke of, Father?" he asked of Grandpa Ford.

"I don't see it now," was the answer. "It used to hang up on one of the rafters. But maybe the children took it down."

Daddy Bunker flashed his light to and fro.

"Here it is!" he cried, and he pointed to the drum standing up at one side of the big chimney, which was in the center of the attic. "The children did have it down, playing with it.

"But I don't see what would make it rattle," went on Daddy Bunker.

"Unless," he added, "a rat is flapping its tail against the drum."

The noise had stopped again, but, all of a sudden, as Grandpa Ford and Daddy Bunker stood looking at the drum, the rattle and rub-a-dub-dub broke out again, more loudly than before. The drum seemed to shake and tremble, so hard was it beaten.

"Who is doing it?" cried Grandpa Ford.

Daddy Bunker quickly stepped over where he could see the other side of the drum, which was in the dark. He leaned over, holding his flashlight close, and then he suddenly lifted into view a large, battered alarm clock, without a bell.

"This was beating the drum," he said.

"That?" cried Grandpa Ford. "How could that old alarm clock make it sound as if soldiers were coming?"

"Very easily," answered Daddy Bunker. "See, the bell is off the clock, and the hammer, or striker, sticks out. This is shaped like a little ball, and it stood close against the head of the drum.

"I suppose the children wound the clock up when they were playing with it up here and when it went off the striker beat against the head of the drum and played a regular tattoo."

"Yes, I can see how that might happen," replied Grandpa Ford. "But what made the drum beat sometimes and not at others. Why didn't the alarm clock keep on tapping the drum all the while?"

"Because," said Daddy Bunker, as the clock began to shake and tremble in his hand, "this is one of those alarm clocks that ring for a half minute or so, and then stop, then, in a few minutes, ring again. That is so when a person falls asleep, after the first or second alarm, the third or fourth may awaken him.

"And that's what happened this time. The old alarm clock went off and beat the drum. Then when we started to find out what it was all about, the clock stopped. Then it went off again."

"Another time Mr. Ghost fooled us," said Grandma Ford, when her husband and son came down from the attic.

"Did any of you children have the alarm clock?" asked Mother Bunker, for the four oldest Bunkers were still awake.

"I was playing with it," said Russ. "I was going to make a toy automobile out of it, but it wouldn't work."

"I had it after him, and I wound it up and left it by the drum," said Laddie. "But I didn't think it would go off."

But that is just what happened. Laddie had set the clock to go off at a certain hour, not knowing that he had done so. And he had put it down on the attic floor so the bell-striker was against the head of the drum.

"Well, it's a good thing it didn't go off in the very middle of the night, when we were all asleep," said Mother Bunker. "We surely would have thought an army of soldiers was marching past."

"And it wasn't any ghost at all!" exclaimed Rose, as the grown folks turned to go downstairs.

"No, and there never will be," said her mother. "All noises have something real back of them--even that funny groaning noise we heard."

"But we don't know what that is, yet," said Russ.

"Go to sleep now," urged his mother, and soon the awakened four of the six little Bunkers were slumbering again.