“I didn’t see her anywhere,” he reported, “and I called, but she didn’t answer.”
“Where can the child be?” cried Mrs. Bunker. “Norah, are you sure she isn’t in the house?”
“Positive. But I’ll take a look.”
Just then Russ cried:
“Here comes the expressman back again. Maybe he forgot some of the trunks!”
“No, he took them all,” said Mr. Bunker. “I don’t see——”
The express auto stopped in front of the Bunker house.
“Did you miss anything?” asked the man, laughing.
“Miss anything?” repeated the children’s father.
“Oh! Margy! We missed her!” said Mrs. Bunker.
“Well, I guess I’ve got her here on my truck,” went on the expressman, laughing some more.
“You have my little girl?” cried Mrs. Bunker, “How did she get into your auto?”
“That I don’t know,” the expressman said, “but here she is,” and he lifted out the big bundle loosely wrapped in an old blanket. The bundle had in it the things that wouldn’t go in the trunks. It was open at both ends, and tied with straps and ropes.
Out of one end stuck the dark, and now tangled, curls of Margy Bunker, and Margy was laughing.
“Oh, what a girl you are!” cried her mother. “How did you get in there, Margy?”
“I—I wiggled in,” was the answer, as the expressman carried the bundle, little Bunker and all, to the porch. “I wanted to get my rubber ball that was inside so I just wiggled in, I did.”
“Did you really find her in that bundle?” asked Mr. Bunker, as the expressman put it down on the porch, and Margy, with the help of her mother, “wiggled” out.
“Yes, she was in there,” was the man’s answer. “I loaded that bundle on last, I remember, because it was soft and I didn’t want to crush it with the heavy trunks. It’s a good thing I did, though I didn’t know there was a little girl inside.”
“How did you find out she was in there?” asked Mrs. Bunker.
“Well, I stopped my machine when I got down the street a way, to take on some more packages,” answered the expressman, “and I heard a funny sound. It was like a sneeze.”
“I did sneeze,” said Margy, while Norah was busy smoothing the wrinkles out of her dress. “Some dust got up my nose and I sneezed.”
“First I thought it was a little puppy dog, or a cat—sometimes people send animals by express,” explained the driver. “But when I looked back I saw a little girl’s head sticking out of the bundle, and I knew right away where she belonged. I thought you didn’t want to ship her as baggage or by express, so I brought her back as fast as I could.”
“I’m glad you did,” said Mrs. Bunker. “We couldn’t imagine where she had gone.”
“What did you do, Margy?” asked Russ.
“I—I just crawled inside the bundle,” replied the little girl “I ’membered I put my rubber ball inside, and I wanted it, so I wiggled inside. And when I got there I was so tired I went to sleep, I guess.”