It was now time for bread and jam, and Sue and Bunny were soon eating it on the shady back porch.  Mother Brown told them, just as their grandpa had done, to keep away from the well, and they said they would.

Bunny and Sue then went wading in the brook until dinner time.  And then they had a little sleep in the hammocks in the shade, under the apple tree.

“What shall we do now, Bunny!” asked Sue when she awoke from her little nap, and saw her brother looking over at her from his hammock.  Sue always wanted to be doing something, and so did Bunny.  “What can we do?” asked the little brown-eyed girl.

“Let’s go out to the barn again,” said Bunny.  “Maybe Bunker Blue, or Ben, is out there now, making some more circus things.”

But when Bunny and Sue reached the place where they were going to have their show in a few weeks, they saw neither of the big boys.  They did see something that interested them, though.

This was the hired man who, with a big pot of green paint, was painting the wheelbarrow.

“Hello, Henry!” exclaimed Bunny to the man, who was working in the shade at one side of the barn.

“Hello, Bunny!” answered Henry.  “How are you this afternoon?”

“Good.  How is yourself?”

“Oh, fine.”

Henry went on putting green paint on the wheelbarrow.  Then Bunny said: 

“I couldn’t do that; could I, Henry?  I mean you wouldn’t let me paint; would you?”

“No, Bunny.  I’m afraid not.  You’d get it all over your clothes.  I couldn’t let you.”

“I—­I thought you couldn’t,” returned Bunny with a sigh.  “But I just asked, you know, Henry.”

“Yes,” said the hired man with a smile.  “I know.  But you’d better go off and play somewhere else.”

It was more fun, though, for Bunny Brown and his sister Sue to watch Henry paint, and they stood there for some time.  Finally the hired man stopped painting.

“Guess I’ll go and get a drink of water,” he said, putting the brush in the pot of green paint.  “Now don’t touch the wheelbarrow.”

“We won’t!” promised Bunny and Sue.

Just then, inside the barn, there sounded a loud: 

“Baa-a-a-a-a!”

“What’s that, Bunny?” asked Sue.

“One of the new little calves.  Want to see them?”

Of course Sue did, and soon she and Bunny were petting one of the calves.  They were in little pens, by themselves, near the mother cows, and the children could reach over the sides of the pens, inside the barn, and pat the little animals.

All at once Bunny cried: 

“Oh, Sue.  I know what we can do!”

“What?” she asked.

“We can stripe a calf green, with the green paint, and we’ll have a zebra for our circus.”

“What’s a zebra?” Sue wanted to know.

“It’s a striped horse.  They have ’em in all circuses.  We’ll make one for ours.”