“I—­I didn’t mean to do it!” cried Bunny, and his voice sounded very strange, coming from his mouth upside down as it was.  Sue did not know whether to laugh or cry.

“Oh, Bunny!  Bunny, is you playing circus?” she asked.

“No—­no!  I’m not playing circus!” and Bunny wiggled, and wiggled again, trying to get his feet loose.  Both of them were caught between two branches of the peach tree where the limbs grew close together.

And it is a good thing that Bunny could not get his feet loose just then, or he would have wiggled himself to the ground, and he might have been badly hurt, for he would have fallen on his head.

“Oh, Bunny!  Bunny!  You is playing circus!” cried Sue again.  She had finished her first peach, and now, dropping the stone, from which she had been sucking the last, sweet bits of pulp, she stood looking at her brother, dangling from the tree.

“No, I’m not playing circus!” and Bunny’s voice sounded now as though he was just ready to cry.  “Run and tell grandpa to help me down, Sue!” he begged.  “I—­I’m choking—­I can’t hardly breathe, Sue!  Run for grandpa!”

Bunny was almost choking, and his face, tanned as it was from the sun and wind, was red now—­almost as red as the boiled lobster, the hollow claw of which Bunny once put over his nose to make himself look like Mr. Punch, of the Punch and Judy show.  For when boys, or girls either, hang by their feet, with their heads upside down, all the blood seems to run there if they hang too long.  And that was what was happening to Bunny Brown.

“Are you sure you isn’t playin’ circus?” asked Sue.

“No—­I—­I’m not playing,” answered Bunny.  “Hurry for grandpa!  Oh, how my head hurts!”

“You look just like the circus man,” said Sue.  For one of the men in the circus Bunny and Sue had seen a few days before had hung by his toes from a trapeze, upside down, just as Bunny was hanging, with his head pointing toward the ground, and his feet near the top of the tent.

But of course the circus man was used to it, and it did not hurt his head as it did Bunny’s.

“Hurry, Sue!” begged the little boy.

“All right.  I’ll get grandpa,” Sue cried, as she ran off toward the tree where Grandpa Brown was picking peaches.

“Oh, Grandpa!” cried the little girl.  “Come—­come hurry up.  Bunny—­Bunny—­he——­”

Sue was so out of breath, from having run so fast, and from trying to talk so fast, that she could hardly speak.  But Grandpa Brown knew something was the matter.

“What is it, Sue?” he asked.  “What has happened to Bunny?  Did a bee sting him?”

“No, Grandpa.  But he—­he’s like the circus man, only he says he isn’t playin’ he is a circus.  He’s upside down in the tree, and he’s a wigglin’ an’ a wogglin’ an’ he can’t get down, an’ his face is all red an’ he wants you, an’—­an’——­”

“My goodness me!” exclaimed Grandpa Brown, setting on the ground his basket, now half full of peaches.  “What is that boy up to now?”