“Sleeping out?” said Sue.  She did not just know what Bunny meant.

“Yes, sleeping out,” said the little boy again.  “Sleeping out in this tent, I mean.  We’ll have to do it, if we go to camp, and we might as well have some practice, you know.”

Bunny and Sue knew what “practice” meant, for a girl whom they knew took music lessons, and she had to go in and practice playing on the piano every day.

Bunny thought that if you had to practice, or try over and over again, before you could play the piano, you might have to practice, or try, sleeping out of doors in a tent.

“How can we do it?” asked Sue.

“It’s easy,” Bunny answered.  “We’ll bring our blankets out here and sleep in the tent to-night.”

“Maybe daddy and mother won’t let us, Bunny.”

“They won’t care,” said the little boy. “’Sides, they won’t know it.  We won’t tell ’em.  We’ll just come out at night, when they’ve gone to sleep.  We can slip down, out of our rooms, with our blankets, and sleep in the tent on the ground, just as we’ll have to do in camp.  ’Cause we mayn’t always have cot beds there.  Will you do it, Sue?”

“Course I will, Bunny Brown!”

Sue nearly always did what Bunny wanted her to.  This time she was sure it would be lots of fun.

“All right,” Bunny went on.  “To-night, after it gets all dark, we’ll come down, and sleep here.”

“S’pose—­s’posin’ I get to sleep in my own bed in the house, Bunny?”

“Oh, I’ll wake you up,” said Bunny.  “I won’t go to sleep, and I’ll come in and tickle your feet.”

Sue laughed.  She always laughed when anyone tickled her feet, and even the thought of it made her giggle.

“Don’t tickle ’em too hard, Bunny,” she said. “’Cause if you do I’ll sneeze and that will wake up daddy and mother.”

“I won’t tickle you too hard,” Bunny said.

That night, after supper, Mrs. Brown said to her husband: 

“Bunny and Sue are up to some trick, I know they are!”

“What makes you think so?” asked Mr. Brown.

“Oh, I can always tell.  They are so quiet now, they haven’t teased for anything all afternoon, and now they are getting ready to go to bed, though it isn’t within a half-hour of their time.”

“Oh, maybe they’re sleepy,” said Mr. Brown, who was reading the paper.

“No, I’m sure they are up to some trick,” said Mother Brown.

And now, if you please, just you wait and see whether or not she was right.

Bunny Brown and his sister Sue did go to bed earlier than usual that night.  Bunny, after supper, had whispered to his sister: 

“If we go to bed sooner we can be awake quicker and go down to the tent.”

“Can you open the door?” asked Sue.

“Yes, the back door opens easy.”

“But has you got the branches from the evergreen tree cut so we can spread our blankets over them?” Sue wanted to know.