“Mother, if we can’t go out to the barn, could we have our dog, Splash, in here to play with us?” asked Bunny, after a while.  “We could hitch him to a chair, and make believe it was an express wagon.”

“Oh, yes!” cried Sue.  “And you could be the driver, Bunny, and you could leave a package at my house—­make believe, you know—­and then I wouldn’t know what was in it, and I could guess, and you could guess.  We could play a guessing game; will you, Bunny?”

“Yes, I’ll play that.  May we have Splash in, Mother?”

“No, dear.”

“Oh, why not?”

“Because I just saw Splash splashing through a puddle of muddy water.  If he came in now he’d get you all dirty and he would spoil my carpet.”

“But what can we do, Mother?” Sue asked, and her voice sounded almost as if she were going to cry.

“We want to do something,” added Bunny.

“Oh, dear!” sighed Mrs. Brown, yet she could not help smiling.  Rainy days were hard when two children had to stay in the house all the while.

“We can play ’spress wagon without Splash!” exclaimed Sue, for she was a good little girl, and did not want to make her mother worry.

“All right,” agreed Bunny.  “We’ll just make believe we have Splash with us to pull the pretend wagon.”

He and Sue often played pretend, and make-believe, games, and they had much fun this way.  Now they turned one chair on the side, and put another in front.  The turned-over chair was to be the wagon, and the other chair, standing on its four legs, was the horse.  Bunny got some string for reins, and the stick the washerwoman used to punch the clothes down in the boiler made a good whip, when another piece of string was tied on the end of that.

“Giddap!” cried Bunny, sitting on a stool behind the chair-horse.  “Giddap!  This is an express wagon, and we’ve got to hurry.”

“You must leave a package for me!” cried Sue.  “This is my house, over on the couch,” and she curled up in a lump.  “And this is my little girl,” she went on, pointing to one of her dolls, which she had taken into her “house” with her.  “If I’m asleep—­make-believe, you know,” said Sue to Bunny, “you tell my little girl to wake me up.”

“Pooh!  I can’t talk to a doll!” cried Bunny.

“Yes, you can, too,” said his sister.  “Just pretend, you know.”

“Well, even if I do, how can your doll talk to you, and wake you up?”

“Oh, Bunny!  I’m only going to be make-believe asleep, and of course a doll, who can pretend to talk, can make-believe wake me up as easy as anything, when I’m only make-believe asleep.”

“Oh, all right, if it’s only make-believe,” agreed Bunny.  “Giddap, Splash!  I’ve named the make-believe chair-horse the same as our dog,” he explained to Sue.

Then the game began, and the children played nicely for some time, giving Mrs. Brown a chance to finish her sewing.  Bunny and Sue took turns driving the “express wagon,” and they had left many pretend bundles at each other’s houses, when a step was heard in the front hall, and Bunny and Sue cried: