“It would make a good kennel for our dog Splash,” said Bunny.

“And you may have it for that, if you like,” said Mrs. Preston.  “I’ll have the hired man take it over to your camp.”

After thanking Mrs. Preston for the good time she had given them, the children, after a lunch, started for their homes.  Bunny and Sue found something very strange going on in the camp when they reached there.

There was Mr. Bixby, the hermit, sitting on a box just outside the tent, talking very earnestly to Mr. Brown, who had just come from town in the small automobile.  It had stopped raining.

“Well, I’ve decided not to let him go back to you,” Mr. Brown was saying.  “I don’t think you have treated him right, and I am going to complain to the authorities about it.”

“And I tell you, Mr. Brown, not meaning to be impolite, that I’m entitled to that boy an’ I’m going to have him.  He’s bound out to me for the Summer.”

“What does he want, Mother?” whispered Bunny.

“Hush, my dear.  Daddy will attend to it all.  Mr. Bixby came here a little while ago and he wants to take Tom back.  Tom doesn’t want to go on account of the ‘needle pricks’ as he calls them.  But Mr. Bixby wants him, and your father is not going to let Tom go.”

“Oh, I’m glad of that!” exclaimed Sue in a whisper.  “I like Tom, and I don’t care if I was locked in a trunk and ’most smothered if we can keep Tom.”

CHAPTER XXIII

TRYING TO HELP TOM

“You were locked in a trunk and almost smothered!” exclaimed Mrs. Brown, looking first at Sue and then at Mr. Bixby, as though she thought he might have had some hand in the matter.

“Yes, it was over in Mrs. Preston’s attic.  But it was my own fault, I never should have got in the trunk, for it closed with a spring lock and they had to get a carpenter to saw me out.”

“Oh!  And spoil Mrs. Preston’s trunk?”

“’Tisn’t spoiled,” said Bunny.  “She’s going to let us use it for a dog kennel.”

“And it will make such a nice one for Splash,” said Sue.  “You see, we can put hinges on the little square place the carpenter cut out to make a hole for me to get through, and we can make something fast to it that Splash can get hold of with his teeth, like a knob, so he can pull the door shut when it rains.  It will be awful nice.  I don’t mind having been shut up a bit when I think of Splash.”

“But how did it all happen?” asked Mrs. Brown, while her husband and Mr. Bixby were talking together.

The children told of Sue’s adventure and of Charlie and Rose, and of the big porch and of the lunch.

“But what does Mr. Bixby want, Mother?  Is he really going to take Tom away from us?” asked Sue.

“I don’t know, my little girl.  I hope not.  But he seems to have the law on his side.”

“Well, you have your way of looking at it and I have mine,” Mr. Bixby was saying to Mr. Brown.  “I hired this boy from the poorhouse and agreed to pay him certain wages.  Part he keeps for himself and the rest goes to the poorhouse managers for his board in the Winter when he can’t work.