“Say it again,” begged Russ, who had not been listening carefully.

“What goes through the door, but never comes into the room?” asked Laddie again.  “It’s a good riddle, and I made it up all myself.”

“Does it go out of the room if it doesn’t come in?” asked Rose.

“Nope,” answered Laddie, shaking his head.  “It doesn’t do anything.  It just goes through the door, but it doesn’t come in or go out.”

“Nothing can do that,” declared Russ.  “If a thing goes through the door it’s got to come in or go out, else it doesn’t go through.”

“Oh, yes, it does,” said Laddie.  “Do you give up?”

“Is it a cat?” asked Vi.

“Nope.”

“A dog?”

“Nope.”

“A turtle?” guessed Mun Bun, who didn’t quite know what it was all about, but who wanted to guess something.

“Nope!” said Laddie, laughing.  “I’ll tell you.  It’s the keyhole!”

“The keyhole?” cried Russ.  “No!”

“To be sure!” answered his small brother.  “Doesn’t a keyhole go all the way through the door?  If it didn’t you couldn’t get the key in.  The keyhole goes through the door, but it doesn’t come into the room nor go out.  It just stays in the door.  Isn’t that a good riddle?”

“Yes, it is,” answered Rose.  “I’d never have guessed it.”

“I thought it up all myself while you were talking about a door to this bungalow,” said Laddie.  “What goes through the door but doesn’t come in the room?  A keyhole,” and he laughed at his own riddle.

The next day Cousin Tom went down to the beach, where once more Russ, Rose and the others were playing in the driftwood bungalow, and called: 

“How many of you would like to go crabbing?”

“I would!” cried Russ.

“So would I,” said Rose.

“What is it like?” asked Vi, who, you might know, would ask a question the first thing.

“Well, it’s like fishing, only it isn’t quite so hard for little folk,” said Cousin Tom.  “Come along, if you’re through playing, and I’ll show you how to go crabbing.”

“Are Daddy and Mother going?” asked Rose.

“Yes, we’ll all go.  Come along.”

The six little Bunkers followed Cousin Tom up the beach to the inlet.  There, tied to a pier not far from Cousin Tom’s bungalow, was a large boat.  Near it stood Mother and Father Bunker and Cousin Ruth.  Cousin Ruth had some peach baskets, two long-handled nets and some strings to the ends of which were tied chunks of meat.

“Are we going to feed a dog?” asked Russ.

“No, that is bait for the crabs,” said Cousin Tom.  “Come, now, get into the boat, and we’ll go for a new kind of fishing.”

CHAPTER XII

“They’re loose!”

“All aboard!” cried Russ as he stood on the edge of the little wharf in the inlet, at which the boat was tied.  “All aboard.”