“I guess you’d say so if you looked outdoors!” exclaimed Russ, who came back from having peered from a window.  “It’s snowing terrible hard.”

“Then we can make lots of snow men!” exclaimed Laddie.  “That will be heaps of fun.”

“You’ll have to be well wrapped up when you go out,” remarked Grandma Ford.  “It is colder here than it is during the winter at your home, so put on your coats every time you go out.”

“The place for them to go now is to bed!” said Mrs. Bunker.  “Mun Bun and Margy are asleep in their chairs this very minute, and Vi is almost asleep.  Come, children, off to bed with you!”

Outside it was darker than ever, and still snowing and blowing hard.  But Grandpa’s house at Great Hedge was the nicest place in the world.

“Did the horses go to bed?” sleepily asked Mun Bun as his mother carried him up.

“Yes, they’re in bed and asleep long ago.  And that’s where you will soon be yourself.”

The children’s rooms were close together, some of them sleeping in the same apartment.  And Mr. and Mrs. Bunker had a room down at the end of the hall, so that they could go to any of the six little Bunkers who might call in the night.  Often one of the four smaller ones wanted a drink.

Russ and Laddie had a room together, and so did Rose and Vi, and before the two older Bunker children went to bed Rose whispered to her brother: 

“Shall we get up and hunt for the ghost when the others are asleep?”

“I don’t guess we’d better do it to-night,” he answered.  “I’m too sleepy.  Besides we don’t know our way around the house in the dark.  We’ll wait until to-morrow.”

“All right,” agreed Rose.  This suited her.  She, too, was ready for bed.

Daddy Bunker and Grandpa Ford did not, of course, go to bed as early as did the children.  And Mother Bunker was going downstairs to talk to Grandma Ford as soon as Margy and Mun Bun were sound asleep.

One after another the six little Bunkers got into bed and, though the two smallest were asleep almost at once, the others turned and twisted a little, as almost every one does in a strange bed.  But, finally, even Rose and Russ, in their rooms, were in Slumberland, lulled by the whistle of the wind and the rattle of the snow against the windows.

Russ thought it must be the middle of the night when he was suddenly awakened by a loud noise.  It was a banging sound, as though something heavy had fallen to the floor.  Then came a rattle of tin and a splash of water, and the voice of one of the little Bunkers cried: 

“Oh, I fell in!  I fell in!  Somebody get me out!”

CHAPTER XII

UP IN THE ATTIC

Russ leaped out of bed and ran into the hall, where a light was burning.  The Bunkers always burned one, turned low.

“Mother!  Daddy!” cried Russ.  “Come on, quick!  The ghost has got one of us!  Come quick!”