“Here’s your monkey back,” said Bunny, after the first greetings.

“Huh!  ’Tisn’t my monkey!” declared Miss Winkler.  “It’s Jed’s!  I shouldn’t ever worry if it never came home!  Still, that isn’t saying it’s your fault, Bunny and Sue.  I know you mean to be kind, and Jed will thank you, even if I don’t.  Wango, you rascal, why don’t you stay away when you run off?  I don’t want you around!  What with the poll parrot——­”

“Polly wants a cracker!  Polly wants a cracker!” shrieked the green bird.

“A fire cracker’s what you ought to have!” sniffed Miss Winkler, who did not like the two pets her sailor brother had brought back with him from one of his voyages.

“Cracker!  Cracker!  Put the kettle on the fire!  Polly wants a cracker!” yelled the bird, and Wango began to chatter, the two of them making such a racket that Miss Winkler held her hands over her ears while Bunny and Sue could not help laughing.

“Stop it!  Stop it!” yelled the maiden lady, and finally the monkey and the parrot grew quiet.

“Put Wango in his cage, Sue, if you please,” said Miss Winkler.  “And I’ll tell Jed, when he comes home, how good you were to bring Wango back—­not that I want the creature, though.  Well, it’s cleared off, I’m glad to see.  And now maybe you two will have a piece of cake for yourselves.  I won’t give Wango any, though!”

“Yes’m, I could eat a bit,” said Bunny, with a smile.

“I like it, too,” added Sue.

The children were soon having a lunch of cake and milk.  Though Miss Winkler was a bit fussy over her brother’s pets, yet she had a good heart, and she liked Bunny and Sue.

Through the little mud puddles, left after the rain, Bunny and Sue splashed their way back home.  Their mother saw them coming, and, as Splash was making a great fuss at being kept in the house, she let the dog out.  He ran to meet the children.

“What’ll we do now?” asked Bunny, when they had told their mother about taking Wango home.

“Let’s go down and wade in the brook,” proposed Sue.  “We have our boots on, and we won’t have ’em on to-morrow.  We’ll have to go to school then, anyhow.  So let’s go wade in the brook now.”

“All right!” agreed Bunny.  “And we’ll sail boats!”

With their dog, the children were soon splashing in the shallow brook, made a bit higher on account of the rain.  They found some boards and made a raft, on which they pushed themselves about the wider part of the brook.  Splash climbed on the raft with them, and the children pretended they were Robinson Crusoe on a voyage.

“Well, we had a lot of fun to-day,” sighed Bunny in contentment, as he and Sue were going to bed that night.  “Lots of fun!”

“Yes,” agreed his sister.  “And to-morrow we have to go to school.”

“Oh, well,” Bunny remarked, “maybe we’ll have fun there.”  The children had been kept at home on account of the heavy rain.