“Maybe she did,” returned Sue.  “She thought she lost it around our house, but she looked, and we all looked, and we didn’t find it, so maybe it was lost down here.  I’m going to look, and if we find it we’ll get a present.”

“I’ll help you look,” said Bunny kindly, “but I don’t believe it’s down here.”

The two children walked along a little farther, with their eyes searching the ground, but they saw no golden ring.

“Oh, I tell you what let’s do!” suddenly exclaimed Bunny.

“What?” asked Sue, eager to have some fun.

“Let’s go back home, and I’ll put the lobster claw on my nose, and we’ll play Punch and Judy.  We haven’t done that yet.”

“All right, we’ll do it!” Sue agreed.  “And I’ll let you take my sawdust doll.  You have to hit her with a stick you know, if you’re Mr. Punch, and it won’t hurt a sawdust doll.”

“All right,” Bunny cried.  “And when I hit her I’ll call out, the way Mr. Punch does:  ‘That’s the way to do it!  That’s the way I do it!’”

He said this in the funny, squeaky voice which is always heard at Punch and Judy shows, and Sue laughed.  She thought her brother was very funny.

Bunny and Sue were about to turn around and go back home, but, as they came to a stop in front of the last house on their block Bunny said: 

“Oh, Sue, look!  They’re painting this house, and maybe we can get some red or blue paint, to put on my face, when I play Mr. Punch.”

“Oh, Bunny Brown!  You wouldn’t put paint on your face; would you?” demanded Sue.

“Just a little,” said Bunny.  “Why not?”

“S’posin’ you couldn’t get it off again?” Sue wanted to know.

“Oh, I could wash it off when I got through playing,” Bunny replied.  “Come on in, and we’ll see if the men will give us a little paint; red, or blue or green.”

Outside the house, in front of which the children then stood, were a number of pots of differently colored paint, and some ladders.  But there was no paint yet on the outside of the house.

“I guess they’re painting inside,” Bunny said.  “I don’t see any of the men out here.  Come on, we’ll go in; the door is open, Sue.”

The front door was open a little way, as the two children could see as they went up the walk.  Bunny and Sue knew every house in that part of town, and also knew the persons who lived in them.  All the neighbors knew the children, making them welcome every time they saw them.

“There’s no one in this house, I ’member now,” Sue said.  “Miss Duncan used to live here, but she moved away.”

“Then I guess the men are painting it over all nice inside to get it ready for someone else to live in,” remarked Bunny.  “There isn’t anyone here, Sue,” he added, as his voice echoed through the empty house.  “Even the painters have gone.”

“We’d better go out,” said Sue.  “Maybe they wouldn’t like us to be in here.”