“Pooh!  Nobody will care!” exclaimed Bunny, who was rather a daring little fellow.  “Besides, I want to get some paint.  Come on, we’ll go upstairs.  Maybe they’re painting up there, or pasting new paper on the walls.”

Bunny started up the front hall stairs, and, as Sue did not want to be left alone on the first floor of the empty house, and as she did not want to go out, and leave Bunny there, she followed him.

Their footsteps sounded loud and queer in the big, vacant rooms.  As they reached the top of the stairs they heard behind them a loud banging noise.

“What—­what was that?” asked Sue, looking quickly over her shoulder.

“I—­I guess the front door blew shut,” said Bunny.  “Never mind, we can open it again.  I want to get some red paint for my face, so I can play Mr. Punch.”

But if Bunny and Sue knew what had happened when that banging noise sounded, they would not have felt like walking on through the empty rooms, even to get red paint.

CHAPTER V

LOCKED IN

“On, say, Bunny!” suddenly called Sue, as she followed her brother through the upstairs rooms, “wouldn’t it be fun for us to live here?”

“Do you mean just us two?” the little boy asked.

“Yes,” answered Sue.

Bunny shook his head.

“I’d like mother, and daddy, and Aunt Lu, too,” he said.  “It would be nicer, then.”

“Oh, but sometimes they don’t want us to make a noise,” went on Sue.  “And if we were here all alone we could yell and holler, and slide down the banister, all we wanted to.  Let’s slide down now,” she said, as she went to the head of the stairs, and looked at the long, smooth hand-rail.

“Say, that will be fun,” Bunny cried.  “I’ll go first, Sue, but don’t come after me too close, or you might bump into me and knock me over.”

“I won’t,” promised the little girl.

It did not take much to cause Bunny to change his mind or his plans when there was any fun to be had.  For a while he forgot about looking for red paint to put on his face to make him look funny when he played Mr. Punch, with the hollow lobster claw on his nose.  Just now the joy of sliding down the banister rail seemed to be the best in the world.

“Here I go!” cried Bunny, and down the rail he went, ending with a little bump on the big, round post at the bottom.

“Now it’s my turn,” Sue said, and down she came.  Though she was a girl Sue could slide down a rail almost as well as could Bunny.  In fact, she had played with her brother so much that she could do many of the things that small boys do.  And Bunny surely thought that Sue was as good a chum as any of his boy playmates.

“Now it’s my turn again!” exclaimed the little blue-eyed chap, as he went up the stairs, his feet making a loud noise in the empty house.  For some time Bunny and Sue played at sliding down the banister rail, and then Bunny remembered what they had first come into the house for.