“Nope, you didn’t hurt me, Sue.  Falling down did—­a little, but I fell on something soft, I guess.”

Bunny stood up and looked.  He had fallen on a pile of cloth bags which the painters had left inside the house.  It was lucky for Bunny that the bags were there, or he might have been badly bruised.  As it was he and Sue were not hurt, and, having picked themselves up, and brushed off their clothes, they were ready to go back home.

And it was quite time, too, for the shadows were getting longer and longer out in the street, as the sun went down.

“It was the front door that blew shut with such a bang,” Bunny said, as he and Sue went down the long, front hall.  “It was open when we came in, but it’s shut now.”

“The wind blew it, I guess,” said Sue.  “I wonder if you can get it open, Bunny?”

“Sure!” her brother said.

But when Bunny tried to open the front door he could not.  Either it was too tightly shut, or else some spring lock had snapped shut.  There was no key in the hole, but Bunny turned and twisted the knob, this way and that.  But the door would not open.

“Let me try,” said Sue, seeing that Bunny was not getting the door to swing open so they could get out.  “Let me try.”

“Pooh!  If I can’t do it, you can’t,” Bunny said.  He did not exactly mean to be impolite, but he meant that he was stronger than his little sister and so she could hardly hope to do what he could not.

“Oh, but Bunny, what will we do if we can’t get the door open?” Sue asked, and she seemed almost as frightened as the day when she had fallen down in the mud puddle when she and Bunny went to meet Aunt Lu.

“Well, if I can’t get the front door open, maybe I can get the back one or the side one open,” Bunny said.  “Come on, we’ll try them.”

But the back door was also locked and there was no key in that to turn.  Neither was there a side door.  Both the front and back doors were locked.

Bunny looked at Sue, and Sue looked at her little brother.  Her eyes were bright and shiny, as though she were going to cry.  Bunny tried to speak bravely.

“Sue—­we—­we’re locked in!” he said.

“Oh, Bunny!” she exclaimed.  “What are we going to do?  Oh!  Oh!  Oh dear!”

CHAPTER VI

ADRIFT IN A BOAT

Bunny Brown was a brave little chap, even though he was only a bit over six years old, “going on seven,” as he always proudly said.  And one of the matters in which he was braver than anything else was about his sister Sue.

His mother had often spoken to him about his sister when he and Sue were allowed to walk up and down in the street, but not to go off the home block.

“Now, Bunny,” Mrs. Brown would say, “take good care of little Sue!”

And Bunny would answer: 

“I will, Mother!”

Now was a time when he must look after her and take special care of her.  The first thing he said to Sue was: