“I—­I don’t want to,” and Sue gave a little shiver.

“You don’t like to hunt worms?” asked Bunny, as if very much surprised.  “I like it—­it’s fun!”

“Oh, but worms—­worms are so—­so squiggily!” stammered Sue.  “They make me feel so ticklish in my toes.”

“You don’t pick up worms in your toes!” cried Bunny.  “You pick ’em up in your hands!”

“I know,” and Sue smiled at her brother, “but they are so squiggily that they make me feel ticklish away down to my toes, anyhow.”

“All right,” Bunny agreed.  “I’ll pick up the worms, but you can have a turn fishing just the same.”

“Thank you,” answered Sue.

Mrs. Brown had taught the children to be kind and polite to each other, just as well as to strangers and to “company.”  Though of course Bunny Brown and his sister Sue had little troubles and “spats” and differences, now and then, just like other children.

Bunny began looking for worms, and he dug in the soft dirt of the island, near the edge of the water, with a stick.  But either there were no worms there, or Bunny did not dig deep enough for them, for he found none.

“Guess I’ll have to fish without any bait,” he said, after a while.  But, as I suppose you all know, fish hardly ever bite on an empty hook, especially when it is made from a bent pin; so, after he had dangled the line in the water for quite a while, Bunny said: 

“Here, Sue.  It’s your turn now.  Maybe you’ll have better luck than I had.”

“Maybe there aren’t any fish in this river.”

“Oh, yes there are.  Bunker Blue caught a lot one day.  But he had worms for bait.”

However Sue did not mind fishing without any worms on the pin-hook, and she sat down on a log, near the water and let the line dangle in it, while Bunny walked about the island.  He had never been on this one before, though there was a larger one, farther down the river, where he and his sister Sue had often gone on little picnics with their mother and father.

Walking back a little way from the edge of the water, Bunny saw a place where a tangle of vines, growing over an old stump, had made a place like a little tent, or bower.  All at once Bunny remembered a story his mother had read to him.  Back he ran to where Sue was fishing.

“Oh, Sue!  Sue!” he exclaimed.  “I know what we can do!”

“What?”

“We can play Robinson Crusoe!” cried Bunny.

“Is that like tag, or hide-and-go-to-seek?” the little girl wanted to know.

“Neither one,” answered her brother.  “Robinson Crusoe was a man who was shipwrecked on an island, and he lived there a long time with his man Friday.  We can play that.”

“But we aren’t shipwrecked,” Sue said.  Living near the sea the children had often heard of shipwrecks, and had once seen one, when a big sail boat had beep blown up on the beach and broken to pieces by the heavy waves.  The sailors were taken off by the life-savers.  “We’re not shipwrecked,” said Sue.  “There’s our boat all right,” and she pointed to the one in which they had gone adrift.