And that is just what she had done.

Oh! how Sue was covered with the whites and yellows of the eggs!

She had slid down the haymow on a side where she and Bunny did not often play, and she had slid right into the hen’s nest.  The children had not thought of looking there for it.

But Sue had found it.

Slowly she stood up.  She and Bunny looked into the nest And, just as Sue had said, all the eggs were broken.

“Oh, it’s too bad!” the little girl exclaimed.  “Mrs. Gordon will be so sorry.”

“You couldn’t help it,” declared Bunny, “You—­you just slid into ’em!”

“Yes,” went on Sue.  “I didn’t see the nest at all, but I heard the eggs break, and there I was, sitting there on them just like a hen.  Oh, dear!  Look at my dress!”

“It will wash out,” said her brother.  “You might go down and wade in the brook.  But we couldn’t, without asking mother, and then she’d see you anyhow.”

“Oh, I’ll tell her!” exclaimed Sue.  “We’d better go in, ’cause if egg-stuff dries on you it’s awful hard to get off.  Aunt Lu said so when she baked a cake yesterday.”

“Well, we can come back and slide some more.”

“Yes, after I get clean.  And we’ll have to tell Mrs. Gordon, too; won’t we, Bunny?”

“Oh, yes.  But she has lots of hens and eggs, so she won’t care.”

Mrs. Brown and Aunt Lu were much surprised when Bunny Brown and his sister Sue came in, Sue all white and yellow from the eggs.  But Sue’s mother knew it was something that could not be helped, so she did not scold.  She changed Sue’s dress, and then she said: 

“Now you and Bunny run over and tell Mrs. Gordon.”

When the grocery-store-keeper’s wife saw Bunny and Sue coming over to her house she thought perhaps their mother had sent them on an errand, as Mrs. Brown often did.  For the time Mrs. Gordon had forgotten about the hidden hen’s nest.  In fact, she had not thought that Bunny and Sue would really spend much time looking for it.  So when Sue said: 

“I—­I found it, Mrs. Gordon!”

Mrs. Gordon asked: 

“What did you find, Sue, a penny rolling up hill?”

That was the way Mrs. Gordon sometimes joked with Bunny and Sue.

“No’m.  I found your hen’s nest, and I sat in it and broke all the eggs,” said Sue.  “I—­I’m sorry.”

“And I’m sorry with her,” added Bunny.

“Bless your little hearts!  What’s it all about?” asked Mrs. Gordon with a laugh.  Then Bunny and Sue told her, and she laughed harder than ever.  Bunny and Sue smiled, for now they knew Mrs. Gordon did not mind about the broken eggs.

“Well, I’m glad you found the nest, anyhow, if you did break the eggs,” said the storekeeper’s wife.  “Maybe now my hen will not go over into your barn, but will make her nest in our coop, where she ought to make it.  So it’s all right, Sue, and here are some cookies for you and Bunny.”