CHAPTER XXV

THE LOBSTER CLAW

“Don’t, Sue, don’t!” begged Bunny Brown.  “I must have the doll.  You said I could take her,” and he tried to pull the doll away from his sister.

But Sue did not want to give up even an old doll.

“You mustn’t knock out all her sawdust,” she said.  “She’ll get sick.”

Bunny did not know what to do.  It seemed as if his Punch and Judy show would be spoiled, and he did so want to make Aunt Lu feel jolly about it.

Sue had really said, at first, that he could beat her old doll with a stick, just as Mr. Punch does in the real show, but now Sue had changed her mind.

“Oh, dear!” said Bunny, and he said it in such a funny way that everyone laughed again.

“Let him take your doll, Sue dear,” said her mother, from where she sat on a box in the barn.  “If he spoils it I will get you a new one.  It’s only in fun, Sue,” for Mrs. Brown did not want to see Bunny disappointed.

“All right.  You can take her, but don’t hit her too hard,” said Sue.

“I won’t,” promised her brother.  And then the little show went on.

Mr. and Mrs. Punch had great times with the “baby,” which was the sawdust doll.  Then Sue stooped down, out of sight, and turned herself into a make-believe policeman, by putting on a hat, made out of black paper, with a golden star pasted on in front.  George Watson had made that for her.  Up popped Sue, the pretend policeman, to make Mr. Punch stop hitting the sawdust doll baby.

“Go ’way!  Go ’way!” cried Bunny Punch, in his squeaky voice, as he tossed the doll out on the barn floor.  “That’s the way to do it!  That’s the way I do it!”

Then Sue sang a little song, that Bunker had made up for her, and he played the mouth organ.  And next Bunny and Sue sang together.  The children thought it was fine, and the grown folks clapped their hands, and stamped with their feet, which is what people do in a real theatre when they like the play.

When Bunny and Sue made their bow, after singing the song together, they both bobbed out of sight behind the curtain.

“Is that—­is that all?” asked Tommie Tracy, in his shrill little voice, from where he sat in the front row.

“Yep.  That’s all,” answered Bunny.  “The show is over, and we hope you all like it; ’specially Aunt Lu.”

“Oh, I just loved it,” she answered.  “And to think you got it all up for me!  It was just fine!”

“Do it all over again!” said Tommie.  “I liked it too, but I want some more.  Do it again, Bunny!”

“I—­I can’t,” Bunny answered, as he came out from inside the box that Bunker Blue had made into a theatre.  Bunny had taken off his lobster claw nose, and held it dangling from the strings by which it had been tied around his head.

Suddenly one of the planks, across two boxes, broke, and some of the boys, who had been sitting on it, fell down in a heap.  But no one was hurt.