ddie. "What is it that's so easy to
catch but nobody runs after?"

"Huh! is that a riddle?" asked Russ.

"Course it's a riddle."

"A wubber ball," guessed Mun Bun, coming from the window against the
panes of which the snow was now beating rapidly.

"No," Laddie said.

"A coupe!" exclaimed Violet.

"Huh! No!" said her twin in disdain.

Margy asked if he meant a kittie. She had been chasing one all over the
house that morning while Russ and Rose had been to market with their
aunt, and she did not think a kitten easy to catch at all.

"'Tisn't anything with a tail or claws," crowed the delighted Laddie.

"I bet it's that neuralgia William's got," laughed Russ.

"No-o. It isn't just that," his smaller brother said.

"And you'd better not say 'bet,' Russ Bunker," advised Rose wisely. "You
know Aunt Jo says that's not nice."

"You just said it," Russ rejoined, grinning. "Twice."

"Oh, I never did!" cried his sister.

"Didn't you just say I'd 'better not say bet?'" demanded Russ. "Well,
then count 'em! 'Bet' out of 'better' is one, and 'bet' makes two----"

"I never said it the way you did," began Rose, quite put out, when
Laddie began to clamor:

"Tell me my riddle! You can't--none of you. 'What is it that's so easy
to catch but nobody runs after?'"

"I don't know, Laddie," said Rose.

"I give it up," said Russ.

"Do you all give it up?" cried Laddie, almost dancing in his glee.

"What is it?" asked Vi.

"Why, the thing that's so easy to catch but nobody runs after, is a
cold!" announced her twin very proudly.

"And I'm so-o cold," announced Mun Bun, hanging to Rose's skirt while
the older ones laughed with Laddie. "Don't Aunt Jo ever have it warm in
her house--like it is at home?"

"Of course she does, Mun Bun," said Rose, quickly hugging the little
fellow. "But poor William is sick and nobody knows how to tend to the
heating plant as well as he does. And so--Why, Russ, Mun Bun is cold!
His hands are like ice."

"And so are my hands!" cried Margy, running hastily from the window.
"We've been trying to catch the snowflakes through the windowpane."

"No wonder your hands are cold," said Rose admonishingly.

Russ began to cast about in his ingenious mind for some means of getting
the younger children's attention off the discomfort of a room the
temperature of which was down to sixty. In one corner were two stacks of
sectional bookcases which Aunt Jo had just bought, but which had no
books in th