d Daddy Bunker. "Which is
something we cannot do."

"No wonder its eye is red, then," said Rose.

"I guess it's sunburnt," said Margy. "I got sunburnt at Captain Ben's."

That night they docked at Savannah and went to a hotel in two taxicabs,
for one would not hold all the Bunkers and their baggage too. The hotel
was a nice one, and Rose thought the negro waiters and chambermaids
very attentive and very pleasant people.

"They are the smilingest people I ever saw," she confessed to Mother
Bunker. "I guess they are thinking of funny things all the time."

"Perhaps," granted her mother. "But they are trained to politeness. And
you children must be just as polite."

They all tried to be polite, and Russ grew quite friendly with one of
the bellboys who brought them ice water. He asked that boy if he knew
how to cut the pigeon wing, and the boy grinned very broadly.

"I sure does!" he declared. "But if the boss heard of me doin' it around
dishyer hotel, he'd bounce me."

"Are you made of rubber?" asked Vi, who was standing by.

"What's dat?" he demanded, rolling his eyes. "Is I made of rubber?
Course I isn't. I's made of flesh and blood and bones, same as you is,
little Miss. Only I isn't w'ite like you is."

"But you said the man would bounce you. Rubber balls bounce," explained
Vi.

At that the bellboy went away laughing very heartily, but Vi could not
understand why. And, of course, as usual, nobody could explain it to
Vi's satisfaction.

"I know a riddle!" cried Laddie, after a moment. "What looks like a boy,
but bounces like a rubber ball? Why! A bellboy!"

And he was highly delighted at this and went around telling everybody
his new riddle.

In the morning Mr. Frane Armatage appeared at the hotel and was shown up
to the Bunker rooms. Mr. Armatage, as the little Bunkers knew, was an
old school friend of Daddy Bunker's; but one whom he had not seen for a
long time.

"Why," said Mr. Armatage, who was a slender man with graying hair and a
darker mustache, "Charley was only a boy when I last saw him." He was a
very jovial man, and red-faced. Rose thought him handsome, and told
Mother Bunker so. "No, Charley was only a sapling then. And look at him
now!"

"And look at the sprouts that have sprung from that sapling," laughed
Daddy Bunker, with a sweeping gesture towards the six little Bunkers.

"Was he only as big as I am?" Russ asked.

"Well, no, come to think of it; he was some bigger than you. We wer