Something flashed across a green patch of grass away down by the road.
It was red, had small, sharp-pointed ears and nose and a bushy tail.
This tail waved quite importantly as the small animal ran.

"Come on!" cried Vi, taking the lead at once. She often did so, for
Laddie was slower than she. "Come on! Let's get it, Laddie."

Laddie, nothing loath, ran after his twin sister. They raced down the
hill and came to the little gully into which the animal with the bushy
tail had disappeared. The end of that gully was the open mouth of a
culvert under the road.

"Did he go in there?" Laddie demanded. "Did he go into that hole, Vi?"

"He must have," declared Violet. "It must be his home. It's a burrow."

"But he wasn't a bunny. Bunnies have burrows," objected Laddie.

"I guess other animals can have burrows, too," said his twin. "And he
was lots prettier than a rabbit."

"He was that," admitted the excited Laddie. "It wasn't a rabbit, of
course. Rabbits aren't red."

"Let's find the other end of the hole," Vi said eagerly. "We'll stop
both ends up and then--and then----"

"Well, what then?" her twin demanded.

"Why, we can catch him then," said Vi, rather feebly. "That is, we can
if he wants to come out."

"I suppose we can. If he doesn't take too long. Let's," said Laddie, and
he ran across the road and looked to see if there was another opening to
the culvert.

But as it chanced, this was an old and unused drain, and the farther
mouth of it was stopped up. This made the hole a very nice den for the
little animal the Bunker twins had seen go into it. But neither Laddie
nor Vi had any idea as to what the creature was.

"I'm going to get a stick and poke him out," announced Laddie.

"You can't poke him out when there is no other hole over there,"
rejoined Vi very sensibly.

"I'll poke him till he comes out then," said Laddie, looking all about
but not starting to find a stick.

To tell the truth he was at the end of his resources. He did not know
how to get at the little red animal.

"Anyway," he said at last, "maybe he didn't run in here after all."

"He did so, Laddie Bunker!" cried Violet. "I saw him."

This seemed final. Laddie looked all around again, quite puzzled as to
what to do next. There was no backing out of a thing when once it was
begun--not with Vi Bunker! She always insisted upon going on to the end,
no matter what that end might be.

"Well," her twin said at last, "I s'pose I'll have