"and can fix the furnace, we shall just have to keep him
until William is well again. Has he finished his dinner, Annie?"

"Not yet, Ma'am. And indeed he was hungry. He ate like a wolf. But when
he heard about us all being beat by that furnace, down he went. There!
He's shaking the grate now. You can hear him. He said the ashes had to
be taken out from under the grate or the fire never would burn. Yes'm."

"Well, then," said Mother Bunker, "you children will have to wait to
see Sam--and Alexis--until he has finished eating."

"Annie," said Aunt Jo quickly, before the girl could go, "how does
Alexis act toward this boy?"

"Oh, Ma'am! Alexis just snuffed of him, and then put his head in his
lap. Alexis says he's all right. And for a black person," added the
parlormaid, "I do think the boy's all right, Ma'am."

She went out and Aunt Jo and Mother Bunker laughed. The youngsters were
suddenly excited at that moment by the stopping of a taxicab at the
door. Vi had spied it from the window, for hard as it snowed she could
see that.

"Here's Daddy! Here's Daddy!" she cried, dancing up and down.

Mun Bun and Margy joined in the dance, while the other three children
entered upon a whirlwind rush down the stairway to meet Mr. Bunker at
the front entrance.

He came in, covered with snow, and with his traveling bag. The
children's charge upon him would surely have overturned anybody but
Daddy Bunker.

"I scarcely dare come home at all," he shouted up the stairway to his
wife and Aunt Jo, "because of these young Indians. You would think they
were after my very life, if you didn't know that it was my pockets they
want to search."

He shook off the clinging snow and the clinging children until he had
removed his overcoat. Russ grabbed up the bag, and Rose and Laddie each
captured an arm and were fairly carried upstairs by Mr. Bunker. He
landed breathless and laughing with them in the middle of the big room
which Aunt Jo had given up to the six little Bunkers as their playroom
while they visited here in her Back Bay home.

"What is the news, Charles?" asked Mother Bunker, almost as eagerly as
the children themselves might have asked the question.

"I've got to see Armatage personally--that is all there is about it, and
Frank Armatage cannot come North."

"Then you are going?" said his wife, and the children almost held their
several breaths to catch Daddy Bunker's reply.

Their father looked around upon the eager little