bit of trouble.

A little boy named Sammie Perkins, in trying to catch a frog in a pond,
leaned too far over and fell in. But a man pulled Sammie out very
quickly, and the little boy only got wet through. Of course he cried,
and was frightened. But his mother took off some of his clothes and
dried them in the sun. So no great harm was done. And that was all that
happened, except that every one had such a fine time that they said they
wished there was a picnic every day.

"But that would be too much!" said Grandma Brown. "You would soon get
tired of it."

The Brown family drove home, getting there just as the sun was going
down.

Splash, who had been chained up by the hired man, so he would not follow
the wagon, was now let loose. And oh! how glad he was to see Bunny Brown
and his sister Sue!

Splash jumped about, barking and wagging his tail. He even tried to kiss
Bunny and Sue with his red tongue.

"Oh, Splash!" cried Bunny. "I wish you had been to the picnic. Then you
could have run after the tramps!"

"Well, the tramps ran anyhow, so it was all right," said Papa Brown.
"Though the next time you see any rough men, Bunny, you had better come
and tell me, or your mother, and not try to drive them away all by
yourself."

"All right, I will, Daddy. But we'll take Splash to the next picnic
anyhow. He was lonesome without us."

And I think Splash was.

"Well, now we'll have supper," said Grandma Brown. "That is if you
children are hungry?"

"Oh, I am!" cried Sue, and Bunny said the same thing. The drive home had
given them good appetites. But then children are very often hungry
anyhow, even without picnics.

"Shall we have some of that nice cocoanut custard cake?" asked Bunny.

"Yes," his grandmother told him. "I'll get it from the pantry." But when
she went there, the cupboard was not exactly bare, like Mother
Hubbard's, but something had happened. For Grandma Brown cried:

"Oh the cake! The lovely cake is gone! And so are a lot of my pies and
crullers! Oh, some one has been in my pantry!"

CHAPTER XXI

BUNNY'S BIG IDEA

Bunny Brown ran to the pantry where his grandmother had gone. Sue
followed. The two children saw Grandma Brown looking at some empty
shelves. On one shelf, before they had started for the picnic, had stood
the big cocoanut-custard cake, that was too large to go in any of the
baskets. That was why it had been left at home for supper.

"Oh, is it really gone?" asked Bunny sa