manage to have a good time, all right," he said approvingly.
"Where are you going to play?"

They looked at Meg. It was her game and she was the only one who knew
the best place to go.

"We have to play in the loft," directed Meg. "We're going to live in a
lighthouse, Jud, and pull things up and down."

Jud did not understand at first and when she told him, he said that
lighthouse keepers did not live at the top of the lighthouse and pull
things up, but instead they lived in a neat little house built on the
ground, like other houses, and climbed the tall stairs to take care of
the light.

"Well, I think it would be more fun to live up high," said Meg, and
Jud said that was the best of a "pretend" play. You could do it to
suit yourself.

The four children scrambled up the loft ladder--practice had made this
once difficult feat easy for them--and for a half hour jumped about
in the clean, sweet hay, forgetting their game. The smooth, slippery
hay, piled in such masses, never failed to fascinate them.

"Now let's play lighthouse," suggested Meg, when Twaddles had come
down rather hard on his nose and was trying not to cry. "First thing
we need is a basket and rope."

They found a basket Jud said they might take and he got a piece of
rope for them. Then they argued about staying down on the floor of the
barn to put things in the basket for, of course, each one wanted to
pull the basket up; that was the interesting part.

"Take turns," Bobby advised. "I'll stay down first, and let Meg pull
up first, because she thought of this game."

So Meg ran up the ladder and Bobby put in the lunch box and she pulled
and tugged and at last succeeded in pulling the basket up to the
loft.

CHAPTER XVII

RAINY DAY FUN

"I'll bury it in the hay, before Twaddles comes up," said Meg to
herself. "He always wants to eat everything up right away."

She peeped over the edge of the haymow and saw the twins, one on
either side of Bobby, staring up. They looked funny, for their mouths
were open and Meg giggled a little.

"Send the basket back," Twaddles called. "We want to put something in
it."

"All right--wait a minute," answered Meg.

She ran back and hastily stuffed the lunch box under the hay, pulling
a pile over it so that it did not show at all. Then she rushed to the
edge of the mow, but she was in such haste not to keep the others
waiting that she dropped the basket, rope and all.

It rapped Dot on the head a