calf out to the road and was wiping the mud off with a bunch of grass.

"I declare, you are smart young ones," said John Winsome. "I would not
have lost this calf for a good deal. I thank you. I never would have got
him out if you hadn't thought of those rails, sonny."

Russ did not much care about being called "sonny." He said that he might
as well have been called "moony"--and he didn't go mooning about at all!
Older folk were always calling him "young staver" and "chip of the old
block," and things like that. They didn't mean any harm; but of course
Russ, like other boys, did not fancy being called out of name. And
"sonny" did not make the oldest Bunker feel dignified at all.

"Don't mind, Russ," said Rose in a soft little voice when the man had
led the staggering calf away. "Don't mind if he did call you sonny. I
guess he thinks you are pretty smart just the same. Anyway, we know you
are."

"I would have helped you get the rails and build that platform if I had
stayed," said Tad Munson. "But I don't know that I would ever have
thought of using the rails to save that poor calf. You see, all I could
think of was running for John Winsome."

"And I guess that was the first thing to think about," Russ observed,
nodding. "Anyway, it's all over now and the calf is safe again. We might
as well go on to the Dripping Rock and see what it looks like."

"Oh, yes!" cried Vi. "And find out what it drips."

They trooped along the road, and, coming to the place where Mun Bun had
so earnestly studied the wood tortoise, the little Bunkers were
surprised to find that the hard-shelled creature had totally
disappeared.

"Oh!" mourned Mun Bun. "My turkle is gone. Somebody come and took him."

"No," Rose told the little boy. "He was watching you very slyly, and
when he saw you had gone, he ran away just as fast as he could travel."

"He needn't have been so scared," said Mun Bun, in disgust. "I wouldn't
have hurt him."

"But you were poking him with a stick, you know, and he prob'ly thought
you might poke his eyes out. Come on; let's hurry to the Dripping Rock."

They did this, and Vi, in her curiosity, even got wetted a good deal
with the water that dripped from the rock where the spring welled out of
the ground and spattered over the lip of the stone basin on top of the
big boulder. Ferns grew all about the pool of water below, and Rose and
Vi and Margy gathered a lot of these to carry home to Mother Bunker.

"I want to pi