little boys and girls could not sit in the
big rooms of the schoolhouse unless there were warm fires to send the
steam humming through the pipes and radiators.

"Here we are, three weeks late for school already, and no likelihood of
coal coming into the town for another month. Of course there will be no
school," Mother Bunker said decidedly. "I should not dare let the
children go in any case unless the fires were built."

"Quite right," said Daddy Bunker. "And I presume the other people will
feel the same about their children. School must be postponed again."

"Oh, bully!" cried Russ.

He shouted it out so loud that the older folks, as well as the children,
looked at him in some amazement.

"What is bully?" asked Vi. "Do you mean a coal strike is bully? Why
can't we have coal to burn? Who has got our coal?"

Nobody gave her questions much attention, which of course was not
unusual. But Daddy Bunker began to laugh.

"I can see what is working in Russ's mind," he said. "You reason from
the cause of a lack of coal, to an effect that you need not go to
school?"

"I--I don't mind going to school," Rose said, a little doubtfully but
looking at her elder brother.

"And I don't mind, either," said Russ promptly. "Only daddy is going to
that Cowboy Jack's. And if we can't go to school for a month, why can't
we go with daddy? We might as well."

"Oh! Oh!" cried the other children in chorus, seeing very plainly now
what Russ had meant by saying the coal strike was "bully."

"Perhaps you are taking too much for granted," Mother Bunker said
soberly. "Still, Charles, maybe I had better not unpack our trunks quite
yet?"

"I'll see what the outlook is to-morrow morning," said Daddy Bunker
quite soberly. "Anyway, I shall not start for the Southwest until day
after to-morrow. Will that give you time, if----?"

"Oh, yes," said Mother Bunker, who had become by this time an expert in
making quick preparations for leaving home. "Norah and Jerry will get on
quite well here."

This was enough to set the six little Bunkers in a ferment. At least, to
put their minds in a ferment. They were so excited and so much
interested in the possibility of going away again that they could not
"settle," as Norah said, to their ordinary pursuits.

Even Rose had by this time decided that she would be able perhaps to
pronounce the name of the man Daddy Bunker was going to see--Mr. John
Scarbontiskil.

"And, anyway," she told Russ, "maybe I