rah and Jerry Simms aren't here," Vi reminded him. "Are they?"

"That doesn't make any difference. It can be the clearing-up shower of
this equinox, just the same."

"Can it?" asked Vi.

She was always asking questions, and she asked so many that it was quite
impossible to answer them all, so, for the most part, nobody tried to
answer her. And this was one of the times when nobody answered Vi.

"We'd better keep on playing," Rose said, very sensibly. "Then we won't
bother 'bout the thunder strokes."

"It is lightning," objected Russ. "I don't mind the thunder. Thunder is
only a noise."

"I don't care," said Rose, "it's the thunder that scares you---- Oh!
Hear it?"

"Does the thunder hit you?" asked Vi.

"Why, nothing is going to hit us," Russ replied bravely, realizing that
he must soothe any fears felt by his younger brothers and sisters. Russ
was nine, and Daddy Bunker and mother expected him to set a good example
to Rose and Laddie and Violet and Margy and Munroe Ford Bunker, who,
when he was very little, had named himself "Mun Bun."

"Just the same," whispered Rose in a very small voice, and in Russ's
ear, "I wish we hadn't come over from Captain Ben's bungalow this
morning when it looked like the rain had all stopped."

"Pooh!" said Russ, still bravely, "it thunders over there just as it
does here, Rose Bunker."

Of course that was so, and Rose knew it. But nothing seemed quite so bad
when daddy and mother were close at hand.

"Let's play again," she said, with a little sigh.

"What'll we play?" asked Violet. "Haven't we played everything there
is?"

"I s'pose we have--some time or other," Rose admitted.

"No, we haven't," interposed Russ, who was of an inventive mind. "There
are always new plays to make up."

"Just like making up riddles," agreed Laddie. "I guess I could make up a
riddle about this old storm--if only the thunder wouldn't make so much
noise. I can't think riddles when it thunders."

The thunder seemed to shake the house. The rain dashed against the
windows harder than ever. And there were places in the roof of this
attic where the water began to trickle through and drop upon the floor.

"Oh!" cried Mun Bun, on whose head a drop fell. "It's leaking! I don't
like a leaky house. Let's go home, Rose."

"Do you want to go home to Pineville, Mun Bun?" shouted Russ, for he
could not make his voice heard by the others just then without shouting.

"Well, no. But I'd rather be at tha