"Oh, dear! Oh, dear! Go and love your mother for a change!" laughed Mr.
Brown as he squirmed away from Bunny and Sue, who had hugged him and
kissed him half a dozen times. "You've mussed my hair all up! Isn't my
hair sticking up seven ways, Mother?" he asked his wife.

"Indeed it is. If you children muss mine that way I shall have to comb
it again before supper, and I'll hardly have time if father is to
explain about the auto tour. This is as much news to me, Bunny and Sue,
as it is to you."

"Oh, Mother made a rhyme! Now we'll have a good time!" cried Bunny.
"Come on, Sue, we'll kiss her easy-like, and then we'll hear about the
trip. When are you going, Daddy?"

"And where?" asked Sue.

"One is about as important as the other," laughed Mr. Brown. "But I
think you will have to wait a while. I want to telephone to the chief of
police, and have him start the search for Fred Ward. We have to work
quickly in the cases of runaway boys, or they get so far away that it
makes them harder to find."

"What makes boys run away?" asked Bunny.

"Well, it's hard to tell," said Mr. Brown. "Sometimes it's because they
feel ashamed at being punished, just as Fred was, and as you might be,
Bunny, if I scolded you for being bad. Not that you are often naughty,
but you might be, some time."

"But I wouldn't run away," Bunny said, shaking his head very earnestly.
"I like it here too much. I read a story once, about a boy who ran away,
and he had to sleep in a haymow and eat raw eggs for breakfast."

"Oh! I'd never do _that_!" cried Sue. "I wouldn't mind playing with the
little chickens that came out of the eggs, but I wouldn't run away,"
she said earnestly. "I wouldn't want to sleep in a haystack lessen Bunny
was with me."

"Well, when you two make up your minds to run away," said Mrs. Brown
with a laugh, "tell us, and we'll come for you when night falls and
bring you home. Then you can sleep in your own beds and run away the
next day.

"That will be great!" cried Bunny. "We'll do it that way, Sue."

"That's what we will!" said she.

They were at the Browns' house now, and Dix, the dog that belonged to
the runaway boy, turned to go back home. Splash barked at him as much as
to say:

"Oh, come on, old fellow, stay and have a good time. Maybe I can find a
choice bone or two."

But Dix wagged his tail and barked, and if one had understood dog
language, of which I suppose there must be one, he would, perhaps, have
heard D