him?"

"I--I guess he's all right," answered Rose, who was out of breath from
running. "But he's standing under a tree up the street, and he won't come
home."

"He won't come home?" repeated Mrs. Bunker. "Why won't he come home,
Rose?"

"'Cause his balloon is caught. He's got hold of the string and his balloon
is up in the tree and he won't come home. He says he's going to take a
ride up to the sky!"

"Oh, goodness me! what _has_ happened now?" exclaimed Mrs. Bunker.
"Norah!" she called. "Come! Something is the matter with a balloon and Mun
Bun! We must go see what it is!"

One or the other of the six little Bunkers was always, so it seemed to
their mother, in trouble of some sort, and she or Norah or Jerry Simms or
their father had to drop anything they might be doing to rush to the help
of the child who had gotten itself into something or some place it should
not have got into.

CHAPTER VII

LADDIE'S NEW RIDDLE

Norah O'Grady, the cheerful cook for the six little Bunkers, saw their
mother hurrying out of the house with Rose.

"What's the matter, Mrs. Bunker?" asked Norah. "Is there a fire, and are
ye goin' for a policeman?"

Firemen and policemen, aside from Jerry Simms, were Norah's two chief
heroes.

"No, there isn't a fire, Norah" answered Mrs. Bunker. "But Rose just told
me that Mun Bun is caught up in a tree with a balloon, and I've got to go
and get him down. Maybe you'd better come, too."

"Better come! I should say I _had_!" cried Norah, quickly taking off her
apron. "The poor little lad caught up in a balloon! The saints preserve
us! 'Tis probably one of them circus balloons, or maybe a German airship
came along and caught him up! The poor darlin'!"

"Oh, no!" exclaimed Rose, as she trotted along with her mother and Norah,
"Mun isn't in a balloon. His balloon is caught in a big tree and the
little darlin' won't come away and----"

"It couldn't be much worse!" gasped Norah. "We'll have to get a fireman
with a long ladder, 'tis probable, to get him down."

"I don't see how it could have happened," said Mrs. Bunker. "He was in the
yard playing, a little while ago. The next time I looked he was gone.
Where did the balloon come from, Rose?"

"Mun Bun bought the balloon!" said the little girl.

"He _bought_ it?" cried Norah and Mrs. Bunker.

"Yes, it's a five-cent one. He had five cents that Jerry Simms gave him,
Mun had, and he bought the balloon, and it had a long string to it, an