mit, sitting on a box just outside the tent,
talking very earnestly to Mr. Brown, who had just come from town in the
small automobile. It had stopped raining.

"Well, I've decided not to let him go back to you," Mr. Brown was
saying. "I don't think you have treated him right, and I am going to
complain to the authorities about it."

"And I tell you, Mr. Brown, not meaning to be impolite, that I'm
entitled to that boy an' I'm going to have him. He's bound out to me for
the Summer."

"What does he want, Mother?" whispered Bunny.

"Hush, my dear. Daddy will attend to it all. Mr. Bixby came here a
little while ago and he wants to take Tom back. Tom doesn't want to go
on account of the 'needle pricks' as he calls them. But Mr. Bixby wants
him, and your father is not going to let Tom go."

"Oh, I'm glad of that!" exclaimed Sue in a whisper. "I like Tom, and I
don't care if I was locked in a trunk and 'most smothered if we can keep
Tom."

CHAPTER XXIII

TRYING TO HELP TOM

"You were locked in a trunk and almost smothered!" exclaimed Mrs. Brown,
looking first at Sue and then at Mr. Bixby, as though she thought he
might have had some hand in the matter.

"Yes, it was over in Mrs. Preston's attic. But it was my own fault, I
never should have got in the trunk, for it closed with a spring lock and
they had to get a carpenter to saw me out."

"Oh! And spoil Mrs. Preston's trunk?"

"'Tisn't spoiled," said Bunny. "She's going to let us use it for a dog
kennel."

"And it will make such a nice one for Splash," said Sue. "You see, we
can put hinges on the little square place the carpenter cut out to make
a hole for me to get through, and we can make something fast to it that
Splash can get hold of with his teeth, like a knob, so he can pull the
door shut when it rains. It will be awful nice. I don't mind having been
shut up a bit when I think of Splash."

"But how did it all happen?" asked Mrs. Brown, while her husband and Mr.
Bixby were talking together.

The children told of Sue's adventure and of Charlie and Rose, and of the
big porch and of the lunch.

"But what does Mr. Bixby want, Mother? Is he really going to take Tom
away from us?" asked Sue.

"I don't know, my little girl. I hope not. But he seems to have the law
on his side."

"Well, you have your way of looking at it and I have mine," Mr. Bixby
was saying to Mr. Brown. "I hired this boy from the poorhouse and agreed
to pay him certain wages. Par