So, while this is happening, I'll take just a moment to tell my new readers something about the two children, whose adventures I am to relate to you in this book. This volume is the eighth one in the series. The first, called "Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue," introduced you to the two children. In that first book I told you that they lived with their father and mother, Mr. and Mrs. Walter Brown in the seaport town of Bellemere, on Sandport Bay. Mr. Brown was in the boat and fish business, and hired a number of men and boys, of whom Bunker was one.
With the family also lived Uncle Tad, of whom I have spoken, and then there was the hired girl, and Splash, the dog. The children loved them both, and they also loved Jed Winkler, an old sailor of the town, but Miss Euphemia Winkler, his sister, they did not love so well, though they liked the funny antics of Wango, a monkey, that Mr. Winkler had brought back from one of his many voyages.
Bunny Brown was about six years old, and Sue was a year younger. She had brown eyes and curly hair, and Bunny's eyes were blue, and his hair had once been curly, but now was getting straighter. Bunny and Sue were always having fun, and if you want to read about some of it just look in the second book, which tells about them on Grandpa's farm. There Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue played circus and had even better times, as related in that volume. In Aunt Lu's city home they—well, I guess it will be best if you read that book for yourselves, instead of having me telling you partly about it here.
In Camp-Rest-a-While the two children had more good times, and also when they went to the big woods. And just before the things that I am going to tell you about in this book, Bunny and his sister, with their parents, went on an auto tour in the ark. They traveled, ate, and slept in the big moving van that Mr. Brown had had put on an automobile frame and there were no end of good times.
And now, from the same ark, which was being taken to the shop, Bunny and Sue had seen the Shetland pony so frightened that he ran away.
"Oh, Daddy! do you s'pose he'll be hurt?" asked Bunny, as he and his sister hurried after their father and Bunker Blue.
"Who, the man or the pony?" asked Mr. Brown, for both were now out of sight.
"The pony," answered Sue. "Oh, how I could love him!"
"So could I!" exclaimed Bunny. "He was a dandy!"
"I didn't think our ark could scare anything as much as it scared the little horse," said Bunker Blue. "I guess he'd never seen a big auto before."