"We didn't bring him with us 'cause he's lost," said Harry, leaning on his shovel. "He's an awful nice dog, too. We were going to bring him here with us, but one day, when we were out in the automobile, he jumped out and ran away and we never saw him again."
"We had a dog Splash, and he ran away, too," said Sue.
"My dog would carry things in his mouth," went on Harry. "He used to carry our paper, and sometimes he would take things you didn't want him to, and carry them away."
"Oh, Bunny!" suddenly exclaimed Sue, "that's just what the big yellow dog did. He took mother's pocketbook when we didn't want him to and carried it away. Maybe this is the same dog!"
"What kind of a dog was yours?" asked Bunny of his new friend.
"He was a big yellow one," was the answer. "But he was never here in this place, 'cause we were never here ourselves before this summer. So he couldn't have taken your mother's pocketbook."
"But the pocketbook wasn't taken from here," said Bunny. "It was where we live—in Bellemere. And it was a big, yellow dog! Could your dog run fast?" he asked Harry.
"Oh, yes, terribly fast. But what's that about your mother's pocketbook?"
Bunny and Sue told the story by turns, how they had seen the dog running away with the pocketbook containing the five-dollar bill and their mother's diamond ring.
"And he ran into a carpenter shop, and we ran in after him, and Mr. Foswick locked us in, and Bunny broke a window, and we had a terrible time!" explained Sue.