"Well, I think you may have some," said Mrs. Bunker. "I'll come down to the whistling wagon with you and see about it."
Margy and Mun Bun led her down to the front gate, where the peanut man, still smiling, was waiting. The hot oven on his wagon, in which he roasted the peanuts, was still whistling. Afterward Daddy Bunker told the children that the steam came out and made the whistling sound by puffing itself through a tin thing with holes in it, just as a boy blows his breath through the same kind of tin thing to make a whistle.
"And the reason the Italian puts water in the top of his peanut-roaster is so that the peanuts in the bags, where he puts them to keep warm, will not burn," the father of the six little Bunkers told them. "The whistling is like the bell the old-fashioned ice-cream man used to ring. People hear it and come to buy, just as you did."
Mrs. Bunker found the Italian's peanuts fresh and nicely browned and roasted, and she bought enough for all the children.
"You have to thank Margy and Mun Bun for them," she said to Russ, Rose and the twins. "They first heard the whistling wagon and ran out to see what it was."
The children had a sort of little play-party with the peanuts, though Laddie stuffed some of his in his pocket.
"I'm going to save 'em," he said.
"What for?" asked Russ, who had his kite partly finished.
"Oh, maybe I'll see an elephant in a circus parade," the little boy answered.
"Circus parades never come up in our Back Bay section," said Aunt Jo with a smile. "So I don't believe you'll see an elephant, Laddie."