"There you go again with your questions!" interrupted Russ, with another laugh. "You can't seem to stop, Vi. You don't give any one else a chance."
"And I know a nice riddle I can ask, too," broke in Laddie, who was his sister Violet's twin. "I know a riddle about what makes the paper stick on the wall and if it falls off——"
"I asked first!" broke in Vi. "Just tell me what made you count us all out just as if we were going to play tag, Russ, and then what made you do a flop-over. Tell me that, and then we'll play the steamboat game."
"All right, I'll answer just those questions and no more," promised Russ. "Then we'll have some fun. I counted you all out—one, two, three, four, five—six—that's me—because I wanted to see if we were all here."
As there were six little Bunkers, it was sometimes needful to count them, one by one, to make sure all were on hand. This was what Russ had done.
"And I turned a somersault when I came to myself, just because I felt so good," the dark-haired boy went on with a merry whistle. "Come on, we'll play the steamboat game now. Rose, you please get out the spinning wheel, and Margy and Mun Bun, you bring over the littlest footstools. Don't bring the big ones, 'cause they're too heavy for you."
"Shall we sit on 'em footstools?" asked Mun Bun, as he shook his golden hair out of his blue eyes.
"Yes, you sit on one footstool and Margy can sit on the other," said Russ. "Now, don't both of you try to sit on the same one, or there'll be a fuss, and we'll never get to playing. Can you bring the spinning wheel all alone, Rose?"
"Yes, it isn't heavy," answered Rose, the oldest girl of the six little Bunkers. "It drags over the floor easy." And as she pulled to the middle of the attic, from the dark corner where it had stood all summer, a big, old-fashioned spinning wheel, Rose hummed a little song. She generally was humming or singing, when she was not helping her mother in the housework. For where there were so many children, there were more matters to attend to than Mrs. Bunker, Norah, the Irish cook, or Jerry Simms, the odd-chore man, could well look after, and Rose was glad to aid. She was a regular little "mother's helper," and her father often called her that.
So while Rose brought over the spinning wheel and Margy and Mun Bun the footstools, Laddie and Violet appealed to their older brother.