"Oh, what's that?" asked Vi, at once curious when she saw the object before Mun Bun.
"I dess it's a box," said Mun Bun, looking over his shoulder. "But sometimes it walks. I'm waiting to see it walk again."
"A walking box!" shouted Laddie. "I can make a riddle out of that, I know. When is a box not a box at all?"
"When it's a turtle!" exclaimed Russ, beginning to laugh.
"No, no!" said Laddie. "That isn't the answer. When it walks. That is the answer to my riddle, Russ."
"That is an awfully funny looking turtle," Rose said. "See how high up it is." None of them had ever seen a wood tortoise before, and the box-like, horny shell was not like that of the little mud-turtles in Rainbow River or the snapping turtle Laddie had found at Uncle Fred's.
The tortoise was so scared (for Mun Bun had been poking it with a stick) that its legs and head were drawn into the shell and it refused to move. Russ did not know but that the tortoise would bite, so he said they had all better go back to the calf. Mun Bun did not like to give up his new-found treasure, but he went back, clinging to Rose's hand and looking back at the tortoise as long as he could see it.
When they came to the place where the calf had been stuck in the mud there was Tad Munson and with him a man. The man had already dragged the calf out to the road and was wiping the mud off with a bunch of grass.
"I declare, you are smart young ones," said John Winsome. "I would not have lost this calf for a good deal. I thank you. I never would have got him out if you hadn't thought of those rails, sonny."
Russ did not much care about being called "sonny." He said that he might as well have been called "moony"—and he didn't go mooning about at all! Older folk were always calling him "young staver" and "chip of the old block," and things like that. They didn't mean any harm; but of course Russ, like other boys, did not fancy being called out of name. And "sonny" did not make the oldest Bunker feel dignified at all.