"Well, it's a good thing it didn't go off in the very middle of the night, when we were all asleep," said Mother Bunker. "We surely would have thought an army of soldiers was marching past."
"And it wasn't any ghost at all!" exclaimed Rose, as the grown folks turned to go downstairs.
"No, and there never will be," said her mother. "All noises have something real back of them—even that funny groaning noise we heard."
"But we don't know what that is, yet," said Russ.
"Go to sleep now," urged his mother, and soon the awakened four of the six little Bunkers were slumbering again.
The next morning they all had a good laugh over the drum and the alarm clock, and Laddie and Russ had fun making it go off again. The clock was one that had never kept good time, and so had been tossed away in the attic, which held so many things with which the children could have fun.
"Want to help us, Rose?" asked Russ after breakfast, when the children had on their rubber boots, ready to go out and play in the snow.
"What you going to do?" she asked.
"Make a snow man," Russ answered. "We're going to make another big one—bigger than the one the rain spoiled."
"It'll be lots of fun," added Laddie.