“Where’s your mother?” he called out. “I want to see her.”
Muffs, who was really braver than she supposed she was, crawled out from a good hiding place she had just discovered underneath the porch.
“I told you,” she said simply. “My mother is in New York.”
“His mother then,” he demanded, pointing to Tommy.
“She’s letting me board here,” Muffs explained. “She went shopping.”
The headless man was losing his temper again. He turned to Mary who had just emerged, dirty and looking rather ashamed, from underneath the A-coop.
“Where’s your mother? I’ve got to see somebody.”
“My mother’s the same as Tommy’s mother,” Mary said. “But if you must see somebody I think Daddy’s home. He’s working out in that house at the end of the walk. It’s his carpenter shop.”
“I’ll see him later. What were you doing in there?” he asked, scowling at the A-coop.
“Hiding,” Mary confessed. “That’s where we used to keep Bunny Bright Eyes. He was a rabbit. The man that owned him came and got him while we were busy making him a house.”