“Hurrah!” cried Juddy Hatch. “We’re going to play robbers, and you can be in my cave.”
“Be in my cave,” urged David, his brother. “Our side has the best slide.”
“I’ll come up there and settle you youngsters if you’re going to quarrel,” threatened Jimmie, switching a buggy whip and looking very fierce. “You’d better start playing and stop arguing.”
The children knew Jimmie had small patience with little bickerings, though he had never been known to do anything more severe than scold. So they took him at his word and began to play.
“You be on Juddy’s side, then,” agreed David. “See, we each have a cave here in the hay—that’s mine in this corner. The way we do is to all go into our caves and take turns creeping up. When you hear us on the roof of your cave, you have to get out and run over to ours, climb up to the top and slide down the other side. If you’re caught you have to b’long to our robber tribe.”
The hay was very smooth and slippery, and the children had many a tumble as the two robber tribes chased each other across the haymow. Such shrieks of laughter, such howls as the robbers in their excitement sometimes forgot and pulled a braid of Sarah’s or Dorabelle’s! The baby continued to sleep placidly through all the noise, and Jimmie told Grandpa that he thought perhaps “the poor little kid was deaf!” Jimmie was only fooling, of course, for the Hatch baby was not deaf at all.
It was Sunny Boy’s turn to be chased, and as he heard David’s robber tribe beginning to climb up on the roof of his cave he dashed out and ran for the other cave at the end of the haymow. Up the side he went, and down. Dorabelle was captured in that raid and had to go over to David’s side.
“Now I’ve got four in my tribe,” crowed the robber chief. “Get your men together, Jud, and we’ll do it again.”
“Where’s Sunny Boy?” demanded Juddy, counting his tribe. “He was here—I saw him climb up the top of the cave. Sunny Boy! Sun-ny!”
No Sunny Boy answered.