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Updated: June 4, 2025
"Come on!" cried Russ, immediately in action again. "Let's stop up the hole. Then the foxes can't get out until Mr. Armatage comes." They did that at least, Russ and Vi and the colored boys did. Rose dusted Laddie off and wiped his face. He soon became more cheerful. "Well," he said, with a long breath, "they didn't bite me after all; but I thought they would. And their eyes shone dreadfully."
Russ had gone to the fire and brought Mammy June out of the cabin and brought her up here to the big house! To tell the truth, Russ was so excited when he got back that in telling of the adventure he gave the younger children to understand that he had done it all himself. Daddy Bunker and Mr. Armatage did not appear much in his story. "Russ is always doing the big things," sighed Laddie.
Bunker felt so happy about the recovery of the two children that he determined to do something nice for the colored people who had so enthusiastically aided in hunting for Russ and Rose. "Let 'em have another big dance and dinner, such as they had Christmas eve," Mr. Bunker suggested to the planter. "I'll pay the bill." "Just as you say, Charley," agreed Mr. Armatage.
"We we were playing Christmas tree," said Margy, grabbing hold of Rose's hand. "For de lan's sake!" repeated the man, showing the whites of his eyes in a most astonishing way. "What dat in dere?" "That's our Christmas tree," said Mun Bun, very bravely now. "For de lan's sake!" ejaculated the man for a third time. "What Mistah Armatage gwine to say now?
"I know there isn't anything of the kind. Cats hate water." He had already learned that Frane, Junior, was apt to exaggerate. Russ thought the Armatage boy was letting his fancy run wild at this present moment. "It is a cat," murmured Frane. "I can see his whiskers moving. Yep, a big fellow! Want to see?" and he took his eye away from the bark cylinder.
Mosquitoes?" demanded Russ, as much puzzled as anybody. "The red thing! With the pointed ears! And a big tail!" cried Vi in gasps. "What can she mean?" demanded Rose. But Philly Armatage suspected the reason for Vi's fear at once. She grabbed hold of Laddie's ankles and started to draw him out of the pipe. "You'd better come out!" she cried. "That old fox will bite your nose off."
The Armatage children knew a great deal more about the plantation and the country surrounding it than the Bunkers did. That was only natural. Philly or Alice or Frane, Junior, would not have started off secretly, as Russ and Rose Bunker did, after nine o'clock at night to go down to the place where old Mammy June's cabin had been burned.
"I've got half as many young ones as you have, Charley," said Mr. Armatage. "You've beat me a hundred per cent. I wonder if we keep on growing if the ratio will remain the same?" Russ knew what "ratio" meant, and he asked: "How can it keep that way if we grow to be seven little Bunkers? You can't have three and a half little Armatages, you know."
Then he and Mr. Armatage talked business for a while. The owner of the Meiggs Plantation wished to get more land and hire more hands for the next year, and through Mr. Bunker he expected to obtain capital for this. Aside from business the two old friends desired very much to renew their boyhood acquaintance and have their wives and children become acquainted.
Armatage laughingly said, from sinking quite out of sight. But the land on which the Armatage home stood was high and dry. It was a beautiful grassy knoll, acres in extent, and shaded by wide-armed trees which had scarcely lost any leaves it seemed to the little Bunkers, though this was winter.
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