“Though I’m not sure I can make it,” he said, puckering up his own lips to send forth a shrill tune. “Why not?” asked Laddie. “Well, the bark doesn’t peel off so well now as it does in the spring,” Russ answered. “But maybe if I pound it long enough I can slip it off.” An hour or more passed pleasantly, the children busy at their different means of having fun, and then Mun Bun came toward Rose, saying: “I’m hungry now. I want to eat.” “So do I!” added Margy, who generally wanted to do whatever she heard Mun Bun say he wanted to do. “Well, I think we can have lunch,” decided Rose. “Ho, Russ!” she called. A loud whistle answered her, for Russ had succeeded in stripping the bark from a tree branch and had whittled out a whistle that was louder than the one formed by his lips. “Come, we’re going to eat!” called Rose, and soon all six little Bunkers were walking toward the stump where the lunch had been left. But when they reached it—the lunch was gone! “Who took it?” demanded Rose. “I didn’t! You needn’t look at me!” declared Laddie quickly. He sometimes did play jokes like this—if you call them jokes. “Are you sure we left it on this stump?” asked Russ. “Of course I’m sure,” said Rose. “Look, you can see some of the crumbs. Oh, Russ, some one has eaten the lunch!” “Maybe it was a bear!” suggested Violet, with a little shiver of mixed delight and fear. “There are no bears here,” Russ replied impatiently. “Then maybe it was a squirrel,” suggested Laddie. “A squirrel couldn’t carry away the boxes, baskets, and everything!” declared Rose. Suddenly, from behind the bushes, came a chuckle in a boy’s voice. At first Russ thought perhaps Ralph Watson and his dog Jimsie had come along, and that Ralph had hidden the lunch for fun. But a moment later the ugly face of the peddler boy looked out from the bushes. “I took your lunch!” he said. “I ate it! I ate it all up!” CHAPTER XXIV STUNG For a moment or two the six little Bunkers could hardly believe this dreadful news. In fact the two youngest did not quite understand what the peddler boy said. Then Rose exclaimed: “Oh, you couldn’t! You couldn’t eat all our lunch!” “Ha! Ha!” chuckled the mean peddler boy. “Yes, I did! I was terribly hungry, and I ate it all! You took your strawberry shortcake away from me, but you can’t take this lunch away, because I ate it all up! Ha! Ha!” “You horrid boy!” cried Rose. She said afterward she just couldn’t help calling him that name, even though it was not very polite. But, then, he wasn’t polite himself, that peddler boy wasn’t. “You—you——” began Laddie, spluttering somewhat, which he often did when he was excited. “Did you take my apples?” For Laddie had put up in the lunch a special little basket of apples. “I have the apples in my pocket!” boasted the shoe-lace boy. “I ate one of ’em, and I’ll eat the others when I get home. But I ate all the rest of your lunch. I haven’t any of that in my pockets.”