"And his parrot! He's got a parrot, too!" exclaimed Sue.

"Yes, if he'll let us have the parrot we could have a dandy show!"
agreed Bunny.

"I hope it will be a better show than the one we were in," said Mart,
with a sad little smile. "It isn't any fun to go traveling with a troupe
and then have it 'bust up' on the road as ours did."

"Aren't you children very young to be traveling alone?" asked Mrs.
Brown. "Haven't you any--well, any folks at all?"

She did not like to mention "father or mother," for fear both parents
might be dead and to speak of them might cause sorrow to Mart and
Lucile. But surely, Mrs. Brown thought, the boy and girl ought to have
some one to look after them.

"Oh, we weren't exactly alone," said Lucile, who was not as old as her
brother. "We were like one big family until the show failed. Mr. and
Mrs. Jackson were in charge, and Mrs. Jackson was very good to us. But
people didn't seem to like our performance, and we didn't make enough
money to keep on playing."

"I liked your show," said Bunny.

"So did I!" exclaimed his sister Sue. "It was grand."

"Yes, if we had done as well everywhere as we did in this town I guess
we'd have been all right," said Mart. "But we didn't. We got stranded in
Wayville--that's the next largest town to this, I heard some one say,
and we couldn't go any farther. Some of our baggage had to go to pay
bills. Mr. and Mrs. Jackson left us at a boarding house while they went
to New York to see if they could raise money."

"But I guess they couldn't," added his sister. "Anyhow they didn't come
back, and we didn't have any money. So the boarding house lady kept what
few things we had left, and Mart and I came away."

"I made up my mind I'd have to do something," went on the climbing boy,
as Bunny and Sue thought of him. "I'm strong, and if I could get work
I'd soon earn enough money to take me and my sister back to New York.
Perhaps you could tell me where I could get a job," he added to Mrs.
Brown.

"We'll talk about that after you get warm and have had something to
eat," said she.

"Yes, maybe that would be better," agreed Mart. "It makes you feel sort
of funny not to eat."

"I know it does," put in Bunny. "Once Sue and I went to Camp
Rest-a-While, and we got lost in the woods, and we didn't have anything
to eat for a terrible long while."

"It was 'most all day," sighed Sue. "And we were terrible glad when
daddy and mother found us!"

"I should say you