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all we can to find Fred for his parents."

"I'll see what I can do after the exhibition is over," promised Mr.
Brown. "I'll ask the proprietor of the medicine wagon if I can get a
chance. But I'll have to do it when the banjo player can't hear, for in
case he should be Fred--which I hardly think can be true--but if it
should be he, and he heard me asking, he'd run away again."

"Yes, I suppose he would," said Mrs. Brown with a sigh. "Oh, how foolish
boys are sometimes. They don't know what is good for them," and she
looked at Bunny, as if wondering if the time would ever come when he
would not be a "mother's boy." She hoped not.

"Let's get up as close as we can," said Bunny. "Maybe if it's Fred we
can tell, no matter if he is blacked up like a minstrel."

"He doesn't look at all like Fred to me," said Sue. "He looks so funny
with his big red lips and his white collar."

"That's the way they all dress," said Bunny. "Come on, here's a place we
can squeeze through and see better."

Bunny wiggled his way up among the people. His sister followed him, and
Mr. and Mrs. Brown, watching the children, knew where to find them when
they wanted to go away.

"Now take a good look," whispered Sue to Bunny, as they got very near
the platform on which the boy sat. She had made her whisper rather loud,
and it came at just the time when the banjoist stopped playing, so that
he and several persons heard the little girl.

"What's the matter?" asked one man, smiling down at Sue. "Didn't you
ever see a minstrel before?"

"Yes, I did," said Sue. "But maybe not this one."

"Oh, they're all alike," said the man, but Sue paid no more attention
to him, for she was nudging Bunny and trying to get him to look at the
colored boy.

Bunny himself was greatly interested. He wanted to make sure whether or
not the player were Fred. So he stared with all his might at the
banjoist, who just then began another song.

By this time the medicine man had come out on the platform of his wagon
with more filled bottles to sell. He would begin as soon as the song was
finished, for more people had gathered, attracted by the music.

And then Bunny and Sue both noticed that the colored boy was looking
straight at them. But he did not seem to know them. And surely, if it
had been Fred Ward he would have known the Brown children, even though
he had lived next door to them only a short time. People did not easily
forget Bunny Brown and his Sister Sue, o