to keep track of them. So you might take my word
for it, now, that there were six of them, and count them afterward, if
you care to.

"Come on!" cried the eldest Bunker--Russ, who was eight years old. "Come
on, Rose, let's have some fun."

"What'll we do?" asked Rose, Russ' sister, who was about a year younger.
"I'm not going to roll on the grass, 'cause I've got a clean dress on,
and mother said I wasn't to spoil it."

"Pooh! Clean grass like Aunt Jo's won't spoil any dress," said Russ.
"Anyhow, I'm not going to roll much more. Let's get the pipes and see
who can blow the biggest soap bubbles."

"Oh, I want to do that!" cried Vi, or Violet, who was, you might say,
the third little Bunker, being the third oldest, except Laddie, of
course. "What makes so many colors come in soap bubbles when you blow
them?" she asked.

"The soap," answered Russ, getting up after a roll on the grass, and
brushing his clothes. "It's the soap that does it."

"But soap isn't that color when we wash ourselves with it," went on Vi.
"And what makes bubbles burst when you blow 'em too big?"

"I don't know," answered Russ. Like many an older person, he did not try
to answer all Vi's questions. She asked too many of them.

"Let's blow the bubbles," suggested Rose. "Then maybe we can see what
makes 'em burst!"

"Come on, Margy and Mun Bun!" called Vi to two other and smaller
Bunkers, a little boy and girl who were digging little holes in a sandy
place in the yard of Aunt Jo's home. "Come on; we're going to blow
bubbles!"

These two little Bunkers left their play and hastened to join the
others. At the same time a boy with curly hair and gray eyes, who was
Violet's twin, dropped some pieces of wood, which he had been trying to
make into some sort of toy, and came running along the path.

"I want to blow some bubbles, too!" he said.

"We'll all blow them!" called Rose, who had a sort of "little mother"
air about her when the smaller children were with her. "We'll have a
soap-bubble party!"

"Shall we have things to eat?" asked Mun Bun.

"'Course we will," cried Margy, the little girl who had been playing
with him in the sand. "We always has good things to eat at parties;
don't we, Rose?"

"Well, maybe we can get some cookies from Aunt Jo," said Rose. "You can
run and ask her."

Off started Margy, eager to get the good things to eat. It would not
seem like a party, even with soap bubbles, unless there were things to
eat! All the