omplained the little
girl. "I don't want to go home all wet!"

"But you'll have to!" insisted Bunny. "You can't stay out here till you
get dry. You must go to the house, Sue!"

"Not the front way nor the side way nor the back way!" Sue declared.

"Then how are you going to get in?" asked Bunny. "Do you want to go in
through the cellar?"

"I'd have to come up in the kitchen," objected Sue, "and Mary would see
me just the same and she'd say, 'bless an' save us!'"

"Well, but how are you going to get in?" Bunny demanded. "There isn't
any other way."

"Yes, there is!" suddenly exclaimed Charlie.

"How?" asked Bunny Brown.

"Up the painter's ladder," went on Charlie. "They're painting the roof
of your sun parlor. And the ladder's right there. We can get Sue up the
ladder to the roof of the sun parlor, and there's a second-story window
she can get in so nobody can see her, and change her things."

"Oh! A ladder!" gasped Sue, when she heard how Charlie and her brother
planned to get her into the house unseen by company. "A ladder!"

"Sure!" cried Bunny. "That's the best way! Charlie and I'll help you
up."

"You won't let me fall?" asked Sue.

"Course not!" declared Charlie. "I've climbed lots of ladders!"

"So have I!" boasted Bunny Brown. "And so have you, Sue Brown!"

"And can't anybody see me if I go up the painter's ladder?" asked Sue,
who was feeling most uncomfortable, being clammy and wet.

"Nobody'll see you!" declared Charlie. "The ladder's away off on one
side of the sun parlor. Mary can't see you from the kitchen, and your
mother and the company can't see you."

"Is the painter there?" Sue went on. She was asking a good many
questions and making a number of objections, I think.

"No, the painter isn't there," Charlie said. "I saw him going back to
the shop after more paint when we came down here."

"All right then!" sighed Sue. "Help me up the ladder!"

Cautiously the children approached it. There the ladder stood, a big
one, on a long slant leading from the ground to the roof of the
one-story sun parlor. From the roof of this extension were several
windows Sue could climb into, one opening from her own room.

No one was in sight, and the painter had not come back. Sue was just
starting up the ladder, with Bunny going before her and Charlie
following her, when the little girl happened to think of something
else.

"S'posin' the roof's just been painted?" she asked. "How can I walk on
it?"