rs.
Neither Bunny nor Charlie knew what to do.

"Oh, dear!" sighed Sue for the third time.

Suddenly the three children saw the upper end of the ladder--the part
that was raised up over the roof of the sun parlor. They saw this part
of the ladder moving.

"Oh, somebody's coming up!" exclaimed Charlie.

"Maybe it's mother!" wailed Sue. "Oh, help me get in the window! I don't
want her to see me this way!"

"Mother wouldn't be coming up the ladder!" declared Bunny. "What would
she be coming up the ladder for?"

"That's so!" agreed Charlie. "I guess she wouldn't."

"But somebody's coming up!" declared Sue, and this was very plain to be
seen. The ladder shook more and more.

Wonderingly the children watched it, and then there came into sight,
above the roof of the sun parlor, the head and shoulders of the
painter. He looked surprised as he saw the children, and then a cheerful
smile spread over his face as he said:

"Well, you've been getting daubed up, I see!"

"Ye-yes," faltered Bunny. "We got some of your paint on us!"

"'Tisn't my paint!" laughed the painter. "It's your father's, Bunny. I
got this paint down at his boat dock to paint the roof of this sun
parlor. I don't mind how much of it you daub on yourselves. 'Tisn't my
paint, you know!"

"But we don't want it on us!" exclaimed Sue. "Oh, I fell in the brook
and I got all muddy and now I'm all covered with paint! Oh, dear!"

Sue was almost crying again, and the painter who at first had thought
the children were merely playing, now began to understand that something
was wrong.

"What's the matter?" he asked.

Then the story was told, of why the boys had helped Sue climb up the
ladder to get into her room so her mother and the company would not see
her in her soiled dress.

"But now we're all paint!" wailed Sue.

"Well, never mind!" said the good-natured painter. "I can take those
paint spots out for you, if that's all you're worrying about."

"Oh, can you?" eagerly cried Sue.

"How?" asked Charlie Star, who was a rather curious little chap.

"Will you?" asked Bunny Brown, which was more to the point.

"I can and will!" said the painter. "Wait until I get some clean rags
and my turpentine."

He want back down the ladder, but soon came up again, with a can of
something with a strong, but not unpleasant smell. Bunny remembered that
smell. Once when he was little, and had a bad cold, his mother had
rubbed lard and turpentine on his chest.

"T