BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON THE ROLLING OCEAN

BY LAURA LEE HOPE AUTHOR OF THE BUNNY BROWN SERIES, THE BOBBSEY TWINS SERIES, THE SIX LITTLE BUNKERS SERIES, MAKE BELIEVE STORIES, ETC. ILLUSTRATED BY WALTER S. ROGERS NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS

Made in the United States of America

Books by Laura Lee Hope

12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.

THE BUNNY BROWN SERIES

BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON GRANDPA’S FARM BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE PLAYING CIRCUS BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT AUNT LU’S CITY HOME BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT CAMP REST-A-WHILE BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE IN THE BIG WOODS BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON AN AUTO TOUR BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AND THEIR SHETLAND PONY BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE GIVING A SHOW BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT CHRISTMAS TREE COVE BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE IN THE SUNNY SOUTH BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE KEEPING STORE BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AND THEIR TRICK DOG BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE AT A SUGAR CAMP BUNNY BROWN AND HIS SISTER SUE ON THE ROLLING OCEAN

THE BOBBSEY TWINS SERIES

THE BOBBSEY TWINS THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE COUNTRY THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT THE SEASHORE THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SCHOOL THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT SNOW LODGE THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON A HOUSEBOAT THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT MEADOW BROOK THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT HOME THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN A GREAT CITY THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON BLUEBERRY ISLAND THE BOBBSEY TWINS ON THE DEEP BLUE SEA THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN WASHINGTON THE BOBBSEY TWINS IN THE GREAT WEST THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT CEDAR CAMP THE BOBBSEY TWINS AT THE COUNTY FAIR THE BOBBSEY TWINS CAMPING OUT THE BOBBSEY TWINS AND BABY MAY THE BOBBSEY TWINS KEEPING HOUSE

SIX LITTLE BUNKERS SERIES

(Eleven Titles)

MAKE BELIEVE STORIES

(Twelve Titles)

Grosset & Dunlap New York

Copyright, 1925, by GROSSET & DUNLAP

Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue on the Rolling Ocean

CHAPTER I THE RUNAWAY HORSE

Bunny Brown stood behind a long board which was laid across two boxes in the front yard. On the board were some piles of white stones and little heaps of red pebbles. There were also clam shells, a few filled with white sand and others with brown sand.

On one end of the board were some pieces of paper cut into squares and near them was a ball of string. On the other end of the board, balanced on a small box, was a shingle. This shingle moved up and down like the scales in a grocery store. In fact, this shingle and the box were Bunny Brown’s scale. He was “playing store.”

[Pg 2]

“Well, I wonder if anybody is coming to buy anything at my store to-day,” said Bunny, as he paced up and down behind the counter.

Just then a little girl, carrying a doll under one arm, walked up to the shade tree under which the play store was. She went to the counter and looked at the piles of sand, pebbles, and the clam shells. But Bunny Brown did not seem to think she was a little girl. He bowed to her and asked:

“What will it be to-day, Mrs. Anderson?”

“Oh, Bunny! You sound just like Mr. Gordon in the real grocery store!” laughed Sue, clapping her hands. As she did this her doll fell down on the grass. “You’re just like Mr. Gordon!” cried the little girl again.

Bunny Brown frowned, wrinkling his forehead until it looked like a wash-board from the laundry.

“Look here!” he exclaimed, coming out from behind the counter. “I’m not going to play store if you do that!”

“Do what?” asked Sue, for it was Bunny Brown’s sister Sue who had come to the store. Bunny had called her “Mrs. Anderson,” but[Pg 3] all the same, she was Sue Brown. “What did I do, Bunny?” asked Sue.

“There you go again!” cried Bunny. “Stop calling me by my right name! If we’re going to play store I’m Mr. Gordon and you’re Mrs. Anderson!”

“Yes, I know, Bunny, but—”

“Oh, will you stop it?” cried the little boy, dancing up and down in his excitement. “I’m Mr. Gordon keeping the store!” he explained.

“Yes, I know you are,” admitted Sue. “I said you sounded just like Mr. Gordon when mother goes in and he says what will it be to-day, Mrs. Brown. You sounded just like him, and—”

“Well, then, you must call me Mr. Gordon!” insisted Bunny. “Now start over again.”

“Oh, all right, Bun—I mean Mr. Gordon!” and Sue quickly corrected herself. “Wait a minute.”

She picked up her doll from the grass and, imitating as nearly as she could the manner of a grown woman, walked out of the store. Of course the store was out of doors, in the front yard of the Brown home, under the[Pg 4] trees. But to Bunny the store was very real, indeed. Bunny could “pretend” much harder than could Sue, because, possibly, he was a year older.

Sue—or Mrs. Anderson—having gone out, turned about to come in again. Bunny was once more behind the counter, looking at the clam shells, the piles of pebbles, and the sand, at his wrapping paper and twine and at the swaying shingle on a box—his scales.

“Good morning, Mrs. Anderson, what will it be to-day?” again asked the little boy storekeeper as he bowed to his sister.

“Oh, good morning, Mr. Gordon,” replied Sue, and she did not even smile as she gave her brother the pretend name. This showed that Sue was now playing the game in real earnest. “Have you any sugar this morning, Mr. Gordon?”

“Yes, Mrs. Anderson, I have some nice fresh sugar that just came in,” Bunny answered, acting so much like Mr. Gordon, the real grocer, that Sue nearly smiled at him. But she remembered just in time and her face grew serious.

[Pg 5]

“Do you wish white sugar or brown, Mrs. Anderson?” asked Bunny. I can call him that without getting into trouble, you know.

“I’ll have a pound of white sugar, and two pounds of brown,” answered Sue, or Mrs. Anderson.

“Please have a seat while I weigh it for you,” the little storekeeper went on.

In front of the counter there was a small box. Pretending that this was a stool, such as they sometimes have in real stores, Sue sat down on it.

Then Bunny, taking up a stone for a weight, put it on one end of the shingle scales. On the other end of the shingle he piled up some white sand, and when the shingle balanced, that was a pound. He put the white sand in one of the pieces of paper and tied a string around it.

“There is your white sugar, Mrs. Anderson,” he said to his sister. Sue took it but cried:

“Oh, Bunny, there’s a hole in the paper and all the sand is running out! Look!”

Bunny Brown raised his hands in the air.

[Pg 6]

“There you go again!” he cried. “Didn’t I tell you to call me Mr. Gordon and not Bunny? And that isn’t sand—it’s sugar! If you aren’t going to play right—”

“Oh, Bunny—I mean Mr. Gordon—I forgot!” gasped Sue. “Truly, I did! Come on and play!” she begged, for Bunny started to walk out from behind the counter. “I won’t do it again! Really, I won’t, Bun—I mean Mr. Gordon! And I don’t care if this san—I mean if the sugar spills. I have lots of money and I can buy more,” and she looked in her pocket where a mass of green leaves from the lilac bush took the place of money.

“Well, all right,” said Bunny slowly, after a moment. “But if you forget again I’m not going to play!”

“I won’t forget,” promised Sue.

She placed the paper of sand-sugar down on the counter in front of her, brushed some of the grains off her doll’s dress and said:

“Now I’ll have some brown sugar, Mr. Gordon.”

“Yes, Mrs. Anderson,” said Bunny. “This brown sugar is very sweet. Just taste it!”

[Pg 7]

He held some of the brown sand out to his sister. She looked at him in a funny way, and Bunny cried:

“Go on—taste it!”

Thereupon Sue wet the end of her finger and dipped it in the sand Bunny held out to her on the end of a little board. Then Sue put the sand on the tip of her tongue.

“Burr-r-r! Ugh! Oh, yes, it is very sweet sugar!” she exclaimed, making a funny face as she spluttered until the sand was out of her mouth. “I think I’ll have two pounds of that, Mr. Gordon.”

Bunny never smiled at the funny face his sister made when she tasted the sand. When Bunny played anything he was very much in earnest, as I have told you.

He put another stone on the weight end of the shingle scale. He then dipped out twice as much brown sand as he had of the white and wrapped this up in a paper which he tied with a piece of string.

“There is the brown sugar, Mrs. Anderson,” he said. “And now what else will there be to-day?”

[Pg 8]

Bunny Brown acted so much like Sam Gordon, the real grocer, and even imitated his talk and manners so well, that Sue felt like laughing. But she knew that if she did so her brother would not play any more, so she kept as straight a face as she could and said:

“Have you any fresh eggs, Mr. Gordon?”

“Oh, yes, Mrs. Anderson, some very fresh ones. They were picked just this morning!”

“Oh, Bunny Brown, you don’t pick eggs! They grow in the chicken coop!” giggled Sue. And Bunny, knowing that he had made a mistake, did not find fault this time with Sue for calling him Bunny instead of Mr. Gordon.

“I mean,” corrected the little boy, “that the eggs were laid fresh this morning.”

“Then I’ll take a dozen,” said Sue, getting her face straight again.

Bunny picked up twelve of the larger white pebbles and put these in an old cracker box, of which he had several under the counter.

“Be careful not to break the eggs, Mrs. Anderson,” he said, handing Sue the box. “Is there anything else?”

“I think that’s all,” said Sue gravely, as she[Pg 9] had heard her mother say. “How much is it?”

Bunny pretended to be adding up the cost of the pound of white sand-sugar, the two pounds of the brown sand-sugar, and the price of the dozen white-pebble-eggs.

“That’s a dollar and fifty-seven cents,” he finally said.

Sue took out a large green leaf and two smaller ones. And Bunny gave her back, in change, two red petals from a rose.

“Come again, Mrs. Anderson,” he called as Sue, tucking her doll under one arm and her packages under the other, started away from the play store. She walked across the grass and down toward the bushes that grew as a sort of hedge in front of the house.

As she neared the gate, Sue saw something which caused her to cry out:

“Oh, look, Bunny! Look! Quick!”

“Say, didn’t I tell you I’m Mr. Gordon, the grocer, and you mustn’t call me Bunny?” cried the little boy. “Now I’m not going to play store any more!”

“I don’t want to play store!” exclaimed[Pg 10] Sue, who was much excited. “Look, Bunny! It’s a runaway horse and he’s coming right this way!”

This made Bunny forget all about being a grocer. Out from behind the counter he ran to join his sister near the gate. He saw, coming down the street, a galloping horse on the back of which was a man who either had lost the bridle or who did not know how to manage the animal.

“Oh, Sue, it is a runaway!” gasped Bunny, and for the first time since the store game had begun he called his sister by her right name. “I wonder whose it is?”

“I guess it’s that man’s,” said Sue. “Look! He’s coming right for us! I’m going to run!”

“He won’t come here!” said Bunny. “He can’t jump over the bushes, Sue.”

The man on the back of the horse seemed either frightened or excited. He was now leaning forward, his arms around the neck of the animal, and he cried:

“Avast there! Belay! Drop your anchor! Pull up at the dock! I want to go ashore!”

[Pg 11]

Bunny thought this was a funny way to talk to a horse.

“He should say ‘whoa’ or ‘back’ to him,” thought Bunny. “He’s talking just like Bunker Blue or one of the sailors down at daddy’s dock.”

But neither Bunny Brown nor his sister Sue had time to think much more or do much more. All of a sudden the horse came up on the sidewalk near the Brown gate. Then, just outside the hedge of bushes, the horse came to a sudden stop.

Off his back shot the man, up into the air, over the bushes in a curve, and then he fell to the ground with a groan.

“Oh! Oh!” cried Bunny’s sister Sue.

[Pg 12]

CHAPTER II A STRANGE STORY

Bunny Brown was as much excited and frightened as his sister, but he did not scream and call out as Sue did. Instead, Bunny looked at the man, lying so still and quiet on the grass. At first the little boy thought the rider of the runaway horse had been killed when he had been flung in such a queer way over the fence.

But as Bunny looked he saw that the strange man had landed on a pile of grass that had been cut and raked up that morning by Bunker Blue, a boy who worked at Mr. Brown’s fish and boat dock.

“The pile of grass was like a cushion,” thought Bunny to himself, remembering how once he had fallen on a pile of hay in a field when he and his sister were in the country on Grandpa’s farm. Bunny had not been hurt[Pg 13] by his fall, and he was hoping the man was not much hurt by his tumble.

That the man was not dead was proved a moment later when he moved slightly, groaned and opened his eyes.

“Hello, what’s your name? Are you much hurt?” asked Jed Winkler, who was in the crowd that had rushed up the street after the runaway.

“My name is Pott—Philip Pott,” was the faint answer. “I was coming here to look for my son. He’s lost—my son Harry is lost. At least, so they say—went down with the schooner Mary Bell. The treasure is lost too—the treasure is gone! Oh, if I could only find my lost son!” Then the man closed his eyes and lay very quiet.

“He’s a sailor, just as I used to be!” exclaimed old Jed Winkler, whom Bunny Brown and his sister knew very well. “He’s badly hurt, too. He’ll have to lay up in the sick bay a spell, I reckon! Catch hold of him, somebody, and we’ll lift him!”

While Bunny Brown and Sue looked on, their mother and Uncle Tad, an old soldier[Pg 14] who lived with the Brown family, came out of the house.

“Bring the poor man into our house,” ordered Mrs. Brown. “I have telephoned for the doctor.”

“Oh, Mother! He fell off his horse right in front of Bunny and me!” exclaimed Sue, running toward her mother. “We were playing store!”

“He flew right over the bushes,” added Bunny.

“Yes, my dears,” said Mrs. Brown. “But run out of the way now until Uncle Tad and Mr. Winkler carry the poor man into our house.”

While this is being done I will take just a moment to tell my new readers something of the two children who are to take part in this story.

Their names, as you have already been told, were Bunny and Sue Brown. Their father’s name was Walter Brown. He owned a boat and fish business in the seacoast town of Bellemere. He owned a pier which extended out into Sandport Bay, and to this pier were[Pg 15] brought the fish which his men caught in nets off the coast.

The fish were packed in barrels of ice and shipped to New York and other cities. Mr. Brown also hired rowboats, sailing craft and motor launches to those who wanted them. He had men to help him, and also a chap named Bunker Blue, who was a big, kindly lad, very fond of Bunny and Sue. You first met the children in the book called “Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue,” which tells of the funny adventures they had. After that, in other books, you were told how the children went to Grandpa’s farm, how they camped, and of their visit to Aunt Lu, after which they went to the big woods, then took an auto tour.

Once Bunny and Sue had had a Shetland pony, and later a trick dog. You may guess that they were fond of playing store, and once they helped in a real store. Just before this story opens, as related in the book, “Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at a Sugar Camp,” the children had gone to the woods toward the end of winter and had seen how maple sugar was made.

[Pg 16]

Now it was summer again, and Bunny and Sue were ready for more adventures. But they were hardly prepared for seeing a man tossed off the back of a runaway horse, over their hedge, and almost at their feet.

“Oh, Bunny, do you s’pose he’s dead?” whispered Sue to her brother as Uncle Tad, Mr. Winkler, and another man lifted the unconscious man who had said his name was Philip Pott.

“I guess he’s not dead,” Bunny answered. “He couldn’t talk if he was dead.”

“Well, anyhow, maybe he’s hurt,” went on Sue.

“Yes, I guess he is hurt,” agreed Bunny.

The children started to go into the house, following the men who were carrying the injured sailor. Some other men and boys in the street caught the runaway horse, which had stopped as soon as it had tossed the man from his back.

“Whose horse is it?” some one asked.

“It belongs to Jason’s livery stable,” said Bunker Blue, coming along just then. “That’s old Jim—I know that horse.”

[Pg 17]

“All right, I’ll take him back to Mr. Jason,” offered Sam Flack, a man who did odd jobs about the town.

Bunker had come back from the boat and fish dock to take away the pile of newly cut grass he had raked up.

“Hi, Bunny, did the horse jump over the hedge?” asked George Watson, one of Bunny’s chums. A number of boys and girls had gathered near the scene of the runaway.

“No, the horse didn’t go over the bushes—just the man,” said Charlie Star, another chum of the Brown children.

“How do you know?” asked Harry Bentley.

“I saw him,” answered Charlie.

“So did I!” added Mary Watson. “Oh, weren’t you ’cited—I mean excited—Sue?”

“Yes, I was,” admitted Sue.

Sue and her brother went into the house, following the men who had carried in Mr. Pott, and Bunker Blue “shooed” the other people out of the yard so he could gather up the grass. Sam Flack led away the now quieted horse.

The excitement was over for a time. But[Pg 18] many things were happening in the home of Bunny Brown and his sister Sue.

Mrs. Brown and Julia, the maid, had made ready a couch in one of the rooms, and on this the silent sailor was laid.

“Does he seem to be badly hurt?” asked Mrs. Brown of Uncle Tad. “I have telephoned for Dr. Rudd. He will be here in a few minutes.”

“He seems to be hurt on the legs and in his head, Mrs. Brown,” said Jed Winkler. “He’s a sailor. I gathered that much from his talk. Do you know him?”

“I never saw him before,” Mrs. Brown answered. “I was looking out, watching Bunny and Sue playing store, when I saw this horse come galloping down the street. Then it stopped so quickly that the poor man was pitched off over the hedge.”

“He almost landed on me,” said Bunny.

“On me, too,” added Sue, who did not like to be left out of anything in which her brother had a part.

Dr. Rudd came in a few minutes later and looked Mr. Pott over. The injured sailor[Pg 19] soon felt better. He opened his eyes and looked about him.

“Hello! Where am I? What ship is this?” asked the man in a weak voice.

“You aren’t on any ship, my good man,” said the doctor. “You are in Mr. Brown’s house. Can you tell us who you are and where you want to go?”

The man looked around at the faces, which were strange to him, and said:

“I don’t know any Mr. Brown.”

“We’re the Browns,” explained Bunny.

“That’s my mother’s name and my father’s name and Bunny’s name and my name!” exclaimed Sue. “And you’re in our house.”

“Oh, am I? Thank you, little girl,” said Mr. Pott, smiling at her. “How did I get here?”

“You were riding a horse and it ran away and threw you. Don’t you remember?” asked Uncle Tad.

“You spoke of the schooner Mary Bell,” said Jed Winkler. “You’re a sailor, I take it, same as I used to be. I’m sorry to see you in trouble, messmate? Can I help you?”

[Pg 20]

Mr. Pott looked at Jed Winkler a minute and then said:

“Well, you might help me if you could find the lost treasure.”

“What lost treasure?” asked Dr. Rudd, and Bunny and Sue remembered a sea story their mother sometimes read to them about a shipwreck in which treasure had been lost and later was found on a desert island.