"Oh, won't water spoil your doll, my dear?" asked Grandma Bell.

"I don't mean my big one, that the lady took for her baby," explained the little girl. "I mean my small rubber doll."

"Oh! Well, I guess it will be all right to bathe her in the lake," said Grandma Bell with a laugh.

Daddy Bunker found that the sandy point, which Grandma Bell told about, was a very nice and safe place for the children to play. So, dressed in their old clothes which water and sand would not soil, they all trooped down to Lake Sagatook, and there, in the shade of the big woods, they began to have fun.

Russ and Laddie made little boats and set them adrift in the blue water.

Rose and Vi played with their dolls, for they had each brought two or three of them. Mun Bun and Margy dug in the sand with sticks which they picked up on the sh.o.r.e of the lake.

"It's almost like the seash.o.r.e," said Rose, when she came back from having given her rubber doll a dip in the lake, "only the water doesn't taste salty like when you cry tears."

"I like it here," said Vi. "I wish we could stay always."

The children were having lots of fun when, in the midst of their play, they heard the sound of water being splashed and the noise made by the oars of a boat. Looking up, they saw a rowboat not far from sh.o.r.e, and in it sat a big man.

And, at the sight of this man, Russ dropped the chip he was floating about, pretending it was a submarine, and, in a whisper, said:

"Hi, Laddie! do you see his hair?"

"Yes--it's red," returned Laddie.

"Well, maybe that's the tramp lumberman that took daddy's old coat and real estate papers," went on Russ. "He had red hair! Maybe this is the same one! Oh, Laddie! If it should be!"

CHAPTER XIV

THE DOLL'S b.u.t.tONS

For a little while Laddie and Russ watched the man in the boat as he rowed slowly toward the sandy point of land in the lake, on which the six little Bunkers were playing. The man's hair was certainly very red. The sun shone on it, and Russ and Laddie could see it quite plainly. And, too, he had on a ragged coat.

Rose and the other children were farther in toward sh.o.r.e, playing away.

Laddie and Russ, as the two older boys of the family, thought they ought to do something toward getting back Daddy Bunker's papers.

"He's coming nearer," said Laddie, in a whisper to his brother.

"Yes," agreed Russ. "He'll soon be near enough for us to ask him if he's got 'em."

The red-haired man in the boat rowed nearer and nearer to the sandy point in Lake Sagatook. He did not seem to see the two small boys who were so anxiously waiting for him.

"What's he doing?" asked Laddie, for the man now and then would stop rowing and handle something he had in front of him.

"He's fishing," said Russ. "I can see his pole."

Laddie saw it too, a moment later. The man in the boat was a fisherman.

Pretty soon he was near enough for the boys to call to him.

"Hey!" exclaimed Russ. "Have you got 'em?"

He supposed, of course, that the man would know what he was talking about.

And so it might seem, for the man made answer:

"Well, I had 'em but I lost 'em. But I'll get 'em again."

"Oh, daddy will be so glad!" cried Laddie. "Did you lose 'em out of your coat?"

The man looked up quickly.

"Lose 'em out of my coat? Why, no," he said. "I lost 'em off my hook--two of the biggest fish I've caught this day! But I'll get 'em back--or some just like 'em which will be as good. h.e.l.lo, youngsters," he added with a smile. "Do you live at Mrs. Bell's place?"

"We're just visiting her," explained Russ. "She's our grandma. We're the six little Bunkers."

"Oh, ho!" exclaimed the man with a laugh. "That's so--there are six of you! I can see now," and he looked beyond Russ and Laddie to where Rose, Vi, Margy and Mun Bun were playing on the sandy point and having lots of fun.

"But are you fond of fishing, that you ask if I lost 'em?" the man went on.

"If you please," replied Russ, "we didn't mean to ask about your fish, though we're sorry you lost any. But have you daddy's papers?"

"Daddy's papers? I don't know what you mean," the man said.

"Aren't you a lumberman?" asked Laddie, not liking to use the name "tramp," as the man, though he did have on a ragged coat, did not seem like the lazy wanderers who prowl about the country asking for food but not wanting to work.

"No, I'm not a lumberman," said the man. "What makes you ask that?"

"Well, you look like the lumberman--only he was a tramp--that my father gave a ragged coat to," went on Russ. "And there were real estate papers in the coat, and daddy wants 'em back."

"Ha! Is that so?" asked the man, "Well, I'm sorry but I don't know anything about 'em. I never saw your father that I know of, though I do know Mrs. Bell. I live on the other side of the lake. But I come over here fishing once in a while."

"And haven't you daddy's papers?" asked Laddie.

"No, I'm sorry to say I haven't."

"But you have red hair," went on the little boy.

"Yes, my hair is red all right," laughed the man, as he ran his hand through the fiery curls on his head. "My hair is very red. Sometimes I wish it wasn't so red. But it's of no use to worry about it, I suppose.

But what has my red hair to do with your father's papers?"

Then Laddie and Russ, taking turns, told about their father's clerk in the real estate office giving the tramp lumberman the old coat, and how, in one of the pockets, were the valuable papers. The boys told of the search for the tramp, and also of their trip from Pineville to Lake Sagatook.

"And so you haven't yet found the red-haired man with the papers, have you?" asked the fisherman, smiling at the two boys.

"No," said Russ, a bit sadly. "First we thought you might have 'em."

"Do you know any red-haired lumberman--one that's a tramp?" Laddie asked.