"Here we are, three weeks late for school already, and no likelihood of coal coming into the town for another month. Of course there will be no school," Mother Bunker said decidedly. "I should not dare let the children go in any case unless the fires were built."
"Quite right," said Daddy Bunker. "And I presume the other people will feel the same about their children. School must be postponed again."
He shouted it out so loud that the older folks, as well as the children, looked at him in some amazement.
"What is bully?" asked Vi. "Do you mean a coal strike is bully? Why can't we have coal to burn? Who has got our coal?"
Nobody gave her questions much attention, which of course was not unusual. But Daddy Bunker began to laugh.
"I can see what is working in Russ's mind," he said. "You reason from the cause of a lack of coal, to an effect that you need not go to school?"
"I--I don't mind going to school," Rose said, a little doubtfully but looking at her elder brother.
"And I don't mind, either," said Russ promptly. "Only daddy is going to that Cowboy Jack's. And if we can't go to school for a month, why can't we go with daddy? We might as well."
"Oh! Oh!" cried the other children in chorus, seeing very plainly now what Russ had meant by saying the coal strike was "bully."
"Perhaps you are taking too much for granted," Mother Bunker said soberly. "Still, Charles, maybe I had better not unpack our trunks quite yet?"
"I'll see what the outlook is to-morrow morning," said Daddy Bunker quite soberly. "Anyway, I shall not start for the Southwest until day after to-morrow. Will that give you time, if----?"
"Oh, yes," said Mother Bunker, who had become by this time an expert in making quick preparations for leaving home. "Norah and Jerry will get on quite well here."
This was enough to set the six little Bunkers in a ferment. At least, to put their minds in a ferment. They were so excited and so much interested in the possibility of going away again that they could not "settle," as Norah said, to their ordinary pursuits.
Even Rose had by this time decided that she would be able perhaps to pronounce the name of the man Daddy Bunker was going to see--Mr. John Scarbontiskil.
"And, anyway," she told Russ, "maybe I won't have to talk to him much."