"Well, well!" exclaimed Mr. Bunker, as he took this second one off the hook. "You boys are beating me all to pieces. I'll have to watch out what I'm doing!"

   "Why don't you pull up your line. Daddy, and see what you've got on your hook?" asked Laddie.

   "I believe I will," his father answered. "Here we go! Let's see what I have!"

   Up came his line, and the pole bent like a bow, because something heavy was on the hook.

   "Oh, daddy's got a big one! Daddy's got a terrible one!" cried Laddie.

   "It's bigger than both our fishes put together," added Russ.

   "I certainly have got something," said Mr. Bunker, as he kept on lifting his pole up. "But it doesn't act like a fish. It doesn't swim around and try to get off."

   Something long and black was lifted out of the water. At first the two little boys thought it was a very big fish, but when Mr. Bunker saw it he laughed and cried:

   "Well, look at my luck! It's only an old rubber boot!"

   And so it was. His hook had caught on a rubber boot at the bottom of the lake and he had pulled that up, thinking it was a fish.

   "Never mind, Daddy," said Russ kindly. "You can have half of my fish."

   "And half of mine, too," added Laddie.

   "Thank you," said their father. "That is very nice of you. But I must try to catch one myself."

   And he did, a little later, though it was not as big as the one Russ has caught.

   But after that Mr. Bunker caught a very large one, and Russ and Laddie each got one more, so they had enough for a good meal, as well as some to give to Muffin.

   Then Daddy Bunker and the boys rowed home, and were told all about the muskrat that Mun Bun had seen come out of the lake to eat the fresh-water clams.

   "How would you all like to go after wild

   strawberries to-day?" asked Grandma Bell of the six little Bunkers one morning, about two days after the fishing trip.

   "Oh, we'd just love 

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