Bunny Brown and His Sister Sue at Aunt Lu's City Home Part 13

"And how did you come to take her?" asked Mother Brown.

"Well, Wopsie was sent to a society that looks after lost children,"

said Aunt Lu. "They tried to find her friends, either up here, in New York, or down South, but they could not. I belong to this society, and when I heard of Wopsie I said I would take her and keep her in my house for a while. I can train her to become a lady's maid while I am waiting to find her folks."

"Are you trying to find them?" asked Mrs. Brown.

"Yes, I have written all over, and so has the society. We have asked the police to let us know if any one is asking for a little lost colored girl. But I have had her nearly a month now, and no one has claimed her."

"Yep. I suah am losted!" said Wopsie, but she laughed as she said it, and did not seem to mind very much. "It's fun being losted like this,"

she said, as she patted the soft cus.h.i.+ons of the automobile. "I likes it!"

"And are you really going to keep her?" asked Mrs. Brown of her sister.

"Yes, until she gets a little older, or until I can find her folks. I think her father and mother must have died some time ago," said Aunt Lu in a whisper to Mrs. Brown. "She probably didn't have any _real_ folks down South, so whoever she was with sent her up here."

"Well, I'm glad you took care of her," said Mrs. Brown. "She looks like a nice clean little girl."

"She is; and she is very kind and helpful. She is careful, too, and she will be a help with Bunny and Sue. Wopsie has already learned her way around that part of New York near my apartment, and I can send her on errands. She can take Bunny and Sue out."

While Mrs. Brown and Aunt Lu were talking together Wopsie had given Bunny and Sue some sweet crackers from a box she took out from a pocket in the side of the automobile. Aunt Lu had told her to do so. So Bunny and Sue ate the crackers as they rode along, and Wopsie sat near them.

"Don't you want a cracker?" asked Bunny.

"No, sah, thank you," answered the little colored girl. "I don't eat 'tween meals. Miss Baker say as how it ain't good for your intergestion."

"What's in--indergaston?" asked Sue.

"Huh! Dat's a misery on yo' insides--a pain," said Wopsie. "I t'ought everybody knowed dat!"

Bunny was silent a minute.

"Do you know how to stop a train by pulling on the whistle cord?" he asked.

"No," said Wopsie.

"Huh! I thought everybody knew that!" exclaimed Bunny. Then he laughed, as Wopsie did. It was a little joke on her, when Bunny answered her the way he did.

The automobile came to a stop in front of a large building. Bunny and Sue looked up at it.

"My! What a big house you live in, Aunt Lu!" said Bunny.

"Oh, this isn't all mine!" laughed Aunt Lu. "There are many others who live in here. This is what is called an apartment house. I have my dining room, kitchen, bath room and other rooms, and other families in this building have the same thing. You see there isn't room in New York to build separate houses, such as you have in Bellemere, so they make one big house, and divide it up on the inside, into a number of little houses, or apartments."

Bunny and Sue thought that very strange.

"But you haven't any yard to play in!" exclaimed Bunny, as he and his sister got out of the automobile, and found that the front door of Aunt Lu's apartment was right on the sidewalk.

"No, we don't have yards in the city, Bunny. But we have a roof to go up on and play."

"Playing on a roof!" cried Bunny. "I should think you'd fall off!"

"Oh, it has a high railing all around it. Wopsie may take you up there after a bit. Then you can see how it seems to play on a roof, instead of down on the ground. We have to do queer things in big cities."

Bunny Brown and his sister Sue certainly thought so.

As they entered the apartment house the children found themselves in a wide hall, with marble floor and sides. There was a nice carpet over the marble floor and bright electric lights glowed from the ceiling.

"Right in here," said Aunt Lu, leading the children toward what seemed to be a little room with an iron door, like the iron gate to some park.

A colored boy, with many bra.s.s b.u.t.tons on his blue coat, stood at the door.

"Jes' yo' all wait an' see what gwine t' happen!" said Wopsie.

"Why, what is going to happen?" asked Bunny.

"Oh, ho! Yo' all jes' wait!" exclaimed Wopsie, laughing at her secret.

"What is it? I don't want anything to happen!" cried Sue hanging back.

"Oh, it isn't anything, dear. This is just the elevator," said Aunt Lu.

"Get in and you'll have a nice ride."

"Oh, I like a ride," Sue said.

In she stepped with Bunny, her mother, Aunt Lu and Wopsie. The colored boy, who was also smiling, and showing his white teeth as Wopsie was doing, closed the iron door. Then, all of a sudden, Bunny and Sue felt themselves shooting upward.

"Oh! Oh!" cried Bunny. "We're in a balloon! We're in a balloon! We're going up!"

"Just like a skyrocket on the Fourth of July!" added Sue. She was not afraid now. She was clapping her hands.

Up and up and up they went!

"Oh, what makes it?" asked Bunny. "Is it a balloon, Aunt Lu?"

"No, dear, it's just the elevator. You see this big house is so high that you would get tired climbing the stairs up to my rooms, so we go up in the elevator. It lifts us up, and in England they call them 'lifts' on this account."

"Oh, I see!" Bunny cried, as he looked up and saw that he was in a sort of square steel cage, going up what seemed to be a long tunnel; standing up instead of lying on the ground as a railroad tunnel lies. "I see!

We're going up, just like a bucket of water comes up out of the well."

"That's it!" said Aunt Lu. "And when we go down we go down just like the bucket going down in the well."

"It's fun! I like it!" and Sue clapped her hands. "I like the elevator!"

"Yes'm, it sho' am fun!" echoed Wopsie.

"Wopsie would ride up and down all day if I'd let her," said Aunt Lu.

"But here we are at my floor. Now wasn't that better than climbing up ten flights of stairs, children?"

"I guess it was!" cried Bunny. "Do you live up ten flights?"