“Come to practice?  Oh, I don’t know!” was the answer.  “I can’t talk to you right away, Mart.  Something has happened!”

“What is it?” asked Lucile.  “Have you heard anything about——?”

“Oh, it isn’t about your kin, I’m sorry to say,” was the actor’s answer.  “It’s just that one of my best wigs is missing—­the one I wear when I dress up like General Washington.  Those wigs are scarce, and I hardly ever let it out of my box.  But now it is gone!”

“And I’ve searched high and low for it all over this house, but I can’t find it!” said Miss Winkler.

Bunny and Sue did not know quite what to make of all the excitement over the lost wig which Mr. Treadwell wore on his head in certain parts of the play.  So they stood to one side while the search went on.  Sue looked in the sitting room, while Mr. Treadwell and Miss Winkler went into the parlor that was hardly ever opened.

Something that Bunny saw in a chair in front of the kitchen stove made him call out: 

“Oh, Miss Winkler! there’s a funny old man in your kitchen, and he’s trying to open the cupboard door where you keep the cookies.  Come and see the funny old man!”

CHAPTER XIX

UNCLE BILL

“What’s that, Bunny Brown?” called Miss Winkler, stepping to the door of the parlor, in which Mr. Treadwell was looking for his missing wig.  “What’s that you said about an old man?”

“There’s one in your kitchen now,” added Sue, for she was now looking at the funny “old man” in the kitchen.

“One what in my kitchen?” asked Miss Winkler, in surprise.

“A funny old man,” said Bunny again.  “And he’s after some of your nice sugar cookies.”  Bunny knew Miss Winkler’s sugar cookies were nice because she sometimes gave him and Sue some.  Not too often, but once in a while.

“An old man after my cookies, is there?” cried the sailor’s sister.  “Well, I’ll see about that!”

Down the hall she hurried, leaving Mr. Treadwell to look for the wig himself, and this he was doing.

“I suppose it’s some tramp!” exclaimed Miss Winkler.  “Wait until I take the broom stick to him!  The idea of taking my cookies!  I’d rather give ’em to you children than to an old tramp.  I wish your dog was here, Bunny Brown!”

“Oh, so do I!” cried Bunny.  “Splash would hang on to the tramp the way he hangs to Mr. Treadwell’s coat in the play.  Oh, Sue, let’s go home and get our Splash, and sic him on the tramp!”

By this time Miss Winkler had reached the kitchen door.  Bunny and Sue, with Lucile and Mart, stood to one side, so the sailor’s sister could go in and stop the funny old man from taking her cookies.

Into the kitchen hurried Miss Winkler.  There, surely enough, with his gray head just showing over the back of a hall chair on which he was standing, was what seemed to be an old man.  He had on a black coat, and one hand appeared to be reaching up into the cookie closet.