Brownie came willingly enough to Sister and she gathered him up in her arms.  He may have wondered, in his doggie mind, what all the fuss was about and what had become of the fluffy cat, but he was getting used to having his fun abruptly ended.

“I didn’t know you brought the dog, dear,” said Grandmother Hastings, breaking a grim silence as they walked home.  “And did you know Mother wasn’t willing to have you go at night when you asked me to take you?”

Poor little Sister had to confess that she had asked Grandmother to take them because she knew that in no other way could they get to the movies at night.  Grandmother Hastings never scolded, but her grandchildren hated to know that she was disappointed in them.

No one scolded Brother and Sister very much that night.  They were put to bed, and the next morning Daddy Morrison called them into his “den” before he left for the office, and told them that for a week they could not go out of their own yard.

“And I s’pose we can’t go with Ralph Saturday,” wailed Sister.

CHAPTER XV

TROUBLE AGAIN

However, they were allowed to go with Ralph to the movies the next Saturday.  Ralph himself explained to Daddy Morrison that he had promised to take them and then found he had a previous engagement.  He thought, and Daddy Morrison did, too, that having to stay in the yard for a whole week was punishment enough even if one exception was permitted.

So Brother and Sister went down to the “big” theatre with Ralph the next Saturday afternoon, and then they had to stay in their yard all day Sunday and all day Monday, and after that they might again go where they pleased.

“Let’s go see if Norman Crane’s aunt sent him a birthday present,” suggested Sister the first morning they were free to leave the yard.

Norman Crane was a little friend who lived several blocks away, and whose aunt in New York City sent him wonderful presents at Christmas time and on his birthday.  He had had a party a few days before, and of course Brother and Sister could not go—­all because they would go to those unlucky movies!

Brother was willing to stop at Norman’s house, but when they reached there they found Norman had gone to the city with his mother for a day’s shopping.

“I smell tar,” declared Brother, as they came down the steps and turned into the street where Miss Putnam lived in the haunted house—­only it wasn’t called that any longer.  “Oh, look, Betty, they’re mending something.”

There was a little group of children about a big pot of boiling tar and workmen were mending the roofs of three or four houses that were built exactly alike and were owned by the same man.  These houses were always repaired and painted at the same time every year.

Nearest to the boiling pot—­indeed, with his red head almost in the hot steam—­was the little boy Brother and Sister had noticed walking on Miss Putnam’s picket fence.  A puddle of tar had splashed over on the ground and the red-headed boy was stirring it with a stick held between his bare toes.