“Now you stop, Mun Bun!  Stop shooting my doll!  Mother, make Mun Bun stop!” cried the little girl.  “He’s got a gun, and he shot my doll, and he knocked her off the seat, and maybe she’s killed.”

“Mun Bun with a gun!  What do you mean?” cried Daddy Bunker, jumping up from his seat.  “What are you doing, Munroe?” he asked, a bit sternly.

The two youngest children had awakened while Grandpa Ford was telling about the ghost at Great Hedge.  Of course they did not hear about it, nor did Rose and Russ.

“I have a popgun, and it shoots a cork,” explained Mun Bun, as he held up what he had aimed at Margy’s doll.  “It didn’t hurt, ’cause it only shoots a cork,” he said.

“But you shooted my doll, and knocked her over, and maybe she’s broken!” sobbed Margy.

By this time Mrs. Bunker had reached the seat where the little girl and her brother had been sleeping.  The mother picked the Japanese doll up from where it had fallen to the floor of the car, and said: 

“Don’t cry any more, Margy.  Your doll isn’t hurt a bit.  But Mun Bun mustn’t shoot at her any more, with corks or anything else.  Munroe Ford Bunker! where did you get the popgun?” his mother asked, as she saw that he really did have a small one.

“Out of the basket,” he answered.  “When Margy and I went to get a drink of water I saw the popgun in the train boy’s basket, and I took it out.  I thought maybe I’d want to shoot at a snow man me and Grandpa are going to make, so I kept the gun.  Daddy can give the train boy a penny for it.  I hid it in the seat.  Then I saw Margy’s doll on the seat in front, and she was asleep—­Margy was—­and I shot at the doll, but I didn’t mean to make her fall.”

“Oh, dear!  Such a boy!” cried Mrs. Bunker.  “To take the gun without asking!  Here comes the boy now.  You must give it back.”

“Oh, let him keep it,” said Grandpa Ford.  “I’ll buy it for him.  We may want to shoot the snow man,” he said with a laugh.

So Mun Bun got his popgun after all, though, of course, he did not do right in taking it from the train boy’s basket.  Nor was it quite right, I suppose, to shoot Margy’s doll.  But Mun Bun was a very little boy.

However, the train boy was paid, some other toys were bought, and then, as Grandpa Ford, some time later, looked from the train window, he exclaimed: 

“Ha!  Here comes the snow!  I think we are in for a big storm!”

And with great suddenness the train was, almost at once, shut in by a cloud of white snowflakes, like a fog.  The swirling white crystals were blown all about, and tapped against the glass of the windows, as if they wanted to come in where the six little Bunkers were.  But the glass kept them out.

“How is it out—­cold?” asked Grandpa Ford of a brakeman who came in an hour or so later, covered with white flakes.

“Very cold, sir, and growing more so.  I’m afraid we’ll run into a bad storm before we reach Tarrington.  It’s snowing worse all the while.”