“I can telephone to Mr. Star and ask,” suggested Mr. Brown.  But when he had done this, and no Bunny Brown was there, they all began to get quite excited.

“I’ll get on my coat and rubbers and go out with you,” said Mart, as Mr. Brown began to put on his overcoat.  “He might be in the barn, practicing some of the tricks he is going to do in the play to-morrow.”

“Oh, I don’t believe Bunny would go out to the barn alone after dark,” said Mrs. Brown.

Her husband and Mart were just starting out into the storm to look for the missing Bunny when the tramp of feet was heard on the porch.

“Here comes somebody!” cried Sue.  “I hope it’s Bunny!”

But it was not.  Instead it was Bunker Blue, and he was covered with snow flakes.  His nose was red, too, even if his name was Bunker Blue.

“Has Bunny come back yet?” asked Bunker, as he stamped his feet on the porch, to get the snow off.

“No, he hasn’t,” answered Mr. Brown.  “We are getting very anxious about him, too, though the worst that can happen is that he may get cold.  He shouldn’t have gone out!”

“Well, I didn’t see anything of him,” said Bunker Blue.  “I was quite surprised at what you told me, over the telephone, about his not being in the house in this storm.”

“Oh, maybe he’ll never come back, and then we can’t have our nice Christmas play!” exclaimed Sue.

“Oh, Bunny will come back all right—­don’t worry about that,” said her father gently.  “If he doesn’t come we’ll go and get him.  In fact, now that you are here, Bunker, we three might as well set out and look for the little fellow.  He’s got something on his mind, or he wouldn’t go out as he did.”

“I’m sure I can’t see what made him go out,” said Mrs. Brown.  “It’s snowing very hard, too,” she added, as she shaded her eyes from the light in the room and looked out of the window.

“But it isn’t very cold, that’s one good thing,” her husband added.  “Of course I wish Bunny hadn’t gone out, but, since he has, we must go out and find him.”

“Could he, by any chance, be hiding somewhere in the house?” asked Mart.

“We’ll look,” decided Mr. Brown, “although we looked before.”

He and Mart, as well as Bunker Blue, were dressed to go out into the storm to look for Bunny, who was so strangely missing, but when Mart said this Mr. Brown decided that it would be better to go over the house once more, to make sure Bunny was not hiding away.

“We’ll take Sue with us to help search,” said her father, as he took off his overcoat, for he did not know how long he would stay in the house.  “Bunny and Sue play hide-and-go-seek games in the different rooms,” went on Mr. Brown, “and Sue knows lots of hiding places; don’t you, Sue?”

“Yes, we hide in lots of places,” the little girl answered.  “But I don’t guess Bunny is hiding now.”

“Oh, well, maybe he is, just to fool us,” returned her father.  “Come now, we’ll begin the search.”