Knowing that Splotch was safe in our room, rather than lonely and sad downstairs meant that I fell asleep almost immediately after we brought her upstairs. I slept well, not even waking up once, so when I awoke in the morning I felt refreshed and ready to start the day. I awoke before Guthrie- he was still lightly snoring. I thought eagerly that I would try to get in some snuggle time with Splotch before Guthrie woke up and I had to share her again. I sat up in bed to see if she was still in Guthrie´s bed, but he was buried under his covers in a shapeless mound so I couldn´t really tell if Splotch was hiding in there.

I got out of bed and called her name softly, keeping an eye on Guthrie´s bed to see if there was an independent, wriggling rabbit shaped heap under his covers, but it was still impossible to tell. I went to the end of Guthrie´s bed and lifted up his covers from the bottom gently, peeking under them, still calling Splotch´s name softly. The only sight that met me was Guthrie´s pajama clad legs and a couple of stray socks. Guthrie has a habit of wearing socks to bed and then kicking them off in the night. He´s always losing his socks that way. I crept to the left side of Guthrie´s bed and lifted the covers up gently, and then did the same on the right. Still no Splotch.

Puzzled as to where she could be, I checked under my bed, and then under Guthrie´s. I checked my closet and then Guthrie´s. I then got on my hands and knees and checked under the closets and round the back of the them. No Splotch. I sat down on my bed, thinking carefully about where she could be. The door was closed- there was no way that a rabbit could have opened the door herself and gotten out. Which meant that someone must have come in and taken her.

I went over to Guthrie´s bed. "Guthrie! Guth!" I said, shaking his shoulder to wake up him.

Guthrie moaned a little and then rolled over onto his front, but he still didn´t wake up.

"Guthrie! Wake up!" I said, flicking his cheek. He finds that really annoying, but I knew it would get him up.

Guthrie´s hand swatted me away like I was a fly. He opened his eyes a little. "What? What´s the matter?" he murmured sleepily.

"I can´t find Splotch!" I said urgently.

Guthrie opened his eyes a little more. "What d´you mean you can´t find her?" he said. He rolled over onto his back.

"She´s not in the room!" I said.

Guthrie sat up in bed. "She must be!" he said.

"She isn´t! I´ve looked everywhere!"

Guthrie grumbled and then got out of bed. He looked in all the places I had just looked. I watched him.

When he finally came up short, I said, "Told you."

"Huh," he said.

"The door is shut. That means someone must have come in and taken her away again while we were sleeping," I said.

Guthrie looked at me, nervously.

"Well, maybe it was Ford, or Evan, or Daniel," he said, sounding hopeful.

"Or Adam or Brian," I said.

"Yea," he said.

We were both silent for a moment, contemplating. Then Guthrie said, "I hope it was one of the others. Not Adam or Brian, I mean."

"Me too," I said. "I don´t think either of them would be happy about us bringing her up here."

"Especially after the chicks. And Egor the goat," he said.

I nodded. The chicks he was referring to was an incident from a couple of years before, where Guthrie and I had taken four chicks from their mothers and kept them in a box in our bedroom. We didn´t do it out of badness- we just thought they were so cute and fluffy and we wanted to be able to love on them all the time. But even though we had tried to care for the chicks really well, we didn´t really know what we were doing, and we didn´t want to ask for help because we knew that Adam and Brian, and Crane too would have made us return them to the brood. They had died. Guthrie and I had been devastated. Another time, just a couple of months later, we had led Egor, our favorite kid to have been birthed, into the house and up to our room. We just wanted to play with her. We had left her up in our room one time over supper and when we got back, she had chewed through almost everything, including the wiring in our room. Adam and Brian had been furious, probably because of the expense of repairing the wiring. Adam had spanked us for that and he´d laid down a rule: there were to be no animals in the bedrooms and no animals in the house that he or Brian didn´t know about. So I guess you could say we were kind of playing with fire taking Splotch up to our room to begin with. But when you´re a kid that age, you sort of just get caught up in the moment.

"I´m gonna get Evan and Ford back so bad if they tattled on us," Guthrie said.

"I don´t think they would do that...," I said. The five of us- me, Guthrie, Ford, Evan and Daniel, had a code. You didn´t tattle to Adam, Brian or Crane unless someone was doing something dangerous. It was almost unheard of for one of us to break that code.

"Yea…guess we better go down and see what´s going on," Guthrie said, glumly.

We put on our slippers to go downstairs for breakfast. Normally, during the week and even on Saturdays, we dressed and did chores before breakfast but on Sunday, it was acceptable, if we weren´t going to church, to come to breakfast in pajamas and do chores a little bit later. Daniel and I were the ones who exploited that understanding the most- the others generally just always got dressed for breakfast. I don´t like to be rushed.

We padded downstairs and into the kitchen. Brian was standing by the stove, scrambling eggs and Adam was there, making pancake batter. They both looked up as we wandered in.

"Mornin´, babies," Brian said, using the family´s collective name for Guthrie and me. It normally irritated us now, because we felt like it was patronizing as we weren´t babies anymore. But we had to be careful now and not draw any attention to ourselves, so we just murmured good morning at him.

I sat down in my place and Guthrie sat in his.

"How did you sleep?" Adam said. He had finished making the batter now and was greasing the pan.

"Good," we both said at the same time.

"That´s good," he said. "What kind of pancakes do you want this morning?" Adam asked.

"Whatever you want, Adam," I said. Guthrie echoed me.

"Goodness. You two are accommodatin´ this mornin´," Adam said, lightly. Normally, Guthrie and I made outlandish demands about all the things we wanted in our pancakes.

Neither Guthrie nor I said anything. I poured myself a glass of orange juice and took a sip.

"Don´t you two want to check on your rabbit?" Brian said. "I would think with the fuss you made over her yesterday, you couldn´t wait to see her this mornin´.

Guthrie and I exchanged a look. They both most definitely knew.

I put my glass of juice down and both Guthrie and I slipped out of our seats towards the mudroom. We both tried to give as wide a berth to our brothers as possible- the undercurrent in Brian´s voice suggested that he might try popping our behinds as we walked past.

There, sitting in a high crate, quite happily in the middle of the mudroom, was Splotch. She was nestling into the hay in her crate although there were quite a few brown droppings in the crate, which looked like pellets. She had a water bowl and there were a couple of cauliflower stalks in there too, which had evidence of tiny, rabbit sized teeth marks on them.

We both knelt down and peered over the top of the crate, like proud parents saying hi to her and stroking her head and behind her ears.

Brian walked in and stood, leaning against the old sink where we keep cleaning rags and other cleaning supplies. He watched us with his arms folded.

"I came to check on her last night, to move her into this crate here, which is a bit more secure, and she had miraculously disappeared," Brian said. "Her box wasn´t chewed through, so it couldn´t have been that. And then I went upstairs to check on you both and here´s the strange thing. Splotch was on Guthrie´s pillow. Now, how do you suppose the rabbit got all the way up the stairs and into your room?"

I tried Brian with an impish grin.

"Magic?!" I suggested, lightly.

It was the wrong tactic. Brian did not look amused.

"Hmm, could be. Or, it could also be that after you two had been put to bed, you snuck out your room, came down here and took Splotch back upstairs with you to your room. Tell me, which option seems more likely do you think?"

Guthrie and I exchanged another look. "The second one," Guthrie said quietly.

"The second one," I repeated.

"It was my idea!" Guthrie said.

"But I helped too," I added. I wasn´t about to let Guthrie take all the blame for this one, even though he was trying to protect me and take the blame himself.

"I figured as much," Brian said. He took Guthrie´s arm and pulled him up to standing. Then he turned him to the side and landed what looked like a hard swat on his behind.

"Ouch!" Guthrie said, rubbing his backside. Brian let go of his arm. Then he pulled me up from where I was sitting and did the same to me. My pajamas were thin and he swatted hard, so it really stung.

"Ow!" I said, also now trying to rub the sting out of my backside.

"Be thankful that´s all you´re getting," Brian said. "Rabbits chew through things, kids. If I hadn´t come upstairs and brought her back down to this crate, she would have chewed her way through your room and Adam would be tannin´ your behinds right about now,"

"Darn right." I heard Adam´s voice before he materialized in front of us, standing at the entrance to the mudroom. "You two had better thank your lucky stars that Brian rescued that rabbit. I´m still considerin´ puttin´ you two across my knee- you both know better. What´s the rule about animals in the house?"

I looked up at Adam tremulously. "Not to have them in the house without you knowing…" I said.

"And not to have them in our rooms," Guthrie finished.

"Right. So why did you do it then?" Adam said sternly.

"We just felt bad for her…" Guthrie said.

"I know, Guth," Adam said, sounding a bit softer now. "You´re both kind hearted and that´s a good way to be. But we have these rules for a reason. It doesn't do to break them."

"I know. Sorry…" I said, looking down at my slippers. I was starting to feel a bit cold as we were near the back door and the draught was coming in. Adam noticed and said, "Come on, let´s go back to the kitchen. We´ll talk more about this later on."

Adam and Brian stood there, waiting for us to pass them, but we both stood where we were, waiting for them to go first. They looked sort of amused.

"On you go, kids," Adam said, and when we hesitated for a second longer, he said sharply, "March!"

The two of us hurried past them into the kitchen. Neither attempted to pop our behinds again. As we got back to the kitchen, there was still no one there, but we could hear excited voices all jammering at once in the living room. We all headed round to see what was happening. Evan was seated on the chair at the cove where the phone is, and Ford and Daniel were shouting things over him into the phone as well. I didn´t think the person on the other end would be able to hear anything with all the racket.

"Crane´s on the phone!" Ford announced, happily.

All of hurried towards the phone. Guthrie, whose spirit is irrepressible, seemed to forget that we had just been in trouble and he started shouting with the best of them down the phone to Crane. I was more subdued. I didn´t want to be in my brothers´ bad books again- I had only got off grounding the week before, so I was a bit upset at myself. But then I felt a hand on my head, smoothing my hair back. I looked up and Adam was standing there, behind me. That´s Adam´s primary way of showing affection, so I knew he was trying to show me that perhaps he wasn´t so angry, and that made me feel better, and I sort of sidled into him.

Ford got to speak next and then Guthrie who told Crane all about getting Splotch before I could. Then it was my turn and Guthrie handed me the receiver. I twisted the cord round my finger.

"Hi, Crane," I said into the phone.

"Hi, little one," Crane said, calling me his pet name for me.

"I hear you and Guthrie got a rabbit yesterday at the carnival, that´s fun, huh?"

"Yea."

"What´s the matter, little one?" Crane asked. Like Daniel, Crane has always been perceptive, but I was surrounded by the whole family and I didn´t want to talk to him in front of everyone.

"Nothing," I said.

"Everyone´s around, huh?" Crane said. It was like he was psychic or something.

"Yea. I miss you, Crane. When are you coming home again?" I said.

"In around three weeks. For Thanksgiving," he said.

I sighed. "That´s still three weeks away!" I said, glumly.

"Hmm. Well how about when I speak to Adam or Brian, I ask them to arrange a time in the next few days where we can speak properly. Just you and me. How does that sound?"

"Good," I said. Just like that, I felt better.