"Oh, I haven't thought of a good answer yet," said Laddie with a laugh. "I
just thought of the riddle!"

And he sat by the window, murmuring over and over to himself:

"Why don't the tickets get mad when the conductor punches 'em?"

On and on rumbled the train. They were getting near the end of the trip,
and the children were counting the time before they would get to the
station where they could start to drive to Lake Sagatook and Grandma
Bell's house, when the conductor came through the coach and told Mr.
Bunker that if he changed cars, and took another train at a junction
station, he could save all of an hour.

"We'll do that," decided the children's father. "We'll change at
Clearwell, and get on a train there that will take us to Sagatook
earlier." The name of the station where they were to start to drive to
grandma's was Sagatook. The lake was five miles back in the woods.

They were soon near the junction, where two railroad lines came together,
and there the Bunkers were to change. They gathered up their belongings
and stood ready to get off the car in which they had been nearly a whole
day.

Clearwell was quite a large place, and the station, where the two
different railroad trains came in, was a big one. There was quite a crowd
getting off the train on which the Bunkers had ridden, and more of a
crowd on the platform.