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+The Project Gutenberg EBook of Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm, by
+Mabel C. Hawley
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm
+
+Author: Mabel C. Hawley
+
+Release Date: August 3, 2009 [EBook #29598]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by Roger Frank and the Online Distributed
+Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+[Illustration: "Come on," said Bobby, "we have to capture the ducks."
+(Page 116)]
+
+
+
+
+FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS
+
+AT
+
+BROOKSIDE FARM
+
+BY
+
+MABEL C. HAWLEY
+
+AUTHOR OF "FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS AT OAK HILL SCHOOL," "FOUR LITTLE
+BLOSSOMS AND THEIR WINTER FUN," ETC.
+
+THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+Akron, Ohio--New York
+
+
+
+
+Copyright MCMXX
+
+THE SAALFIELD PUBLISHING COMPANY
+
+Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm
+
+Made in the United States of America
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+ CHAPTER                                                          PAGE
+       I THE RESCUE OF PHILIP                                        7
+      II AN INVITATION                                              18
+     III AUNT POLLY                                                 26
+      IV THE WILLING PACKERS                                        36
+       V DOT'S ADVENTURE                                            45
+      VI BROOKSIDE AT LAST                                          56
+     VII THE WRECK OF THE RAFT                                      65
+    VIII LEARNING TO MILK                                           76
+      IX LOST IN THE WOODS                                          86
+       X THE BLOSSOMS GO BERRYING                                   94
+      XI THE HOME LAUNDRY                                          104
+     XII UP ON THE MOUNTAIN                                        114
+    XIII LINDA IS UNHAPPY                                          123
+     XIV THE PICNIC                                                132
+      XV WHAT MEG FOUND                                            141
+     XVI THE NEW CAT                                               153
+    XVII RAINY DAY FUN                                             163
+   XVIII THE END OF THE VACATION                                   173
+
+
+
+
+FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS AT BROOKSIDE FARM
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER I
+
+THE RESCUE OF PHILIP
+
+
+"Meg!"
+
+The little girl curled up in the window-seat did not move.
+
+"Meg, you know Mother said we were to go before four o'clock, and it's
+half-past three now. You'll wait till the twins come in, and then
+they'll want to go, too." Bobby Blossom looked anxiously at his
+sister.
+
+Meg put down her book and untangled her feet from the window
+cushions.
+
+"I'm coming," she promised. "I never do get a chapter all read, Bobby.
+Where's my hat? I see it. I'll get it!"
+
+Meg's hat was on the lawn outside where she had dropped it, and now
+she raised the screen and tumbled through the window to the ground.
+It wasn't far to tumble, and Meg had done it so often she was sure of
+landing safely.
+
+"Norah says no lady goes out of the house through a window," giggled
+Bobby, tumbling after Meg and closing the screen carefully. Bobby was
+always careful to leave everything as he found it.
+
+Meg giggled, too.
+
+"I don't care, long as I grow up to be a lady like Mother," she
+asserted. "Let's hurry, Bobby, and perhaps we can stop at the
+library."
+
+The children had reached the two stone posts at the foot of the lawn
+when a loud shriek halted them.
+
+"Meg Blossom, you said I could go! Wait for me!"
+
+Down the slightly sloping lawn hurried a short, thick-set little girl
+with dark eyes and hair and the reddest cheeks you ever saw. She
+carried a doll whose blue eyes opened and shut snappily with every
+jump her small mother took. This was Dot, Meg's little sister.
+
+"You said I could go," panted Dot, when she caught up with Meg and
+Bobby. "Wait for Twaddles, he's coming. He wants to take the kiddie
+car."
+
+"I told you so," scolded Bobby. "I never went uptown in my life all
+you children didn't want to tag along. You've got grease on your
+dress, Dot."
+
+"Sam was cleaning the car," said Dot serenely. "I guess I brushed
+against the grease can. It won't show when I'm sitting down. There's
+Twaddles."
+
+Bumping its way over the green grass came a kiddie car with a small
+boy astride it.
+
+"I'm all ready," he beamed. "Come on, Bobby."
+
+"You can't take that kiddie car," announced Bobby firmly. "Mother said
+this letter was to go in the four o'clock mail and we've got to hurry.
+If you and Dot want to go, you'll have to walk fast."
+
+Twaddles usually minded Bobby. He promptly surrendered the kiddie car
+and continued to smile pleasantly.
+
+The four Blossoms trudged briskly along. If you had ever lived in Oak
+Hill you would have known them. The whole town knew Meg and Bobby and
+Dot and Twaddles, and the children knew nearly every one, having lived
+in that one place all their short lives.
+
+Bobby was the oldest. He was seven, and was remarkably like his sister
+Meg in looks. Both had fair hair and blue eyes. Meg's real name was
+Margaret Alice Blossom, and she was named for her mother. Bobby's full
+name was Robert Hayward Blossom. He was just a year older than Meg.
+
+The twins were the funniest and dearest little couple, four years old
+and as roly-poly, happy-go-lucky a pair of youngsters as ever tumbled
+into one scrape after another and out again. They were known as Dot
+and Twaddles to all their friends, but, of course, they had "real"
+names like other children. Dot was named for an aunt, Dorothy Anna
+Blossom, and Twaddles was Arthur Gifford Blossom, if you please. Only
+no one ever called him that.
+
+The Blossom children lived at the very tip end of the long straggling
+street that divided Oak Hill into two sections; in fact the Blossoms'
+rambling, comfortable old house was almost outside the town limits.
+Father Blossom owned the big foundry on the other side of the
+railroad.
+
+"I'll go in," said Bobby, when they reached the post-office. "You wait
+here."
+
+He disappeared into the yellow wooden building that was the Oak Hill
+post-office, and the other Blossoms, seeing a stalled car, stopped to
+watch the troubles of the interurban motorman whose trolley-car was
+blocked by a dog that apparently wanted to be run over.
+
+The motorman clanged his bell and a boy on the curbstone whistled
+shrilly, but the dog refused to budge. He only rolled over on his
+side.
+
+"He's hurt," said Meg. "See, his foot drags. I'll get him off."
+
+She dashed out into the street and bent over the poor animal. Meg was
+"just crazy," her brothers said, about animals, and she was never
+afraid of any four-footed creature. Now, as she leaned over the little
+dog, he began to lick her hand with his rough tongue.
+
+"His leg's broken," Meg said pityingly to the conductor and the
+motorman who had joined her. "Oh, the poor doggie! But Doctor Maynard
+will fix it."
+
+There was a crowd now gathered on the car tracks, and Bobby, who had
+come out of the post-office and heard from the twins what was going
+on, pushed his way through to his sister.
+
+"You hold your dress," he directed. "I'll lift him. There!"
+
+The little dog was a heavy armful for Meg, but she held him bravely.
+
+"I'm afraid of strange dogs myself," declared the conductor, plainly
+relieved that some one else had tended to the dog. "What are you going
+to do with him, little girl?"
+
+"Take him to the doctor's," announced Meg. "Aren't we, Bobby?"
+
+"Of course," affirmed Bobby.
+
+He and Meg, carrying the dog, went back to where Twaddles and Dot were
+waiting. The twins were used to waiting patiently while the older
+children investigated sudden alarms and excitements.
+
+"Let me pat him," begged Dot. "He's pretty, isn't he? Is he hurt,
+Meg? What are you going to do with him?"
+
+"Take him to Doctor Maynard's," said Meg briefly. "I guess he's in,
+'cause it's after four o'clock."
+
+Kind, jolly Doctor Maynard was in. He was the Blossoms' family doctor,
+and knew the children very well. He didn't seem a bit surprised to
+have the four of them walk into his consulting room.
+
+"Now, who's sick?" he demanded, pretending to be anxious. "Don't tell
+me Dot needs gingerbread pills? Or has Twaddles been eating too much
+layer cake? Dear, dear, you can't all have the whooping cough!"
+
+Meg smiled, a little watery smile. Tears stood in her blue eyes.
+
+"It's this," she said, spreading out her dress on the couch so that
+the doctor could see the dog. "I think his leg is broken."
+
+Doctor Maynard sat down on the couch and the children crowded around
+him. The brown eyes of the dog watched him intently as though he knew
+that help was at hand.
+
+"Yes, it's broken," said the doctor gently, after feeling of the slim
+little hind leg that dragged so uselessly. "But we can mend it, Meg. I
+have splints right here."
+
+While the others watched, Doctor Maynard tore off long white strips of
+cloth and selected two wooden splints. These he placed one on each
+side of the broken leg and then directed Meg to wind the strips firmly
+around while he held the splints in place. This was to make the leg
+grow strong and straight again.
+
+"Doesn't it hurt?" demanded Twaddles curiously.
+
+"Yes, it hurts him," admitted Doctor Maynard, stroking the head of the
+little dog. "But animals are splendid patients, and they seldom
+complain. Now, then, our little friend is about as good as new, except
+that he will have to go on three legs for a bit."
+
+The telephone rang just then and it proved to be a call for the
+doctor.
+
+"I'll have to run along, chicks," he said hurriedly. "Going to keep
+the dog, Meg?"
+
+"If Mother doesn't care," answered Meg.
+
+"Mother won't care," said Bobby, as the children were walking home. He
+was very fond of his sister and tried to help her get whatever she
+wanted. "Sam will let him sleep in the garage and perhaps he will be a
+ratter. Sam likes a dog that is a ratter." Sam Layton was the man of
+all work employed by Mr. Blossom.
+
+Meg and Bobby took turns carrying the dog home, and Twaddles mourned
+the fact that the kiddie car had not been brought along.
+
+"I could have given him a ride," he explained. "What makes his tongue
+hang out like that, Meg?"
+
+"He's hot," said Meg. "And I think he wants a drink. Let's take him
+around to the kitchen and give him some water."
+
+As they neared the kitchen door some one spoke to them through the
+screen.
+
+"Meg! Meg! What's this you do be bringing home with ye? A dog? Most
+likely it has the mange now, or some disease ye will all be catching.
+Why can't ye ever take up with a nice, quiet cat? 'Tis no dog I'll be
+having in me clean kitchen, mind that!"
+
+Meg put the strange dog down on the gravel path. He swayed unsteadily
+on three legs.
+
+"Look, Norah," she said. "His leg is broken. Doctor Maynard set it.
+And we only want to get him a drink of water. He's thirsty. He needn't
+even come into the house."
+
+Norah had a sharp tongue, but her heart was generous and sweet.
+
+"The poor beastie!" she said, opening the screen door of her jealously
+guarded kitchen. "Bring him in, Meg. He do be having fever, I suspect.
+I'll get him a cup of water. Dear, dear!"
+
+Making a soft, sympathetic, clucking noise, Norah hurried to get a cup
+of cool water which the little dog lapped up greedily, standing on his
+three good legs.
+
+"Bobby said he thought Sam would let him sleep in the garage," said
+Meg. "I suppose it is cooler there for him. All right, Norah, I'll
+carry him out. But we want to show him to Mother."
+
+"She went to meet your father--she and Sam with the car," Norah told
+them. "And if I don't get my biscuits in, they'll be back before
+there's a thing cooked to eat."
+
+The children took the hint and hurried to the garage. Bobby and
+Twaddles spread an old mat for the dog in a cool, dark corner, and
+very glad he seemed to be to have a place to lie down.
+
+"We'll bring you some supper," Meg promised, patting him kindly. "You
+take a nap and forget 'bout your troubles."
+
+"There's the car round front!" shouted Twaddles. "Bet you I see Daddy
+first."
+
+"Bet you don't!" shrieked Dot.
+
+With wild whoops the children tore round to the front of the house and
+fell upon Father and Mother Blossom just getting out of the car.
+
+"We brought a dog home," cried Bobby.
+
+"Come out and see him," urged Meg, clinging to her Mother's hand.
+"He's a dear little dog, and I love him already."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER II
+
+AN INVITATION
+
+
+The Blossoms all went back to the garage and found Sam bending over
+the sick dog.
+
+"He's a cute little fellow, Mr. Blossom," said Sam. "Just a pup, too.
+Shouldn't wonder if he turned out to be a good ratter when his leg
+gets well."
+
+That was the highest praise Sam could give a dog, and Meg and Bobby
+were delighted.
+
+"May we keep him, Mother?" they urged. "He can live in the garage.
+Please, Mother."
+
+Mother Blossom looked at Father.
+
+"Well, Ralph?" she said.
+
+"Why, keep him, of course," counseled Father Blossom, laughter-twinkles
+in his kind eyes. "Norah is the sole objector in the family, and if
+you can pacify her there's no reason why we shouldn't have as many
+dogs as we want. Named him yet, Meg?"
+
+"I want to think about a name for him," replied Meg. "You can't change
+names, you know, and I wouldn't want him to have a silly name."
+
+"That's my cautious daughter," said Father Blossom. "And now it seems
+to me that some one said we were going to have supper early
+to-night."
+
+"We are," declared Mother Blossom. "Children, you have several things
+to do before you are ready for the table. Your faces and hands are a
+sight. Bobby, didn't you go to the post-office? Was there any mail?"
+
+"I forgot, Mother--there was one letter for you," answered Bobby,
+pulling a crumpled envelope from his pocket. "The dog kind of took my
+attention," he added.
+
+Mother Blossom went into the house to read her letter, and the four
+children scampered upstairs to wash their faces and hands. Meg and Dot
+shared the same room, and Bobby and Twaddles slept in the room
+adjoining. Each child had a little white bed and a separate bureau.
+
+"I s'pose I'd better put on another dress," said Dot doubtfully.
+"Mother didn't say to, though. Shall I, Meg?"
+
+"Well, I would," advised Meg. "Not a spandy clean one, 'cause you
+mussed up two yesterday. Put on the green one again, can't you?"
+
+"I tore that," objected Dot, who certainly had bad luck with her
+clothes. "Oh, dear, I don't see why I wasn't a bird with a dress all
+glued on."
+
+"'Most ready?" asked Mother Blossom, who had come upstairs while the
+little girls were talking. "Let Mother tie your ribbon, Meg. What's
+the matter with Dot?"
+
+Meg bubbled into a gay little laugh.
+
+"She was wishing she was a bird with a dress glued on," she said.
+"Wouldn't that be funny?"
+
+"Yes, it would," agreed Mother Blossom. "But bring me the white pique,
+dear, and let me help you into it. Daddy is waiting for us."
+
+Dot was buttoned into a clean dress in a minute, and then Mother
+Blossom had to call Twaddles away from the basin in the bathroom where
+he was playing in the water instead of washing his hands, and she had
+to find a clean handkerchief for Bobby, and then, at last, they could
+all go downstairs.
+
+Father Blossom was playing the mechanical piano, but he stopped as
+soon as he saw them.
+
+"Everybody here to-night?" he asked. "Well, that is fine! Come on,
+Dottie-mine, and Daddy will tie your bib for you."
+
+The twins did not always have supper with Mother and Father Blossom.
+Sometimes they had their bread and milk at five o'clock and went to
+bed at half-past six. It was a treat for them to eat supper with their
+father.
+
+Mother Blossom smiled at the eager faces.
+
+"We've company coming," she announced. "Some one you love to have
+visit us."
+
+"When are they coming?" asked Meg.
+
+"To-morrow," answered Mother Blossom. "If I hadn't asked Bobby for the
+mail, we might have been in a great pickle. She's coming on the
+nine-fifty-six to-morrow morning."
+
+"Aunt Polly!" shouted the four little Blossoms.
+
+"Is it Aunt Polly, Mother?"
+
+"How long will she stay?"
+
+"Can we go to meet her?"
+
+"Will she bring a trunk?"
+
+Mother Blossom put her hands over her ears.
+
+"Don't all talk at once," she begged. "Yes, Aunt Polly is coming. She
+can't stay long, not even a week----"
+
+"But what do you think?" interrupted Father Blossom. "She wants the
+four Blossoms to go home with her!"
+
+"Ralph, you're not a bit better than Bobby," scolded Mother Blossom.
+"I didn't want to tell them to-night. However, there's no use trying
+to keep a secret in this family. Aunt Polly has invited you all to
+spend the summer at Brookside Farm."
+
+Well, of course, the children could talk of nothing else after that.
+Aunt Polly Hayward was Mother Blossom's eldest sister. She was a widow
+and lived on a fine farm many miles distant from the town of Oak Hill.
+She came often to visit Mother Blossom, and the children thought there
+was no one like her. To go to see Aunt Polly was a wonderful treat,
+and even Bobby, who, as the oldest of the four little Blossoms, had
+had more experiences than the others, had never been away from home
+in his life to stay.
+
+They were all up early the next morning, and Sam and the car took
+Father Blossom to the foundry immediately after breakfast so as to be
+back in time to meet Aunt Polly.
+
+"Aunt Polly's coming, Norah," said Meg, happily, as Norah was clearing
+the table.
+
+"Sure, and I've heard nothing else since last night," rejoined Norah.
+"How is the dog, your poor patient, this bright morning?"
+
+Bobby and Twaddles and Dot looked at each other.
+
+"The dog?" repeated Bobby. "My goodness, we forgot him!"
+
+"I didn't forget him," Meg said. "At least, I remembered him after I
+was in bed. I came down to feed him, and Daddy heard me and wouldn't
+let me go out in my nightgown. He took him some bread and milk. And
+this morning I fed him before breakfast."
+
+"How's he feel?" asked Twaddles sympathetically.
+
+"He's ever so much better," Meg informed him. "He can wag his leg
+some."
+
+"His tail, you mean," corrected Bobby. "Dogs don't wag their legs."
+
+"They do, too," argued Meg. "Anyway this one does, so that shows he is
+better. And I've thought up a name for him. I'm going to call him
+Philip."
+
+Bobby stared.
+
+"What do you want to call him that for?" he said curiously.
+
+"I read it in a book," answered Meg. "He looks as if he ought to be
+named Philip."
+
+Bobby was too surprised to argue, and just then Mother Blossom called
+to them that Sam was coming back with the car and they hurried out to
+see who could go to the station.
+
+"Aunt Polly will like to see us," declared Dot confidently. "And this
+dress is just as clean, Mother. There's only a tiny speck of egg on a
+tuck--it doesn't show a bit."
+
+Mother Blossom sat down on the top step and pulled Dot into her lap.
+
+"It's a duck of a clean frock," she assured her small daughter,
+kissing her. "And do you know there's just one way to avoid
+disappointment, and we'll take it; we'll all go to meet Aunt Polly. If
+she has any bundles, she'll just have to leave them, or Sam can tie
+them on behind."
+
+Sam grinned.
+
+When they reached the station Mother Blossom announced that the
+children were to stay quietly in the car while she went around to the
+front platform to meet Aunt Polly.
+
+"Do you suppose she'll bring us anything?" asked Twaddles hopefully,
+as Mother Blossom disappeared around the corner of the ticket window.
+
+"That isn't polite," reproved Meg quickly. "You must be glad to see
+company whether they bring you things or not."
+
+"There she is!" Dot stood up in the car and pointed. "Aunt Polly!"
+
+"Aunt Polly!" shouted the three other little Blossoms loudly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER III
+
+AUNT POLLY
+
+
+Aunt Polly was short and stout with merry blue eyes and curly dark
+hair that, where it showed under her pretty hat brim, was just touched
+with gray.
+
+"Hello, Blessings!" she greeted the children, as they spilled out of
+the car to meet her. "Every one of you here? That's fine. How do you
+do, Sam? I've two bags there on the platform, if you will get them."
+
+When they were all stowed away in the car, Sam put the bags in the
+front where he and Bobby sat, and backed the car out of the station
+driveway.
+
+"Well, have you decided to come home with me?" Aunt Polly put the
+question to them bluntly.
+
+The four little Blossoms glanced uncertainly at each other.
+
+"Polly Hayward," said Mother Blossom gayly, "you know perfectly well
+no one could get four children ready to take a journey in three days.
+Why, Dot has absolutely nothing to wear!"
+
+"Oh, I'll lend her something," smiled Aunt Polly.
+
+The children laughed at the idea of Auntie lending any dress of hers
+to small Dot.
+
+"We'll fix it somehow," declared Aunt Polly comfortably. "I simply
+have to have those youngsters for a visit at Brookside. We're all
+getting so fat and lazy with no one to stir us up. Even the dog and
+cat need rousing."
+
+"We have a dog, Aunt Polly," announced Meg, her eyes shining. "His
+name is Philip."
+
+Before she had a chance to describe Philip the car reached the Blossom
+house and stopped at the side door.
+
+"Here I am again, Norah," said Aunt Polly, as Norah came out to
+receive her.
+
+"And 'tis glad I am to see ye, Mrs. Hayward," responded Norah
+heartily. "I'll take the bags, Sam. The guest room's all ready,
+ma'am."
+
+The four children went as far as the guest-room door with Aunt Polly,
+and then Mother Blossom waved them back.
+
+"Auntie and I have a great deal to talk over," she said. "You run away
+and amuse yourselves till lunch time, like good little Blossoms."
+
+"Wait till I give them what I've brought them," hastily interposed
+Aunt Polly. "Bobby, you open that black bag and the four parcels on
+top are for you children."
+
+Bobby opened the bag and took out four packages neatly wrapped in
+paper and tied with cord.
+
+"How'll we know which is which?" he asked.
+
+"That's for you to find out," returned his aunt, giving him a kiss.
+
+Mother Blossom sat down on the bed and began talking in a low tone to
+Aunt Polly and the four children raced downstairs and out to the
+garage to open their presents. They liked the garage because there was
+plenty of space to play in, where, indeed, they had four empty rooms
+above the first floor for their own uses.
+
+This morning they rushed upstairs so fast that they never thought of
+Philip till, as they reached the top step, Meg looked back and saw
+the little dog painfully hobbling after them on his three good legs.
+
+"He wants to come, too," she said. "Here, Philip, come on up, good
+doggie."
+
+Philip managed to finish his climb and then lay down on the floor,
+panting, but satisfied to be where his friends were.
+
+"I'll give each one a package," Bobby decided. "Then we'll open them,
+one at a time, like Christmas. You first, Meg."
+
+Meg ripped the string off her parcel with a single motion and pulled
+off the paper in such a hurry that she tore it in two. Meg always
+hurried to solve mysteries.
+
+"Why, it's a game!" she cried, when she had opened the box. "All in
+pieces. Look!"
+
+Bobby took a look and shrieked with delight.
+
+"It's an airplane," he announced instantly. "That's mine, 'cause Aunt
+Polly knows I like experiments. What you got, Dot?"
+
+Dot hastily unwrapped her package and discovered a doll's trunk.
+
+"With clothes in it for Geraldine," she reported, after turning the
+tiny key and taking a peep inside. "That's mine all right. What's
+Twaddles got?"
+
+Twaddles unwrapped his parcel slowly and importantly. He was sure it
+was for him, and he rather enjoyed making the others wait.
+
+"Nothing but a book," he said disgustedly. "What kind of a book is it,
+Bobby?"
+
+"That's for Meg," Bobby informed him. "'Black Beauty.' Aunt Polly
+knows Meg likes to read and is always fussing with animals. I must
+have your present, Twaddles."
+
+The four Blossoms were more interested in Twaddles' gift than in their
+own because it was the only one they had not seen. Bobby carefully
+untied the string and wound it up in a neat ring; then he slowly took
+off the paper and folded that; finally he opened the flat box.
+
+Twaddles promptly tried to stand on his head, a habit he had when he
+was pleased. He never did succeed in standing on his head, but he
+usually turned a very good somersault. He did now.
+
+"Give it to me," he shouted, bobbing right side up again. "See, Dot,
+it's a water pistol!"
+
+"Well, I don't think that's a good thing to give you," pronounced Meg
+decisively. "You'll be hitting Dot in the eye."
+
+"Won't, neither," retorted Twaddles, feeling unjustly accused. "Aunt
+Polly asked me what I wanted most last time she was here and I told
+her; and she said if I'd promise not to shoot at people, she'd get me
+one. So there!"
+
+Bobby, the peace-maker, proposed that they all go in and show their
+presents to Norah, and he helped Meg carry Philip downstairs because
+she was sure the trip would hurt his leg. Bobby was never in too much
+of a hurry to do what Meg wanted him to do.
+
+In the afternoon, after lunch, all the Blossoms went for a long ride
+in the car, stopping at the foundry office on the way home to pick up
+Father Blossom. Still nothing was said about the children going home
+with Aunt Polly.
+
+"Do you suppose Mother will let us?" asked Dot, as Meg was helping her
+undress that night. "Maybe she's afraid I will use up my clean
+dresses too fast, and Aunt Polly won't have any to put on me. But you
+could lend me yours, Meg."
+
+"No, I don't believe that's the reason," said Meg slowly. "I tell you
+what I think--I think Mother and Daddy have to plan a lot before they
+know whether we can go. But you ought to be more careful with your
+dresses, Dot."
+
+The next morning Mother Blossom announced that if the children would
+come out on the porch she had something to tell them. There was a
+general stampede from the breakfast table--Father Blossom had had an
+early breakfast and had gone before the others were down--and Aunt
+Polly in the swing and Mother Blossom in a huge rocking-chair were
+nearly smothered in a shower of kisses.
+
+"Are we going to Brookside?"
+
+"Are we going home with Aunt Polly?"
+
+"Can I learn to milk a cow?"
+
+"Do you have chickens, Aunt Polly?" Four little voices chorused at
+once.
+
+"Dear, dear," chuckled Aunt Polly. "So you've been thinking about
+Brookside all this time, have you? And what makes you think your
+mother wants to talk about the farm with you?"
+
+Four pairs of eyes fixed their anxious gaze upon Mother Blossom.
+
+"Well, dearies," said Mother Blossom in answer, "Daddy and Aunt Polly
+and I have talked this over, and we've come to a decision. It is
+impossible for me to get you ready to go home with Aunt Polly
+to-morrow."
+
+"Oh, Mother!" mourned Twaddles.
+
+"Would you want to go and leave Mother?" that dear lady asked in
+surprise.
+
+"Not--not exactly," stammered the little boy. "But I want to go
+somewhere awfully."
+
+"Couldn't you go, too, Muddie?" suggested Meg.
+
+"Listen, and I'll tell you what we've planned," said Mother Blossom.
+"Aunt Polly has to go back to-morrow. We've tried to persuade her to
+stay, but it seems the summer is a very bad time to be away from a
+farm. But a week from to-morrow, if you are all very good and help me
+as much as you can, I will take you to Brookside to visit Aunt Polly
+for a month, or as long as she can stand four active youngsters in her
+quiet house."
+
+"Hurrah!" shouted the four little Blossoms.
+
+"Won't that be great! Let's get the trunk down right away, Mother."
+
+"Well, I wouldn't, not till Daddy comes home," said Aunt Polly,
+fanning herself and smiling. "A week is plenty of time, and I hear
+that Dot has to have some new frocks made."
+
+"Is Daddy coming?" Bobby asked suddenly.
+
+"I wanted him to, for I think he needs a rest," said Aunt Polly
+soberly. "But the most we could get him to promise was that he might
+come up with your mother when it is time for you to go home."
+
+"Mother's going--she said so," Meg reminded her aunt.
+
+"Only to take you to Brookside, Daughter," explained Mother Blossom.
+"Then I am coming home again to stay with Daddy. You see, I couldn't
+leave him alone in this house for a whole month. Think how lonesome he
+would be."
+
+Twaddles thought this over for a moment.
+
+"Well, I guess it will be a change for him, 'thout any children," he
+remarked, with a sunny smile.
+
+Aunt Polly scooped him into her lap and gave him a big hug.
+
+"Now where in the world did you get that idea?" she said.
+
+"I found it," confided Twaddles cheerfully.
+
+Dot had already disappeared. She thought it time to begin her packing.
+Presently they heard her in the house tumbling books out of the
+bookcase on to the polished floor.
+
+"Glory be, whatever are ye doing?" came Norah's cry. "Haven't I enough
+to be doing, without ye upsetting a room as fast as I put it in
+order?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IV
+
+THE WILLING PACKERS
+
+
+Meg rushed into the house.
+
+"Dot Blossom, you're not to touch my books," she scolded. "The idea!
+Why don't you fuss with your own things?"
+
+Dot looked vexed.
+
+"I'm helping you," she explained. "Don't you want to take your books
+to Aunt Polly's to read rainy days? Well, then, I'll pack 'em for
+you."
+
+Mother Blossom had followed Meg, and now she intervened.
+
+"No one is to pack anything to-day," she said firmly. "I want Dot to
+go into town with a message for Miss Florence. And Meg must practice
+on the piano half an hour at least. This afternoon we're going to take
+Aunt Polly driving. After she goes home there will be plenty for all
+of us to do to get ready."
+
+Miss Florence Davis was the dressmaker who often came to the house to
+make clothes for the Blossom children, and Dot set off presently for
+her house, carrying a note to her. Miss Florence had no telephone. She
+said she wasn't home long enough to answer it. But she always left a
+slip of paper pinned to her door to tell people at whose house she was
+sewing, and her customers were used to going about the town till they
+found her.
+
+"She says she can come," reported Dot when she returned from her
+errand. "She can give you four days, Mother. Where are the boys?"
+
+Mother Blossom looked at her small daughter and sighed.
+
+"I thought you knew Sam painted the fence last night," she said
+mildly.
+
+"I did, but I forgot," explained Dot, trying to fold over a pleat so
+that the vivid streaks of green paint would not show. "I guess I kind
+of brushed up against it, Mother."
+
+Usually when Aunt Polly went home the four little Blossoms were
+disconsolate, but the next morning they saw her to the station quite
+cheerfully. Were they not going to Brookside themselves exactly one
+week from that day?
+
+"Now we must fly around and get ready," announced Bobby, when they
+returned to the house. Bobby had a great trick of remembering speeches
+he had heard older folk make.
+
+"Indeed then and you must," agreed Norah, who was sweeping the porch.
+"Your mother wants Dot in the sewing room. Miss Florence is ready to
+try on. And, Bobby, it's sorry I am, but we're out of soap."
+
+It was rather a long walk to the grocery store, and Bobby didn't think
+that going for soap promised one bit of excitement. Neither did Meg
+want to practice the piano scales that one day were to make her a good
+musician. Norah knew something of what they were thinking.
+
+"You'll both be helping your mother to get ready to go," she said
+earnestly and kindly. "I've got extra washing to do, for all your
+clothes must be clean. And if Meg's going to stop learning music every
+time a new plan comes up, she'll grow up to be terrible ignorant of
+lots of things."
+
+"All right, I'm going," said Bobby quickly. "An' you'll be through by
+the time I get back, Meg. Then I guess we can pack the toys."
+
+Twaddles, left alone, wandered up to the sewing room.
+
+"Hello, Twaddles," said Miss Florence pleasantly. "Have you come up to
+see what pretty dresses Dot is going to have? And what is this I hear
+about every one going to Brookside?"
+
+"We're going to see Aunt Polly," explained Twaddles. "And, Mother, can
+we take toys? Bobby's all ready to pack 'em as soon as he gets back."
+
+"If you don't pack something pretty soon, the house won't hold you,"
+observed Mother Blossom, smiling. "You see, Twaddles dear, Mother
+doesn't believe you will need many toys at Brookside. There will be so
+many wonderful new out-of-door things for you to play with. Suppose we
+say that each of you may choose the two things you are fondest of.
+That won't make so much to carry."
+
+So that was settled, and when Bobby came back from town and Meg had
+finished practicing scales and Dot's three new dresses had all been
+tried on, the children went upstairs to their playroom to select the
+toys they thought they would want to take with them.
+
+"I think we ought to take the things Aunt Polly gave us," announced
+Meg. "They're new, and we haven't played with them much. She might
+think we didn't like 'em if we left them at home."
+
+"All right, we will," decided Bobby. "And I'll take my ball and bat.
+Guess I won't break Aunt Polly's windows. There must be lots of room
+on a farm."
+
+"I'm going to take the paper dolls," said Meg. "I'm pretty sure Aunt
+Polly will have books to read, so that's all right. What you going to
+take, Dot?"
+
+"Geraldine and Tottie-Fay and the trunk," was the prompt response.
+
+"That's three," Meg reminded her. "Mother said we could each have two.
+I tell you--you don't need the trunk; just take Geraldine's new
+clothes."
+
+"All right," acquiesced Dot briefly.
+
+Tottie-Fay was an old dollie, but dearly loved, and, as Father
+Blossom said when he heard that she was going to Brookside, no one
+could need a change of air more.
+
+"I'm going to carry my kiddie-car," declared Twaddles serenely.
+
+The others protested that the kiddie-car wouldn't go in the trunk;
+that there would be no pavement on which to ride it; that Twaddles
+should take a smaller toy.
+
+Twaddles listened politely and set his obstinate little chin firmly.
+He meant to take the kiddie-car.
+
+"We'll express it," said Father Blossom kindly that night. "I'm going
+to send a porch swing up and a----Oh, my goodness, I almost told you.
+And it is a _surprise_!"
+
+"What is it?" cried the four little Blossoms eagerly. "Tell us, Daddy!
+Ah, do! Please!"
+
+"It can be a surprise for Aunt Polly," suggested Meg artfully. "Won't
+you tell us, Daddy?"
+
+"No. I like surprises that are surprises," asserted Father Blossom.
+"Now, not another word does any one get out of me on this subject.
+Not a word."
+
+The next few days were very busy ones; but at last two trunks were
+brought down and placed in the hall, and Mother Blossom made lists and
+packed and explained her plans to Meg and Bobby, who, as the oldest,
+could be expected to remember.
+
+"All the stockings are here, dear, right in this tray," Mother Blossom
+would say. "And I'm putting Bobby's blouses in this trunk. You are
+sure you will remember so that Aunt Polly needn't be bothered in case
+I don't get both trunks unpacked for you?"
+
+Meg was sure she could remember.
+
+"Where's Twaddles?" asked Mother Blossom the last afternoon, when she
+was putting in the very final things. "I haven't seen him since lunch
+time. Dot, do you know where he went?"
+
+"I think he's watching Sam give Philip a bath," volunteered Bobby. "He
+likes the smell of that dog soap, Mother."
+
+"I can't say I do," said Mother Blossom frankly. "It is strongly
+carbolic. Go and call him in, will you, Bobby?"
+
+Bobby found Twaddles blissfully watching the shivering Philip enduring
+a last rinsing after his bath. Sam liked to keep him clean, and he
+said that because a dog had a broken leg was no reason why he
+shouldn't be washed.
+
+"Mother says for you to come in," Bobby told his brother. "It's time
+to get ready for supper. Gee, that soap does smell, doesn't it?"
+
+"I like it," Twaddles affirmed, sniffing luxuriously. "I wish we took
+baths with that kind."
+
+Mother Blossom sent him to the bathroom to wash his face and hands and
+she brushed his hair for him herself.
+
+"What is that I keep smelling?" she asked once or twice, "Oh, the
+carbolic dog-soap. Twaddles, I do wish you wouldn't handle it so
+much."
+
+"Who's been to the drug store?" said Father Blossom, when they sat
+down to supper. "Phew! I smell carbolic, strong."
+
+"Philip had a bath," explained Twaddles uneasily. "Perhaps you smell
+it, Daddy."
+
+"Twaddles means the soap," giggled Meg. "You can't smell a bath,
+silly."
+
+Father Blossom laid down his carving knife and fork.
+
+"I can't stand that," he declared positively. "Twaddles, you needn't
+tell me just handling a soapy dog is responsible for the whiffs of
+carbolic I'm getting. What is that in your pocket?"
+
+A dark wet stain was slowly spreading in the square little pocket of
+the blouse Twaddles wore.
+
+"I--I saved a piece," he stammered. "I thought Spotty, Aunt Polly's
+dog, ought to have some. It's awful healthy for dogs, Daddy. Sam says
+so."
+
+Father Blossom had to laugh.
+
+"I don't doubt it," he admitted. "But that's no reason why we should
+have to smell it. Wrap it up and put it away if you like for Spotty.
+And then come back and we'll see if we can finish supper in peace."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER V
+
+DOT'S ADVENTURE
+
+
+"Good-by, Daddy! Good-by, Daddy dear! Good-by, dear, darling Daddy!"
+
+The four little Blossoms all tried to hug their father at once. They
+were at the station, where Sam and the car had brought them, and the
+train that was to take them on the first lap of the journey to Aunt
+Polly's farm was turning the curve down the track.
+
+"Be good," said Father Blossom, speaking as clearly as he could with
+Dot hanging around his neck and Twaddles pounding his chest
+affectionately. "Help Mother all you can, and be sure to write me nice
+letters."
+
+The long, shiny train glided into the station, and there was a
+scramble among the people waiting on the platform. Apparently every
+one wanted to be the first to get on. It took Mother and Father
+Blossom and Sam and the jolly conductor to see that all four of the
+little Blossoms and the two bags were stowed away comfortably in two
+seats.
+
+Then Father Blossom and Sam got off and stood on the platform talking
+through the open window until the train began to move slowly.
+
+"Good-by!" shouted the children. "Good-by, Daddy! Good-by, Sam!"
+
+Meg leaned over Twaddles, who was seated next to the window.
+
+"Don't forget to feed Philip," she cried.
+
+Sam waved his hand to show that he heard and understood, and the train
+went faster and faster. In a few minutes Oak Hill station was far
+behind them.
+
+"Now we're started," announced Bobby, with satisfaction.
+
+"Did my kiddie-car get on?" asked Twaddles anxiously. "S'posing they
+forgot it?"
+
+"Is that why you were hanging round the baggage-room?" demanded Bobby.
+"Course the kiddie-car is on. I saw Mr. Hayes putting it on. You ask
+the conductor."
+
+But the conductor, who came through presently for tickets, didn't
+know.
+
+"I tell you what you do," he said, his eyes twinkling at Twaddles.
+"You ask the brakesman to take you into the baggage car and let you
+look around. Then you can see for yourself."
+
+"But that is making a great deal of trouble," protested Mother
+Blossom. "You can easily wait till we get to Brookside, dear."
+
+"Let him go, let him go," advised the conductor cheerily. "It will
+kind of break up the monotony of the trip, ma'am. These little folks
+are going to get pretty tired before they get to Alawana."
+
+So Twaddles marched off importantly with the conductor to find the
+young, good-natured brakesman, and the three little Blossoms rather
+wished they could go, too.
+
+"What happens when we get to Alawana, Mother?" asked Bobby. "Do we
+change cars?"
+
+"No, dear, we take the boat," explained Mother Blossom. "If the train
+is on time we have an hour to wait, which will allow us to have lunch;
+then we take a steamer that takes us up Lake Tobago to Little Havre.
+There we take a stage, or a wagon, or whatever they have to meet the
+boat, and ride to Four Crossways; and there Aunt Polly meets us and
+drives us over to Brookside."
+
+"Here comes Twaddles," announced Dot. "Did you find the kiddie car?"
+she asked.
+
+"Yes, it's there," reported Twaddles, squeezing in past Meg, and
+climbing into his place beside his twin. "There's lots of trunks and
+things there, too."
+
+During the long stretches when the train hummed steadily along and
+there was nothing to be seen from the car windows but miles and miles
+of green fields and woods with here and there a house, the children
+played a game Mother Blossom had known when she was a little girl.
+
+"My ship is loaded with apples," Bobby would say.
+
+"My ship is loaded with apricots," Meg would declare.
+
+Dot usually had to think a minute.
+
+"My ship is loaded with--with ashes," she might announce finally.
+
+"My ship is loaded with at;" this from Twaddles.
+
+"Oh, Twaddles!" Bobby would scold. "You can't load a ship with 'at.'
+That isn't anything."
+
+"'Tis, too," maintained Twaddles stubbornly. "It begins with 'a,'
+doesn't it? And it's a word. So there."
+
+If Twaddles had his way and was excused from thinking up another word,
+it would be Mother Blossom's turn.
+
+"My ship is loaded with asters," she might say, smiling.
+
+When no one could think of another word that began with A, they would
+go on to B. This game amused the children for many minutes at a time.
+They had just started on words beginning with C when the train reached
+Alawana.
+
+"I'm hungry," declared Meg, when they all stood together on the
+platform and the train that had brought them from Oak Hill was nothing
+but a black speck in the distance. "We had breakfast an awful long
+time ago."
+
+"I guess it was yesterday," said Dot mournfully.
+
+Mother Blossom laughed.
+
+"Poor chickens, you are hungry," she said. "Never mind, I see a nice
+little restaurant across the street. Let me find out when the boat
+goes, and then we'll have a good, hot lunch."
+
+The Lake Tobago boat, Mother Blossom found out, left in half an hour.
+Their train had been late. However, the dock was not far off, and
+Mother Blossom was sure they would have time for sandwiches and milk
+at least.
+
+All the children were tremendously excited at the thought of going on
+a steamer, as not one of them had ever been on a boat. There was no
+lake or river near Oak Hill, and the largest body of water the four
+little Blossoms had seen was the town reservoir.
+
+"If they have sails, I'm going to roll 'em up and down," Dot
+announced, so thrilled at the prospect that she upset her glass of
+milk down the front of her frock.
+
+"You'll have to wear it," said Mother Blossom, mopping her as dry as
+she could with a napkin. "Perhaps I can put a dry dress on you on the
+boat. Now try to eat quietly, dear; we haven't much time."
+
+The shower-bath of milk rather subdued Dot for the moment, and lunch
+was finished without further mishap. Then a brief walk through the
+pretty little country town brought them to the lake.
+
+"O-oh! Isn't it lovely!" breathed Meg. "Just see how it sparkles in
+the sun. Don't you like it, Dot?"
+
+"It's all right," agreed Dot carelessly.
+
+Her quick eyes had spied an old organ grinder and his monkey on the
+other side of the dock. She slipped under the rope, where the people
+who wanted to take the boat were standing, and ran over to the music.
+
+"We needn't have hurried," said Mother Blossom, coming back to her
+little folk. She had been to the office to have the baggage checks
+looked after. "The boat is held up for another half hour because of
+some engine trouble. Where's Dot?"
+
+Well, where was Dot? Meg had thought her little sister was standing
+next to her. The boys were sure she had been just behind them. Where
+was Dot?
+
+She stood in the crowd gathered about the organ grinder, a little girl
+with shining dark eyes and a milk-splashed frock, watching the clever
+bowing and scraping of the small monkey with evident delight. Then a
+sudden movement of the people about her startled her. She remembered
+that she was supposed to go somewhere with the rest of her family. She
+saw people hurrying toward a large automobile with nine or ten long
+seats in it, and she hurried toward it, too. A man helped her up the
+high step, and she found a seat just behind the driver.
+
+The automobile was lumbering up a narrow white road with woods on
+either side of it before Dot realized where she was.
+
+"Why, this isn't the boat!" she said aloud.
+
+The lady seated next to her glanced at her curiously.
+
+"The boat?" she repeated. "This jitney goes to Fermarsh. You're not
+traveling all alone, are you, little girl? You don't look more'n
+five."
+
+"I was four in June," announced Dot with dignity. "Twaddles was, too.
+We're twins. But I have to go to Little Havre on the boat."
+
+"You're going in the opposite direction," said the woman placidly. She
+did not seem to care. "What's that on your dress?"
+
+Dot's tears brimmed over.
+
+"Milk," she sobbed. "I tipped it over. An' I have to go on the boat
+with my mother."
+
+The jitney driver heard and turned.
+
+"What's this?" he asked. "You belong on the boat, little girl? Well,
+now, don't cry; we'll fix it. I heard they had engine trouble to-day,
+and like as not they'll be late starting. Long up the road a spell
+we'll meet the two o'clock jitney coming back, and I'll see that Dave
+Gunn takes you in with him. An' if you do miss the boat my wife'll
+take care of you over night and we'll ship you up to Little Havre on
+to-morrow's boat."
+
+Dot felt that the jitney driver was very kind, but she hoped with all
+her heart that she would not have to stay all night in a strange
+house. She wanted her mother, and Twaddles and Meg and Bobby. She
+hadn't known till this minute how dearly she loved them.
+
+Sure enough, their jitney had not gone very far when they saw another
+jitney coming toward them.
+
+"Hi, Dave!" called the driver of Dot's jitney. "Got a passenger for
+you. A little lady who tangled up her traveling directions and missed
+getting on the boat. You take her with you, and see that she lands on
+the steamer."
+
+Mr. Gunn stopped his machine and came over to the other jitney.
+
+"Come on, Sister," he said pleasantly, lifting Dot down gently.
+
+"Why, you are little to be traveling on your own. I've got three home
+'bout your size."
+
+Mother Blossom, as you may suppose, had been nearly frantic all this
+time. She had taken the other children on board the boat and had left
+them on deck with the bags, after they had promised not to stir from
+the spot where she left them, and she had been going up and down the
+dock making inquiries, and even walking up into the town, believing
+that perhaps some of the store windows had attracted Dot.
+
+No one remembered seeing a little girl in a green dress and a brown
+straw hat.
+
+Just as Mother Blossom was wearily wondering if she should telegraph
+Father Blossom that Dot was lost, a motor jitney lumbered down to the
+dock. Some one in a green dress and a brown straw hat was sitting on
+the front seat beside the driver.
+
+"Mother! Mother!" shouted Dot.
+
+There was just time for her to tumble out of the car into her mother's
+arms, just time for Mother Blossom to give the driver a dollar bill
+and say a word of thanks, and then the steamboat whistle blew loudly
+once.
+
+"That means she's starting," said the jitney man. "Run!"
+
+And hand in hand, Mother Blossom and Dot raced down the wharf and over
+the gangplank on to the deck of the boat, just as it began to slide
+away.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VI
+
+BROOKSIDE AT LAST
+
+
+"We thought you weren't coming," said Meg anxiously.
+
+"Where did you find Dot?" asked Bobby and Twaddles in the same
+breath.
+
+Dot smiled serenely.
+
+"I came back myself," she informed them. "The jitney man told me
+how."
+
+Mother Blossom sat down on a camp-stool and fanned herself with
+Twaddles' blue sailor hat.
+
+"See if we can't get to Brookside without any more mishaps," she
+commanded the children. "If we had missed the boat, think of the worry
+and trouble for Aunt Polly. Even if we telegraphed she wouldn't get it
+before she started over to meet us."
+
+The four little Blossoms promised to be very good and to stay close
+together.
+
+Lake Tobago was a small lake, very pretty, and for some minutes the
+children saw enough on the shores they were passing to keep them
+contented and interested. In one place two little boys and their
+father were out fishing in a rowboat and the steamer passed so close
+to them that the four little Blossoms, leaning over the rail, could
+almost shake hands with them.
+
+"There's another wharf! Do we stop there? Yes, we do! Come on, Dot,
+let's watch!" shouted Twaddles, as the steamer headed inshore toward a
+pier built out into the water.
+
+"Keep away from the gangplank," warned Mother Blossom. "You mustn't
+get in people's way, dear."
+
+The pier was something of a disappointment, because when the boat tied
+up there the children discovered that only freight was to be taken off
+and more boxes carried on. There was only one man at the wharf, and
+apparently no town for miles.
+
+"Doesn't anybody live here?" asked Twaddles, almost climbing over the
+rail in his eagerness to see everything.
+
+"Sure! There's a town back about half a mile," explained the deck-hand
+who was carrying on a crate of live chickens. "This is just where
+farmers drive in with their stuff."
+
+"Let me see the chickens," cried Dot, climbing up beside her brother.
+
+Her elbow knocked his hat, and because he hadn't the elastic under his
+chin, it went sailing over on to the wharf. One of the men rolling a
+barrel toward the steamer did not see the hat and calmly rolled his
+barrel over it.
+
+"Now you've done it!" scolded Meg, in her big-sister anxiety. "That's
+a fine-looking hat to go to see Aunt Polly in. Hey, please, will you
+bring it back here with you?"
+
+The man with the barrel heard and turned. He picked up the shapeless
+broken straw that had been Twaddles' best new hat, and brought it to
+them, grinning. Several people who had been watching laughed.
+
+"It does look funny, doesn't it?" said Meg. "You'd better go and show
+it to Mother, Twaddles."
+
+Twaddles went back to Mother Blossom and dangled his hat before her
+sadly.
+
+"Oh, Twaddles!" she sighed. "Is that your hat? And we're miles from a
+store. Here, let me straighten out the brim. What happened to it?
+Where did you go?"
+
+Twaddles said truthfully enough that he hadn't been anywhere, and
+explained what had happened to the hat. The boat was out in the lake
+again by this time and steaming on toward Little Havre.
+
+"Where are the others?" asked Mother Blossom. "Tell them we get off in
+fifteen or twenty minutes, and I want them all to come and stay near
+me."
+
+Presently the boat scraped alongside a wide wharf and a number of
+people began to bustle off.
+
+"Where are we going now?" asked Twaddles, his round eyes dancing with
+excitement. Twaddles certainly loved traveling.
+
+"Don't you 'member?" said Meg importantly. "We have to go to Four
+Crossways, and Aunt Polly will meet us. There's a bus that says 'Four
+Crossways,' Mother."
+
+Mother Blossom had to see about the trunks and the kiddie-car, which,
+it seemed, were all to go in a queer contrivance attached to the
+motor bus, a "trailer," the driver called it.
+
+"Isn't that nice?" beamed Bobby, when he heard of this arrangement.
+"Our trunks will get there the same time we do."
+
+The children watched this trailer being loaded, and then all climbed
+into the bus and began the journey to Four Crossways. There were so
+many people on their way there that Bobby and Twaddles had to be
+squeezed into the front seat between the driver and the man who took
+the fares, and they liked this immensely.
+
+"We're going to Brookside," volunteered Twaddles, who was sociably
+inclined, as soon as the driver seemed to have his engine fixed to
+suit him and the car was purring up the straight, wide road.
+
+"To see Aunt Polly," chimed in Bobby.
+
+"There's a lot of you, isn't there?" said the driver, smiling.
+
+When both boys said they had never been on a real farm, the driver,
+whose name, he told them, was Gus Rede, had so much to say about the
+fun that awaited boys on a farm and especially such a fine place as
+Brookside that before Bobby and Twaddles knew it the bus had driven up
+to the post-office and there was dear Aunt Polly waiting to welcome
+them.
+
+"Bless their hearts," she said warmly, when she had kissed Mother and
+had hold of a child with either hand. "Are they all tired out, poor
+lambs? It's a fearful place to get to, especially the first trip."
+
+Mother Blossom assured her sister that they were all right, and as
+glad to see her as she was to see them.
+
+"I left the car around on a side street," explained Aunt Polly,
+leading the way. "You see so many horses are still afraid of
+automobiles that we think it more thoughtful not to leave 'em standing
+on the main street. Yes, I drove over alone for you--either Peter or
+Jud will come over to-morrow for your trunks."
+
+This last was in response to a question Mother Blossom had asked.
+
+Aunt Polly's car was large enough to hold them all comfortably. Dot
+and Twaddles fell into a little doze, leaning against Mother Blossom.
+They had had rather a long day. But Meg and Bobby sat up very straight
+and asked questions whenever Aunt Polly was not speaking to their
+mother.
+
+"Who's Peter and Jud?" Bobby wanted to know first.
+
+"Peter Apgar is my tenant farmer and runs the farm for me," said Aunt
+Polly, pulling over to one side of the road to let a huge load of hay
+go past. "Jud is his son. You'll like Jud. They live in a house about
+a quarter of a mile from our house."
+
+"How is Spotty?" came from Meg. "I thought maybe you'd bring him with
+you."
+
+"Spotty is very lively and well," answered Aunt Polly. "I like a farm
+dog to stay at home and watch things, so I've never trained him to
+ride in the car with me. By the way, Meg, we have a new addition to
+our animal family that I'm sure you'll like."
+
+Meg was immediately curious--what was it?
+
+"The blackest cat you ever saw," said Aunt Polly. "And I think
+probably the largest. He is so shiny, and not a white hair on him! He
+belonged to the people on the next farm, but spent about half his time
+with me; so when they sold and moved away last week Poots was given to
+me to keep."
+
+"Is that his name--Poots?" inquired Meg. "How funny!"
+
+"Well, he's a funny cat," replied her aunt. "And now, children, if you
+look sharp you'll see Brookside!"
+
+She turned the car into a neat graveled roadway which parted a pretty
+concrete wall exactly in half, while Twaddles was puzzling how those
+things that looked to him like chickens could ever turn into big juicy
+turkeys.
+
+Eagerly the four little Blossoms tumbled out. They saw a compact,
+modern house that looked even from the outside as if one might find
+all sorts of unexpected corners within. A green lawn bordered each
+side of the driveway, and in one direction was a red-tiled house with
+smoke coming out of the chimney and in another a birdhouse perched on
+a high pole near the gate the four little Blossoms had just come
+through.
+
+Bobby spied the other house and Meg saw the home for the birds, just
+as people always see whatever they are most interested in first.
+
+"Flowers!" said Dot.
+
+She had seen the hollyhocks that stood up straight and tall against
+the fence that shut off the back of Aunt Polly's house.
+
+Peter Apgar had come up to take the car and perhaps to see the new
+arrivals. The four little Blossoms liked him at once, and when he
+spoke in a soft, lazy drawl that was good-nature itself they knew he
+was going to be a good friend.
+
+"Can't say you're lonesome now, Miss Polly," he chuckled pleasantly.
+He always called her Miss Polly, never Mrs. Hayward. "And I guess Jud
+is as good as useless to me the rest of the summer. What these
+youngsters don't think up to do, he will," the farmer added, with a
+broad grin.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VII
+
+THE WRECK OF THE RAFT
+
+
+Though all of the four little Blossoms protested that they were not
+the least bit sleepy, it was not long after Mother and Aunt Polly had
+helped them to delicious brown bread and honey and milk and baked
+apples that they were stumbling up the stairs to baths and bed. Linda,
+a girl about fifteen, who lived with Aunt Polly and went to school in
+the winter and worked during the summer, had made the two pretty
+bedrooms as dainty as possible and had left a vase of flowers on the
+table in each room. It was Linda, too, who brought armfuls of clean
+towels and showed them which was the hot and which the cold water in
+Aunt Polly's white and green bathroom.
+
+The next day the four children and Mother Blossom and Aunt Polly, with
+Linda and Jud part of the time and Spotty and Poots in constant
+attendance, explored Brookside thoroughly.
+
+They saw the poultry yard, where ducks and chickens and guinea-hens
+and one lame turkey lived happily together. The other turkeys roamed
+all over the farm, and Aunt Polly said that at night they slept out of
+doors in the trees. She said they would be sick if cooped up in
+houses, and that they had to roam half-wild to thrive.
+
+The visitors called on Mrs. Sally Sweet, the beautiful gentle Jersey
+cow that gave such wonderful rich milk; they saw the seven new little
+white pigs; they took salt to the sheep that were in a stony pasture
+and that came running when Peter called to them from the bars.
+
+They made the acquaintance, too, of Jerry and Terry, the two faithful
+farm horses, and Nelly Bly, the brown mare who had a small colt,
+Felix, by her side. Meg had to be dragged away from the colt. She said
+she had never seen such a darling little horse.
+
+Jud Apgar was a tall, lanky boy, with the same pleasant drawling way
+of speaking his father had, and the "evenest temper that ever was,"
+Linda said. Linda should have known, because she was a great tease.
+
+On their way back from the sheep pasture Aunt Polly and the Blossoms
+stopped at the tenant house, and Mrs. Apgar asked them in to taste of
+her fresh buttermilk. She had just finished churning, and the children
+saw their first churn. They admired the firm yellow butter, but they
+did not care much for the buttermilk, though Mother Blossom drank two
+glasses of it and said it was delicious.
+
+It was nearly dinner time now, for Aunt Polly, like many people who
+live in the country, liked to have her dinner at noon, and they all
+hurried home to get freshened up for the meal. Poor Dot, as usual, had
+managed to soil her frock, and she had to be buttoned into a clean
+dress.
+
+"How'd you ever get that old egg on it?" scolded Meg, nevertheless
+helping her to fasten the buttons.
+
+"I didn't know eggs broke so easy," explained Dot. "I was looking in a
+nest where a hen was sitting, and she flew up and scared me. And I
+just touched one of her eggs and it broke."
+
+Meg happened to glance from the window.
+
+"Peter's brought the trunks!" she cried. "And the kiddie-car and a
+bundle that must be the surprise Daddy told us about. Hurry, Dot."
+
+The two little girls ran downstairs and found the others gathered
+about the trunks and parcels on the front porch.
+
+"Daddy's surprise!" shouted Bobby. "Let me open it, Mother?"
+
+Mother Blossom handed him the shears and he cut the heavy cord.
+Something brown and heavy was inside.
+
+"It's a dress. No, it isn't, it's a tent! It's a tent and four Indian
+suits!" Bobby was so delighted that he gave a war-whoop then and there
+and began to do a war dance.
+
+"An Indian suit!" shrieked Twaddles, trying to stand on his head.
+
+"Indian beads!" cried Meg, holding up a long chain of bright colored
+glass beads.
+
+"And feathers!" Dot, too, had been digging in the package.
+
+The rest of the afternoon was a busy time for them all. Jud helped
+them set up the tent on the side lawn, and then the four little
+Blossoms dressed up in their new suits and played Indians to their
+hearts' content. There were jackets and trousers and feather
+head-dresses for Bobby and Twaddles and squaw costumes and bead chains
+for Meg and Dot. Jud made them each a wooden hatchet, which completed
+the make-believe.
+
+The next morning Mother Blossom had to go back to Oak Hill. The
+children went as far as the gate to say good-by to her, but both she
+and Aunt Polly, who was to drive her over, not in the car but with
+Nelly Bly and a smart-looking red-wheeled buggy, thought that it was
+better for them not to go to town.
+
+When they had kissed her good-by and watched the buggy till it was
+nothing but a cloud of dust in the road, the four little Blossoms
+began to feel very queer indeed. They had never been alone in a
+strange place without any mother before.
+
+"Well, my goodness, if you're not here," said Jud cheerily, coming up
+behind them. He pretended not to see the tears beginning to splash
+down Dot's cheeks. "I'm going down to the brook to mend the line
+fence, and I thought if you wanted to come along and play in the
+water----"
+
+They did, of course. Dot slipped her hand into Jud's and the others
+followed, talking busily. What was a line fence? How could he fix it?
+What could they play in the water?
+
+Jud didn't mind questions at all. Indeed, he rather enjoyed answering
+them.
+
+"You see, this fence goes along the brook right in the center," he
+explained carefully, "to show where your Aunt Polly's land stops and
+Mr. Simmond's land begins. If we didn't have a fence there his cattle
+would walk right through the brook and up into our meadows. Say, build
+a raft, why don't you? I always did when I was a kid. Here, I'll show
+you."
+
+Jud in a few minutes had shown Bobby how to make a little raft, and he
+and Twaddles finished it while Meg and Dot ran up to the house to get
+some toys to sail on it. For a raft, you know if you have ever made
+one, is no fun at all unless it has a cargo.
+
+"We brought Geraldine!" cried Dot, running back, out of breath, with
+her best doll. "And now I wish I'd brought her trunk. But here's Meg's
+'Black Beauty' book. She says we can play that's a trunk. It's heavy.
+And Meg is bringing your airplane, Bobby, and the singing bird for
+Twaddles."
+
+The singing bird was a little toy one of the neighbors in Oak Hill had
+given Twaddles. It had come from abroad, and he was very proud of it.
+It was a tiny yellow wooden bird that wound up with a key and sang
+three tunes for all the world like a music box.
+
+Bobby fixed the string, and the children arranged the toys on the
+raft, the smiling Geraldine occupying the place of honor in the center
+and leaning gracefully against the book which served her as a prop.
+
+"Look, Jud!" shouted Bobby. "See it float!"
+
+Jud, in the middle of the stream, waved his hand encouragingly.
+
+"It's beginning to sprinkle," he called. "Better run on up to the
+barn, out of the wet. You'll find Dad working there. Tie your
+raft--this is only a shower."
+
+Bobby obediently tied the raft to a tree root that extended out over
+the water, and the four little Blossoms, taking hold of hands, raced
+madly for the barn. They were only just in time, for as they reached
+the door the rain fell in sheets.
+
+"Most caught you, didn't it?" chuckled Peter, who was mending harness
+in a little room that opened on to the barn floor. "A rain like this
+could drown that littlest one."
+
+"No, it couldn't," protested Dot, who was the "littlest one."
+
+"Maybe Jud will drown," worried Bobby. "Does he stay out in the wet?"
+
+"A bit of rain doesn't hurt Jud," said Peter comfortably. "He's used
+to it, and his mother has dry clothes ready for him when he comes in.
+Well now, look around, and make yourselves at home. You can do most
+anything in Miss Polly's barn."
+
+"Let's play see-saw," proposed Meg, pointing to a long board that
+stood in the corner. "Could we have that, Mr. Peter?"
+
+"Of course you can. I'll lay it across this saw-horse, so, and that's
+as fine a see-saw as any one could ask for," said Peter, lifting the
+heavy plank with ease.
+
+Bobby and Meg took possession of the see-saw, and Dot and Twaddles
+made the simultaneous discovery that hay was slippery. They found this
+out because Twaddles had climbed to the top of a pile of loose hay and
+was intending to reach an open window when his foot slipped and he
+gently slid down to the floor.
+
+"Let me do that," cried Dot, hastily scrambling up. "Watch me, Meg."
+
+She sat down, gave herself a little shove and neatly slid down the
+side of the hay. Then Twaddles tried, and then they took turns.
+
+Spotty appeared at the barn door, wagging his tail engagingly. He was
+"part white terrier" and "part something else" Jud had told the
+children, and he had one funny black spot on his back near his tail.
+
+In less than half an hour the rain had stopped and a watery sun was
+struggling through the breaking clouds.
+
+"Bobby!" Meg thought of something so suddenly, she stopped the see-saw
+with a bump that jarred poor Bobby's teeth. "What do you know about
+the things we left on the raft? Geraldine will be soaked!"
+
+"And the wings of my airplane," cried Bobby. "Why, I never thought! We
+should have taken the toys off. Let's get 'em now, and maybe Linda can
+dry them in the kitchen for us."
+
+Hastily calling the twins, Meg and Bobby set off, running for the
+brook. The grass was very wet and their shoes were soaked in a few
+minutes. But they didn't mind that if only the toys were not damaged!
+
+Bobby reached the brook first. No Jud was in sight, but a neat, firm
+fence showed where he had completed his work. No raft was tied to the
+root, either.
+
+"It's gone!" gasped Meg, who had followed Bobby closely. "My lovely
+book I've never even read yet!"
+
+"And my airplane I meant to have such fun sailing out where there is
+lots of room," said Bobby mournfully. "Dot, the raft's floated away!"
+
+Dot and Twaddles came up to them and Dot at first could not believe
+the bad news.
+
+"But you tied it, Bobby," she urged. "How could it get gone?"
+
+"Don't say 'get gone,'" said Bobby absently. "I don't know how it got
+loose, but it has. You can see for yourself. And all our toys are
+lost!"
+
+"Poor, poor Geraldine!" sobbed Geraldine's little mother. "All
+drowned! And Twaddles' Dicky bird! Maybe, couldn't Jud have them,
+Bobby?" she added suddenly.
+
+Bobby had not thought of that.
+
+"You run and ask him," he said, "while we walk down the brook a way
+and look for 'em."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER VIII
+
+LEARNING TO MILK
+
+
+Dot ran off to the Apgar house as fast as her short legs would carry
+her, to find Jud and ask him if he had taken their toys in out of the
+rain. The other children followed Bobby along the brook.
+
+"Because our feet are as wet as they can be, now," he said, "and if
+Aunt Polly is going to scold, getting them wetter won't make her scold
+any more."
+
+"It looks like more rain," worried Meg, scanning the clouds. "Why
+don't we go back, Bobby, and come out after dinner? If the raft
+floated as far as the woods, the trees will keep it dry."
+
+Bobby was very damp and very hungry, and he, too, thought that after
+dinner would be a better time to hunt for the toys.
+
+"Come on, Twaddles," he shouted. "We're going back."
+
+Twaddles was some distance ahead, and he turned so quickly that one
+foot slipped. Meg and Bobby saw him tumble into the brook with a loud
+splash.
+
+It wasn't very deep, but it was very wet, and though Bobby reached him
+in a second, poor Twaddles was frightened.
+
+"I'm so co-old!" he wept loudly. "I want Mother!"
+
+"Well, don't stand here all day," said Bobby practically. "Take hold
+of Meg's hand, and we'll run to the house. Linda was making soup this
+morning, Twaddles. Think how good nice, hot soup will taste!"
+
+Meg took his hand, and, Bobby on the other side, Twaddles ran with all
+his might toward dry clothes and hot soup. It was raining hard again.
+
+"Why, children!" Aunt Polly met them at the door, for she had long ago
+come back from taking Mother Blossom to town. "Has anything happened?
+I found Dot in the hammock crying for her doll and----But Twaddles is
+dripping!"
+
+"He fell in the brook," explained Bobby concisely.
+
+"Poor lamb!" comforted Aunt Polly. "Come upstairs, dear, and Auntie
+will see that you're rubbed dry. And Bobby and Meg, don't stand around
+in those wet shoes one minute. Change them immediately."
+
+Half an hour later four clean, dry little Blossoms were at the table
+enjoying Linda's delicious soup and other good things. The day had
+turned to a cold, rainy, dismal one, very different from the promise
+of the sunny summer morning. Aunt Polly said they would have to
+manufacture their own sunshine that afternoon.
+
+"You mustn't think of going to hunt for the toys till to-morrow, and
+only then if it's clear," she announced firmly. "Likely as not the
+raft sank, and you mustn't feel too bad about the toys. You'll find
+plenty of other things to play with on the farm."
+
+All that afternoon it poured, and all that afternoon the four little
+Blossoms spent in Linda's kitchen cooking and pulling molasses candy.
+They had the sweetiest, stickiest time you ever heard of, and when
+about six o'clock the rain stopped and the sun came out pure yellow
+gold, they had a plate of beautiful cream-colored candy to take to
+Mrs. Peter Apgar.
+
+"Who wants to help me milk?" asked Jud, passing the kitchen door as
+they were talking to his mother.
+
+"Oh, Jud, I do!" begged Meg. "You promised to show me how."
+
+"We'll all come," said Bobby. "Aunt Polly isn't going to have supper
+till seven o'clock to-night, 'cause the minister is coming. We've got
+oceans of time."
+
+"Dot looks dressed up to me," announced Jud. "Keep her out of the mud,
+somebody."
+
+"This is my prettiest dress," said Dot serenely, smoothing down the
+folds of her white dotted swiss under her coral-colored sweater.
+
+Mrs. Sally Sweet looked mildly interested when she saw such a number
+of people coming into her comfortable barnyard, and when Jud drove her
+into the barn and fastened her in the stanchion, all the children
+stood around to watch.
+
+When Jud had the pail nearly full of milk, he rose carefully.
+
+"Now, Meg," he said, "you sit here. Easy now; don't be nervous. Don't
+you know a cow won't give milk if she knows you're nervous? Now work
+your fingers like this----"
+
+Meg sat on the three-legged stool and tried to do exactly as Jud told
+her. Bobby and Dot and Twaddles stared at her open-mouthed. She was
+actually milking a live cow!
+
+"Keep right on; that's fine," encouraged Jud. "You're doing first
+rate."
+
+His father called him just then, and he ran to the door to see what
+was wanted. Meg, beaming, kept on milking. All would have been well if
+Mrs. Sally Sweet hadn't remembered her calf, Buttercup, and opened her
+mouth to give a tremendous and unexpected, "_Moo!_"
+
+The four little Blossoms were sadly startled. Meg jumped up, upsetting
+the pail of milk over herself and Bobby, who stood nearest, and
+knocking down Twaddles and Dot who were close behind her. As luck
+would have it, both twins pitched into a heap of soft hay and were
+not hurt at all. But when they scrambled to their feet, alas! streams
+of yellow, bright yellow, decorated Dot's sweater and dress and
+splashed Twaddles' middy blouse.
+
+"For goodness' sake!" cried Jud, coming back in time to view this
+wholesale damage. "What have you been up to now?"
+
+Meg explained.
+
+"There must have been eggs in that hay," said Twaddles disapprovingly.
+
+"Some hen stole her nest, and you've finished her hopes," sighed Jud.
+"I must say you're a sweet looking mess. Wonder what Miss Polly will
+say?"
+
+"My! and the minister's coming to supper," announced Bobby,
+remembering this for the first time.
+
+"I thought you looked dressed up," Jud groaned. "I suppose I ought to
+have paid more attention. Well, come on, we'll go up the back way and
+I'll tell Miss Polly most of it was my fault."
+
+The four little Blossoms, eggy and milky, followed Jud up to the
+house. He meant to take them in through the kitchen in case the
+minister should be on the front porch and so spare Aunt Polly's
+company the sight of such a forlorn procession. But, just as they
+rounded the back of the house, they met Aunt Polly showing the
+minister and his wife her kitchen garden.
+
+"Twaddles!" gasped poor Aunt Polly, for Twaddles was ahead.
+
+"We--we--we were learning to milk," said Meg apologetically.
+
+The minister and his wife took one look at the four, and then they sat
+down on the back doorstep and laughed and laughed. After a minute Aunt
+Polly joined them, and then the children and Jud began to giggle.
+
+"Hurry and get into something clean," commanded Aunt Polly, wiping her
+eyes. "Linda is just putting supper on the table. I don't care what
+you put on, as long as it is clean. I spent an hour dressing you, and
+now see the result."
+
+The four little Blossoms made haste to scurry into clean suits and
+dresses, and in a short time were ready to come downstairs and meet
+the minister and his wife properly.
+
+"To-morrow morning," said Bobby, as Aunt Polly put out the light and
+kissed them good-night, "we must go and hunt for the raft."
+
+But in the morning Peter Apgar rattled up to the door while they were
+still at the breakfast table, with Jerry and Terry harnessed to an
+empty wagon.
+
+"Anybody here want to go over to the mill with me?" he called loudly.
+
+Of course the four children were wild to go, and Aunt Polly said that
+she was sure Peter had room for every one.
+
+"Take good care of them, Peter," she said, following them down to the
+gate.
+
+"I will," promised Peter. "I've got an old quilt spread down in the
+bottom for them to sit on. If the jolting tires 'em two can sit up
+with me, taking turns."
+
+Spotty wagged his tail as they drove off, but he would not follow the
+wagon. He knew it was his place to stay and take care of Aunt Polly.
+
+The mill was about four miles from Brookside, and the children enjoyed
+the drive intensely. Good-natured Peter allowed each one to "drive,"
+holding the reins carefully as he told them, "Because," said Peter
+seriously, "even if you're only learning, you might as well begin
+right."
+
+When they reached the mill, Jerry and Terry were tied to a post and
+Peter and the children went inside. Bobby was rather disappointed with
+the outside of the mill; he had expected it to look like the mills he
+saw in pictures, with great wide sails flattened against the sky.
+
+"Electric power runs this mill," Peter explained when Bobby asked
+where the sails were. "You'll find plenty to see inside."
+
+A short, stout man in a dusty white coat met them, and Peter gave him
+his order.
+
+"I've some little folks from down the state a way with me," Peter told
+the man. "Guess you can show 'em round the mill a bit this morning?"
+
+"I should say so!" was the hearty answer. "Come along, everybody, and
+we'll see just how grain is milled."
+
+It was not a real flour mill. That is, not one of the great mills that
+turn millions of bushels of wheat into flour; but it did grind
+buckwheat for the farmers and made coarse flour and feed for their
+stock, cracked corn for poultry and so on. The four little Blossoms
+saw much to interest them, but the great round stones that ground the
+grains and the arrangements for sifting the dust and chaff from the
+grain interested them the most.
+
+"It must be fun to be a miller!" said Bobby, when they were ready to
+go and the noon whistle blew and the big stones stopped turning as the
+power was shut off. "Maybe when I grow up I'll run a mill."
+
+Rattling home in the big wagon with two sacks of "middlings" in the
+back with them, Twaddles and Dot decided that they, too, would have a
+mill some day.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER IX
+
+LOST IN THE WOODS
+
+
+Right after dinner the four children started to hunt for the lost
+raft.
+
+"It must have gone down the brook," argued Bobby, as they walked
+along. "Jud says things always float with the current. So we'll start
+on Mr. Simmond's land and walk slow."
+
+They scrambled under the line fence, and Dot only tore one of the
+ruffles off her frock. They went on and on.
+
+"We're almost to the woods," said Meg, as they dropped down under a
+ragged buttonwood tree to rest. "Where do you suppose the brook goes?
+Wouldn't it be fun to follow it through the woods and see what's on
+the other side!"
+
+The four little Blossoms thought this would be great fun. They had not
+been in the woods yet, though Jud and Linda had promised to take them
+some day and Aunt Polly said it was the nicest kind of a place for
+picnics.
+
+The children stood up, and shaded their eyes their hands. They could
+just see the eaves of the barn and the chimneys of Aunt Polly's house
+and the Apgar house. The brook twisted and turned so often, they had
+really walked further than they guessed.
+
+"I'll bet it's dark in the woods," said Twaddles, marching ahead.
+"Maybe there's bears and things in there."
+
+"Now don't begin and scare Dot," admonished Bobby. "Let's take hold of
+hands. My, isn't it nice and cool!"
+
+They stepped from the sunny glare of the brook pasture into the cool,
+dark, rustly stillness of the beautiful woods. A chipmunk ran across
+their path, and tall ferns grew higher than their heads on either side
+of the brook.
+
+Almost unconsciously the children left the brook and struck off into a
+pretty path that was laid with stepping stones and led up a slight
+hill. They saw two rabbits and heard gray squirrels chattering in the
+trees overhead. One squirrel came down and stared gravely at them.
+
+"Isn't he pretty?" said Meg. "I wish he'd let me pat him."
+
+A shriek from Dot startled them all.
+
+"I saw a snake!" she cried, running to Meg. "A horrid, nasty little
+green one. And now I've lost my flowers!"
+
+Sure enough, the bouquet she had been picking was scattered in all
+directions.
+
+"Don't you care," Meg comforted her. "It was only a baby water snake.
+Aunt Polly told Mother that's the only kind that lives round here.
+Honestly, snakes are all right, Dot. Lots of people don't mind 'em a
+bit."
+
+"Well, I do," said Dot decidedly. "They wiggle so. Let's go home
+anyway."
+
+"I think we'd better," announced Bobby. "I don't know what time it is,
+but I guess there's no use looking for the raft any more."
+
+"The raft?" echoed Meg. "Oh Bobby, where is the brook?"
+
+Bobby grinned a little sheepishly.
+
+"We forgot about the raft, didn't we?" he said. "Let's see--we came
+down that path--the brook must be over there. Come on, Dot, we're
+going home."
+
+Dot sat down on the ground and began to cry.
+
+"I don't want to be lost," she wailed. "I'm hungry, and my feet hurt!
+And I'm so tired!"
+
+Meg put her arms around her sister.
+
+"Don't cry," she urged her bravely. "We're not lost, are we, Bobby?"
+
+Bobby and Meg, as the two older, felt that they must keep the twins
+from becoming discouraged.
+
+"Course we're not lost," asserted Bobby stoutly.
+
+"Course not," echoed Meg. "I think the brook is right past those three
+big trees. Come on, Dot, let's run and see who gets there first."
+
+Dot allowed herself to be pulled to her feet.
+
+"I'll count for you," said Bobby, glad to see her stop crying.
+"One--two--three--go!"
+
+Away went Meg and Dot. Meg had intended to let Dot win, because she
+was so much smaller she couldn't be expected to run as well as her
+older sister. But Meg's good intentions came to nothing. Dot had an
+unfortunate habit of shutting her eyes tight when she ran, and the
+woods, of all places, are where it pays to keep one's eyes wide open.
+Poor Dot, running over the uneven ground with her eyes closed,
+crashed headlong into a wild blackberry bush.
+
+"Oh, ow!" she wailed shrilly. "Meg, Meg! Ow!"
+
+Her face and hands were scratched and bleeding and her dress was badly
+torn by the time Meg and Bobby got her free from the prickly bush.
+
+"I won't go," sobbed the unfortunate child, rubbing her smarting face.
+"I'll lie down in the grass and the birds can cover me with leaves.
+Nasty old woods!"
+
+"But you'll have to come," urged Bobby. "I don't b'lieve it's much
+further, Dot. Come on."
+
+"Then I'll take of my shoes and stockings," said Dot.
+
+"Her feet are all puffed up," said Meg, unbuttoning the little tan
+shoes. "Poor sister! But you can't go barefoot through here--the
+Stones and things are too sharp."
+
+"They'll cut you," said Twaddles, who was watching anxiously.
+
+"Let's make a chair with our hands and carry her," suggested Bobby.
+
+So Meg and Bobby joined hands and managed to start off comfortably,
+carrying Dot.
+
+Twaddles looked at them anxiously.
+
+"It's getting dark," he quavered.
+
+It was, too, a shadowy gray dusk there in the woods.
+
+"I guess it's only 'cause there's so many trees," said Meg cheerfully.
+"It can't be dark out in the fields yet. I don't believe Jud has even
+started to milk."
+
+They took up Dot again and went ahead, but it grew more and more
+difficult to follow the path.
+
+"Here's where we were when you stopped to get your breath," declared
+Twaddles positively as they came into an open space. "I 'member that
+rotten log on the ground."
+
+It was true. They had been walking in a circle!
+
+"What's that?" cried Meg, starting up in sudden fright.
+
+The twins clung to her, hiding their faces in her skirt.
+
+"I saw something move--over there in those bushes," whispered Bobby.
+
+"Is it--a--a bear?" asked Meg softly.
+
+But Dot heard her.
+
+"It's a bear!" she shrieked. "Twaddles, Meg, Bobby, come quick! It's a
+bear!"
+
+Something bounded out of the bushes and leaped upon them with shrill,
+sharp barks.
+
+"Spotty!" chorused the children. "You dear, darling old Spotty! Where
+did you come from?"
+
+Spotty was apparently as glad to see them, and in his way tried to
+tell them so. He jumped up and down, barked excitedly and licked their
+hands and faces over and over.
+
+"Say, I'll bet you Spotty knows the way home!" Bobby jumped to his
+feet as this thought came to him. "Spotty, show us the way home,
+that's a good dog. Home, Spotty!"
+
+Spotty wagged his tail heartily and barked once. Then he rushed a
+little way ahead and turned to look at the children.
+
+"Come on," he seemed to say.
+
+"He does know," agreed Meg excitedly. "Put your shoes on, Dot. All
+take hold of hands and hurry!"
+
+They were in such haste they put the left shoe on Dot's right foot and
+the right one on her left, but she never even noticed it. Taking hold
+of hands, the four little Blossoms scurried through the dark woods,
+for it was pitch dark now, after Spotty. The dog kept just a little
+way ahead, and now and then he barked as if to tell them that
+everything was all right.
+
+It was not easy walking in the dark, and they tripped and stumbled
+over tree roots and unsuspected stones. But at last they came out into
+the open. The stars were shining overhead, and it was night.
+
+"Where are we?" asked Meg in wonder. "This isn't the brook pasture."
+
+"I see the gate light!" cried Bobby suddenly.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER X
+
+THE BLOSSOMS GO BERRYING
+
+
+Sure enough, ahead of them twinkled the pretty ornamental light that
+Aunt Polly had lighted on dark nights to show where the driveway went
+through the gates.
+
+"We're in back of the house!" cried Meg. "See, that's the kitchen
+window where the white curtain is. Don't things look different at
+night?"
+
+"Hello! Hello!" came Jud's clear call. "Bobby, Meg, is that you?"
+
+Then as Bobby answered him, they heard Jud shouting:
+
+"All right, folks, they've come. I told you they were all right."
+
+Peter and Jud and a neighbor's boy came running toward the children,
+swinging lanterns, and followed by Mrs. Peter Apgar and Aunt Polly and
+Linda. Such a time as there was, and such a hugging and kissing and
+explaining!
+
+"When you didn't come home to supper, I began to worry," said dear
+Aunt Polly, carrying Dot, big girl as she was. Peter had picked up
+Meg, and Jud had shouldered Twaddles, while Bobby kept running beside
+them.
+
+"You must be starved," was Linda's greeting. "We've got fried chicken
+and currant jelly, too."
+
+And though it was late, Aunt Polly was sure that fried chicken would
+hurt no one, and while the hungry Blossoms ate, she sat by and
+listened to what had happened to them in the woods.
+
+"Why, darlings," she cried over and over, "Auntie will buy you other
+books and toys, but I couldn't possibly buy your mother other children
+if anything happened to you. Look at Dot's feet; the poor child must
+have walked miles. And her face and hands are terribly scratched."
+
+Directly after supper the tired children were ready for bed, and Linda
+and Aunt Polly undressed them and bathed the sore little feet and put
+soothing cold cream on sunburned, scratched little faces.
+
+The summer weeks flew merrily by, and when a rainy afternoon came and
+Aunt Polly suggested that the children should write to their father
+and mother, the Blossoms discovered that they really had a good deal
+to tell.
+
+"I'll begin, 'cause I'm the oldest and I can write in pencil," said
+Bobby. "Then Meg can print, and I'll write what Dot and Twaddles tell
+me to. I guess they will like that kind of letter."
+
+Aunt Polly thought so, too, and she gave Bobby her own pretty mahogany
+"secretary" that was ever so old a desk, to write at.
+
+Bobby put his tongue in his cheek and worked hard for fifteen minutes.
+Then he was ready to read aloud.
+
+"'Dear Daddy and Mother:'" he read. "'We thought you would like to
+hear from us. Last week Peter was haying and Meg and I helped him make
+loads. Meg drove into the barn all by herself. It is fun to see them
+unload the hay, because they have a thing they call a hayfork that
+comes down and takes up big handfuls and carries it up to the mow. I
+can almost milk. The twins are very good most of the time. Your
+loving son, Robert Hayward Blossom.'"
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+"Will they know that's from you?" asked Meg doubtfully, slipping into
+the chair at the desk and taking up the pencil to print her letter.
+"You never call yourself Robert."
+
+"I guess I know how to write a letter," Bobby informed her with
+dignity. "You always sign your real names to letters, don't you, Aunt
+Polly?"
+
+"Yes, indeed, dear," said Aunt Polly, who was doing something to a
+pair of overalls.
+
+Meg printed slowly and carefully, and soon her letter was ready to be
+read aloud.
+
+"'Dear Daddy and Mother,'" she began proudly. "'We hope you are well.
+We are. Dot most wasn't, but I took care of her. She went out to the
+barn to hunt for eggs, and the turkey gobbler saw her. He thought she
+was carrying corn in the basket. He chased her and she ran. I heard
+her crying and I ran down to the barn. She was backed up into a corner
+and he was making noises at her. He is awful big, but I am not afraid
+of him. I grabbed the broom Jud keeps to sweep the barn floor with and
+I chased that old gobbler clear into the orchard. We are going to pick
+berries to-morrow.'"
+
+                  *       *       *       *       *
+
+The twins had kept still as long as they could, and now it was their
+turn.
+
+"Tell Mother 'bout the snake I saw this morning," said Twaddles. "Jud
+says it was a black snake after baby robins. It was on the grape arbor
+where there is a robin's nest. Jud killed it."
+
+"Tell Daddy I weeded a whole onion row for Aunt Polly," begged Dot.
+
+"Wait a minute, I have to sign my name," interrupted Meg.
+
+And she signed it, "Margaret Alice Blossom," right in among the words
+of the twins' letters that Bobby was patiently writing.
+
+The next day was very warm, and Aunt Polly thought they had better
+play in the orchard instead of picking berries, so they trooped out
+soon after breakfast, to find the orchard cool and shady.
+
+"I wish I had my book that was drowned," mourned Meg. "I love to sit
+up in a tree and read."
+
+"Well, I loved Geraldine better than Tottie-Fay," said Dot, giving the
+old doll a shake as she spoke.
+
+"No use fussing," advised the sensible Bobby. "They're lost, and we
+mustn't let Aunt Polly hear us, 'cause she'll think she ought to go
+right off and buy us some more. I'm going to climb this tree. Who
+wants a ripe apple?"
+
+"I do," and Meg jumped up. "Let me hold my apron and you throw 'em
+down, Bobby. Twaddles, stop teasing Spotty."
+
+"I aren't teasing him," declared Twaddles indignantly. "I'm going to
+teach him to carry bundles."
+
+Twaddles' method of teaching the patient Spotty was to sit down on him
+with feet spread wide apart and wait for the dog to shake him off.
+
+Dot sat down quietly in the grass and began to make a bouquet of
+wild-flowers. It was Dot who always helped Aunt Polly weed and water
+her flower garden, and Dot who liked to see fresh flowers on the
+dining-room table.
+
+When Meg had her apron full of apples she sat down near Dot, and the
+four ate as many sweet summer apples as four small people could who
+had eaten breakfast less than an hour before.
+
+"There's Poots," said Meg suddenly, glancing up and seeing the black
+cat picking her way through the grass. "Do you suppose she is hunting
+birds?"
+
+Poots blinked her green eyes innocently. If she were after birds, she
+had no intention of catching any before an audience. She sat down and
+began to wash her face.
+
+A mischievous idea seized Twaddles.
+
+"Rats, Spotty!" he shouted. "Rats!"
+
+Now rats sounds pretty much like "cats," and the excited and startled
+Spotty did not stop to question which word Twaddles had used. He
+jumped up, his ears pointing forward.
+
+"Rats, sic 'em!" said bad little Twaddles. "Rats, Spotty!"
+
+Spotty barked twice sharply. Poots arose, her fur bristling. Spotty
+leaped at her, barking playfully. Away ran Poots, her black tail
+sticking straight up in the air. And after them raced the four little
+Blossoms, shouting and calling frantically.
+
+Poots ran straight for the front wall and scrambled up it, leaving
+Spotty to bark wildly on the ground and make futile rushes at the
+solid wall he couldn't hope to climb. Some of the masonry was loose,
+and Poots, digging with her sharp claws, sent down a shower of dust
+into the dog's eyes. He whined, and dug at his eyes with both
+forepaws. Then he sneezed several times.
+
+"You will chase me, will you?" Poots seemed to say, gazing down at him
+from her safe position. "The idea!"
+
+"Well, we might as well pick up some of this stuff," said Twaddles,
+knowing that the fun was over.
+
+"It's cooler--just feel that breeze!" exclaimed Meg. "Let's ask Aunt
+Polly if we can't go berrying after dinner."
+
+Aunt Polly obligingly said they could, and after dinner the four
+little Blossoms scrambled into overalls Aunt Polly had bought and
+shortened to fit them.
+
+"I wish your mother could see you," she said, as she gave them each a
+bright tin pail. "No need to worry about your dress now, is there,
+Dot?"
+
+"Going berrying?" asked Jud, as they passed him, clipping the green
+hedge around the kitchen garden. "Better keep out of the sun."
+
+The children walked down the road and turned into another field. They
+knew where the blackberry bushes grew, and they meant to fill their
+pails.
+
+"Let's start here by this fence," suggested Bobby. "What's that over
+in Mr. Simmond's field?"
+
+"It's a bull," answered Meg who knew all the animals at Brookside and
+on the neighboring farms by this time. "He's as cross as can be, but
+he took three prizes at the last Fair."
+
+Twaddles ate the first dozen berries he picked and then he picked
+another dozen for Dot's pail. He decided that larger and better
+berries grew on the other side of the fence. He crawled under and his
+shout of delight brought the others.
+
+"You never saw such big ones!" cried Twaddles gleefully. "Meg, look!"
+
+"They are big," agreed Meg. "Come on, Bobby, let's go on the other
+side. Mr. Simmonds won't care."
+
+Dot was already under the fence, and Meg and Bobby stooped down and
+crawled under after her.
+
+The four little figures in blue overalls began to pick industriously.
+The berries were thick and juicy, and the bottoms of the tin pails
+were covered in a few minutes. Meg had just stopped to pull a briar
+from her thumb when she heard a bellow behind her.
+
+There stood the bull, in the middle of the field, his head down
+between his knees, his feet pawing the ground, and his angry eyes
+glaring at the berry pickers.
+
+"Oh, Bobby! The bull!" gasped Meg. "Run, Dot and Twaddles!"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XI
+
+THE HOME LAUNDRY
+
+
+Dot and Twaddles took one frightened look at the bellowing bull, and
+then dropped flat on the ground and began to squirm under the fence.
+
+"Hurry, Meg," urged Bobby. "Don't stand there like that! Run!"
+
+"I'm waiting for you," quavered Meg.
+
+"All right, hurry," repeated Bobby.
+
+He and Meg crawled under the fence and stood beside Twaddles and Dot.
+Then they looked over at the bull. He was not charging directly toward
+them, but at something else his angry red eyes had seen even before
+the children noticed it. Further down there was a gap in the fence
+where several rails were broken.
+
+Meg shrieked in terror as she saw what the bull meant to do.
+
+"Peter! Jud! Aunt Polly! Come quick!" she screamed, hardly knowing
+what she was crying.
+
+"Coming!" called a big voice, and over the fence corner sprang Peter
+Apgar, a pitchfork in his hand. He had been gathering up the loose hay
+left along the edge of the field after the hayloader had gathered the
+main crop.
+
+After Peter came Spotty, who met the bull just as that cross animal's
+nose appeared at the gap in the fence. Indeed, Spotty met him so
+suddenly that both grunted.
+
+"I'll turn him. You stay back here out of sight," commanded Peter,
+running past the four little Blossoms.
+
+The children were very glad to stay huddled behind the bushes, but
+they couldn't help peeping out now and then to see what Peter and
+Spotty were doing with the bull.
+
+"Woof, woof!" barked Spotty.
+
+"You will, will you?" shouted Peter.
+
+He jabbed the bull with the pitchfork, and that surprised beast turned
+with a bellow. Holding the pitchfork so that it would not hurt him
+unless he tried to come at him, Peter forced the bull back through the
+fence, and then he and Spotty drove him across the field.
+
+Presently Peter and the dog came back, a bit warm and breathless, and
+very glad the four little Blossoms were to see them.
+
+"You can finish berrying in peace," said Peter. "I drove the bull into
+Simmonds' barnyard and told his man to keep him there. No farmer has a
+right to leave a cross bull at large."
+
+The children set to work at the berries again, and, as nothing further
+happened to disturb them, they filled all four pails before supper
+time. Bobby and Meg helped the twins a little, and maybe they weren't
+proud to have berries of their own picking and cream, as Meg said, of
+their own milking, for their supper that night! And there were enough
+berries left over for four small turnovers. Aunt Polly made this
+pleasant announcement.
+
+"I intended to bake cookies to-morrow morning," she said, smiling.
+"And I don't know why I shouldn't make turnovers, too, and maybe
+doughnuts. Perhaps some one would like to keep me company? Linda is
+going to spend the day with her mother in town, and like as not I
+shall be lonesome."
+
+"We'll all keep you company," promised Bobby gravely.
+
+So the next morning every one was up early because Linda wanted to
+have breakfast cleared away before Jud drove her over to town. Soon
+after she was gone Aunt Polly put on a large white apron and the four
+children trooped into the pleasant kitchen after her.
+
+"Let me see," thought Aunt Polly out loud. "Meg should have an apron.
+Suppose I tie one of Linda's around your neck, dear? Hers are shorter
+than mine."
+
+In a very short time Aunt Polly had rolled out the crust for the
+turnovers and filled them with berries and sugar.
+
+"When they are done you can take them outdoors and eat them while
+they're hot," she said. "Make believe you're having a picnic."
+
+"Can't we have a picnic, a real picnic?" asked Bobby quickly.
+
+"Why, of course," agreed Aunt Polly. "I meant you should have a picnic
+weeks ago. Only time goes so fast. However, before vacation is over
+we'll have a real picnic with all kinds of good things to eat."
+
+Every one was very much interested in the first batch of cookies, and
+Aunt Polly gave each one a sample, which was pronounced delicious.
+
+Then Aunt Polly put on her big kettle and started to fry some
+doughnuts.
+
+Dot, when no one was looking, took Spotty out into the hall and gave
+him half a cookie. Then they both came back into the kitchen wearing
+such an innocent air that Aunt Polly had to laugh.
+
+"Spotty has a sweet tooth, all right," she declared. "Don't let him
+tease all your cookies away from you, dear. Twaddles, look out!"
+
+The warning came too late, for Twaddles, reaching across the bowl of
+freshly fried doughnuts to get something, caught his sleeve on the rim
+of the bowl and succeeded in turning the whole thing upside down over
+himself.
+
+"I really think," said patient, long-suffering Aunt Polly, when the
+doughnuts had been picked up and brushed off and Twaddles had
+explained how it happened, "I really think, that four children and a
+dog are too many to have in the kitchen on baking day. Anyway, the
+turnovers are done. I'll slip them on a plate and let Meg carry it out
+under the chestnut tree. Then you may have your picnic." And so it was
+settled.
+
+"I wish," confided Meg, as she bit into a juicy bit of pie--Aunt Polly
+made wonderful berry pies--"I had my 'Black Beauty' book."
+
+"I'll never have another doll like Geraldine!" sighed Dot. "Never! And
+what good are all her clothes? I haven't any doll to fit 'em."
+
+"You might take a tuck in 'em for Totty-Fat," suggested Bobby, using
+the disrespectful name he had invented for Dot's old doll. "She's a
+sight. Oh dear! I wish I had tried to fly my airplane just once before
+I lost it."
+
+"Well, there's my bird," mourned Twaddles. "Aunt Polly never heard it
+sing. And now she never will."
+
+"I dripped a little juice on my dress," announced Dot doubtfully,
+after Meg had gone in to help her aunt wash dishes.
+
+"I should think you had," said Bobby, gazing severely at the little
+girl. "I don't believe blackberry juice comes out, either. Prob'ly
+that dress will always be spotted now."
+
+"Linda said when she was a little girl her mother made her wash her
+own dresses if she got too many dirty in one day," Dot declared.
+"Maybe I could wash this."
+
+Twaddles and Bobby hadn't a very clear idea of how to wash a dress,
+and because it was something they had not done before, the idea
+appealed to them.
+
+"We'll help you," offered Bobby generously. "I saw a piece of soap out
+at the barn this morning. And the rain barrel's full. Come on."
+
+They trotted down to the barn. Neither Peter nor Jud was anywhere in
+sight, which was just what the washers hoped for. Of course, they
+argued, it wasn't naughty to wash a dress, but you never can tell what
+objections grown-ups are going to make. Sometimes they find fault with
+every single thing one wants to do.
+
+"Let me rub the soap on," begged Dot, as Bobby unbuttoned her frock
+for her and she stepped out of it, a sturdy little figure in a brief
+white petticoat.
+
+So Dot rubbed plenty of soap on the blackberry spots. It was harness
+soap, which Jud had been using for the leather harness, but the
+children thought it made a fine lather. Linda would have scolded had
+she seen them, for soap sets fruit juice stains so that it is almost
+impossible ever to get them out.
+
+"Let's put in our handkerchiefs, too," suggested Bobby, pulling out a
+grimy square.
+
+Twaddles had lost his, and Dot's was in the pocket of her dress and
+already wet, but Bobby added his to the wash.
+
+"We must let 'em soak," advised Dot, who had been in the kitchen on
+wash days. "Linda says that gets the dirt out."
+
+The three children balanced themselves on the edge of the rain barrel
+while they waited for their wash to soak.
+
+"Well, for pity's sake, what are you up to now?" It was Jud's voice,
+and Jud came out of the barn so unexpectedly that he made them jump.
+
+Twaddles tumbled to his knees, and Bobby stood up, but poor Dot lost
+her shaky balance and fell into the barrel with her dress and the
+handkerchief.
+
+"There, there, sister, you're not hurt," soothed Jud, as he pulled the
+dripping child out and stood her on the grass. "For mercy's sake don't
+yell like that. Miss Polly will think you're killed!"
+
+Dot was frightened and wet, and she had no intention of smiling at
+such misfortune. She cried so loud that Aunt Polly heard her and came
+running down to the barn, Meg running behind her.
+
+"Why, Baby!" Aunt Polly was surprised to see streams of water running
+off her small niece, and at first she did not notice that Dot had no
+dress on.
+
+"Where's your dress?" demanded Meg.
+
+Aunt Polly picked up Dot, wet as she was, and started back to the
+house. Meg followed to help find clean dry clothes.
+
+Jud looked at Twaddles and Bobby queerly.
+
+"Just what were you doing?" he asked in a different voice than they
+had ever heard from easygoing, good-natured Jud. "What's that in the
+barrel?"
+
+"We were helping Dot," said Bobby. "She got juice all on her dress,
+and, honest, she's worn eleven this week. So we thought we ought to
+wash this one."
+
+"I see," replied Jud slowly. "Do you know you've spoiled a barrel of
+soft rain water that's worth considerable? To say nothing of soap."
+
+"We used the green soap we found on the beam," put in Twaddles.
+
+"You perfect imps!" groaned poor Jud. "That's my harness soap. I don't
+see how your town gets along with all four of you the year around.
+Well, you can just help me bail out this water--that's flat. Wring out
+that pesky wash and spread it on the grass to dry. Then each of you
+take one of those lard pails, and set to work."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XII
+
+UP ON THE MOUNTAIN
+
+
+Two subdued little boys went in to dinner that noon. Afterward Aunt
+Polly announced that she was going over to town.
+
+"I have to drive Nelly Bly," she told them, "and as I couldn't take
+but one, I don't think it is fair to take any of you. As soon as the
+car is fixed, we'll have a long drive."
+
+Jud had taken the automobile over to the one garage the week before
+and it was not ready yet.
+
+"Now try to amuse yourselves and don't get into mischief," cautioned
+Aunt Polly, as Jud brought Nelly Bly and the buggy to the door. "I'm
+sorry I have to leave you when Linda is away, but you'll be all right.
+Jud will be within call, and I'll be back about five. I'm going to
+pick up Linda and bring her back."
+
+"What are you going to do, Jud?" asked Dot, as Aunt Polly drove out of
+the gate. Dot was in a clean dry dress and none the worse for her
+ducking.
+
+"Can't we help you?" asked Meg kindly.
+
+"Now look here," Jud said, in his pleasant, slow voice. "I'm going to
+be all-fired busy in the back garden. If anything frightens you, sing
+out and I'll hear you. If you want to talk to any one, go down to the
+house, and Mother will listen to you. But please don't bother me."
+
+"But what'll we do?" persisted Bobby.
+
+Jud pointed to the tent that had been Father Blossom's surprise.
+
+"Play Indians, why don't you?" he suggested. "Don't believe you've had
+those clothes on three times since you got 'em. If any one had sent me
+a tent when I was a kid, you couldn't have kept me from playing with
+it."
+
+"We might as well play Indian," said Meg, when Jud had gone off to his
+garden, whistling. "Dot and I'll put on our suits and you and Twaddles
+wear yours. I wish I had a tomahawk."
+
+"Girl Indians don't have 'em," said Bobby flatly.
+
+"Well, they ought to," declared Meg. "Doesn't Dot look cunning in her
+suit?"
+
+"Heap big Injun chief," announced Bobby, prancing about in his suit.
+
+"Let's get captives and hide them in the tent," suggested Meg, who
+usually did most of the planning for their games.
+
+"Where'll we get 'em?" asked Bobby doubtfully. "Jud's bigger than we
+are."
+
+"No, we can't capture Jud," agreed Meg.
+
+"Wow! wow! Whoop!" shouted Twaddles, tumbling down the steps and
+giving his best Indian yell as he came.
+
+"Ducks and chickens might be captives," said Meg slowly, frowning at
+the interruption of Twaddles.
+
+Ordinarily Meg was a good little girl and not given to mischief, but a
+spice of naughtiness seemed to be in all the four little Blossoms on
+this unfortunate day.
+
+"Let's get the ducks, first," said Bobby. "That's a great idea, Meg.
+Come on, Twaddles, we have to capture the ducks."
+
+They found the beautiful white birds swimming lazily about the
+artificial duck pond in the chicken yard, and they didn't seem to want
+to be captured at all. The children finally succeeded in driving
+them, twenty of them, that is, into the tent.
+
+"Somebody will have to stay and see they don't come out when we get
+the chickens," said Meg. "Dot's too little--she'll let 'em out. I'll
+do it, if you'll stay when we get the chickens in, and let me capture
+the turkeys, Bobby."
+
+Bobby assented, and Meg stayed behind at the tent while Dot, Twaddles
+and Bobby went after the chickens.
+
+If you have ever tried to drive a hen into a certain place, you will
+know how very stupid she can be. The children were hot and cross
+before they had twenty-eight white leghorn hens penned in the tent
+with the ducks.
+
+"They make an awful lot of noise," said Bobby nervously. "Jud will
+hear them."
+
+"As soon as they find it's dark they'll think it's night," answered
+Meg comfortably. "Now I'm going after turkeys."
+
+But the only turkey she could find was the lame one that lived in the
+chicken yard and was tame enough to allow herself to be picked up.
+
+"Aren't they good and quiet?" said Meg with satisfaction, as she poked
+the patient turkey hen through the tent flaps and heard the soft
+mutterings of the ducks and hens, who thought it was night and time to
+go to sleep.
+
+Just as the Indians had the last captive snugly fastened in, Peter,
+with Terry harnessed to the "market wagon," a light wagon that was
+used to take the butter and eggs over to town in, came down the drive
+from the barn.
+
+"Whoa!" said Peter to Terry.
+
+"Oh, Mr. Peter!" The four little Blossoms rushed out to greet him.
+"Where are you going? Can't we go? Where's Jerry?"
+
+Peter surveyed the four Indians gravely.
+
+"Well, as I'm going up in the mountain, I guess we won't meet any one
+who'll be scared to death," he said slowly. "So I don't know but
+perhaps you might hop in. Jerry? I left him in the stable. This wagon
+goes with one horse."
+
+As the children scrambled in, Peter thought of something.
+
+"Like as not Miss Polly'll be back before we are," he observed. "She
+might miss all four of you if no one's about. Jud!"
+
+"Here!" shouted Jud from the back garden.
+
+He came to the gate in the hedge.
+
+"Jud, if Miss Polly comes home and doesn't find any children, just
+tell her they're with me and that we'll be home by six. I'm going up
+in the mountain."
+
+"All right," said Jud.
+
+"How do you go up in the mountain?" inquired Meg curiously, as they
+turned into the road.
+
+She was sitting on the front seat with Peter, Twaddles was between
+them, and Dot was in her lap. Bobby stood up in the wagon behind them
+and looked over their shoulders.
+
+"I guess I mean up on the mountain," Peter corrected himself. "We've
+got kind of a habit round here of saying 'in the mountain.' Ever been
+up there?"
+
+The four little Blossoms had never been there--indeed they did not
+know there was a mountain near by.
+
+"Well, I suppose it's more of a hill," admitted Peter. "But it's the
+best mountain we have. Queer people live up there. They don't see much
+of anybody, and some of 'em's as timid as deer. The children, now, run
+when they see a stranger coming."
+
+"What are we going to get?" asked Bobby. He had been long enough on
+the farm to know that when one harnessed up a horse and wagon there
+was usually something to be fetched or carried.
+
+"I'm going up to see if I can't get a woman to come down next week and
+help Mrs. Peter do some cleaning," explained Peter. "Help's scarce in
+the town, and some of the mountain-folk like to earn a little money in
+the summer. Miss Polly taking the buggy, I had to get along with the
+market wagon. 'Sides, the thought came to me that I might meet some
+one who wanted a ride."
+
+Meg saw Peter's eyes twinkling and she guessed that he had meant to
+ask them to go with him all the time.
+
+Terry was going up a steep road now, narrow as well as steep, and the
+untrimmed trees lashed against the curtained sides of the wagon as it
+passed.
+
+"Here's Mrs. Cook's house," said Peter at last.
+
+The children saw a little unpainted house standing in a clearing of
+half-chopped tree-stumps. A line of washing was strung between the two
+posts that supported a narrow roof over the door. Skins of animals
+were tacked on the sides of the house, and a large hound dog chained
+to a tree watched them closely.
+
+"Can we get out and see the dog?" asked Meg, as Peter tied Terry to a
+convenient tree.
+
+"I don't know as I'd touch the dog," said Peter. "Better keep away
+from him. He's a night hunter, and may be cross. There's Mrs. Cook's
+little girl--go and make friends with her If you want to."
+
+Peter went up to the house door and knocked, and Meg walked over to a
+little girl seated on a tree stump.
+
+The child was barefooted and wore a ragged dress, but her skin was a
+beautiful clear brown and her eyes were as blue as Meg's. She had
+lovely long brown hair, too.
+
+"Hello!" said Meg.
+
+Apparently the little girl had not heard her coming, for she jumped
+when Meg spoke and turned swiftly. Then she shrieked loudly and dashed
+for the house. Peter came out at once.
+
+"Guess you frightened her," he said. "And Christopher Columbus, I
+don't wonder. You look like a band of Indians let loose."
+
+"My! we forgot these clothes," said Bobby. "Meg didn't mean to
+frighten her. Look at Twaddles--she scared him pretty near stiff
+yelling like that."
+
+Mrs. Cook came out to the wagon presently, to tell Peter that she
+would come the next week. She was a little thin, brown-faced woman,
+and she was even shyer than Dot, who usually shrank out of sight when
+there were any strangers around.
+
+"These Miss Polly's 'lations?" asked Mrs. Cook, twisting her apron
+nervously.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIII
+
+LINDA IS UNHAPPY
+
+
+"Every one of 'em," announced Peter. "These, ma'am, are the four
+little Blossoms!"
+
+"We didn't mean to scare your little girl," said Meg bravely. "I guess
+she thought we were Indians. These are just play clothes."
+
+"Emma Louise scares easy," said Mrs. Cook. "All my children do."
+
+"How many have you?" asked Twaddles, meaning to be polite.
+
+"Nine," replied Mrs. Cook serenely. "Four boys and five girls."
+
+"We have to be going, if we get back in time for supper," hinted
+Peter, gathering up the reins. "I'll tell the Missus you'll walk down
+Tuesday morning, then, and I'll drive you home at night."
+
+"Wait a minute," begged Dot, as Peter was about to turn Terry. It was
+the first word she had spoken since they had reached the Cook house.
+"Give these to the little girl."
+
+It was the chain of gay-colored beads Dot wore around her neck with
+the Indian dress, and Mrs. Cook's face wrinkled into a smile of
+delight.
+
+"Emma Louise will love 'em," she declared brightly. "I'm much
+obliged."
+
+Dot was too shy to say anything, but she blushed and smiled and
+inwardly wished that Peter would drive on. Soon they were going down
+the mountain again.
+
+"Aunt Polly's at home!" shouted Dot, as they turned into the drive and
+she saw a white figure rocking in the porch swing.
+
+Aunt Polly was very glad to see them, and she had not been worried
+because Jud had told her where the children had gone. The milking was
+done, she said, and everything fed, so if they would get washed and
+dressed right away for supper, Linda would put it on the table while
+they were upstairs.
+
+"Linda looked as if she'd been crying," said Meg, slipping off the
+Indian dress and pulling on a clean white pique. "Her eyes were all
+red."
+
+"Maybe she was bad and her mother scolded her," said Dot.
+
+At the supper table Aunt Polly listened to the story of the
+afternoon's drive, and heard about Mrs. Cook and the queer little
+house, but all the time she seemed to be thinking of something else.
+And there was certainly something seriously wrong with Linda. She
+scarcely ate any supper, and her eyes were red, as Meg said. Twaddles
+was sure she had the toothache. When he went out into the kitchen
+after supper he found her crying over the dishes, and she was cross to
+him and told him to get out of her kitchen.
+
+"I guess Linda has the measles," reported the astonished Twaddles to
+the rest of the family, who were on the front porch.
+
+"Yes, I guess she's sick," remarked Bobby. "She didn't want any cold
+chicken."
+
+"Was she bad, Aunt Polly?" questioned Dot "Did her mother punish
+her?"
+
+"Well, Linda and I had decided not to bother you with our troubles,"
+said Aunt Polly, "but I see we can't hide a thing from your sharp
+eyes. I have bad news to tell you. While you were away with Peter this
+afternoon, and while Linda and I were in town, a miserable chicken
+thief got into the chicken yard and stole ever so many chickens. We
+don't know yet how many. And they took nearly every one of Linda's
+ducks. She has the ducks for her own, you know, and she uses the money
+for her school clothes. So that's why she's crying."
+
+The four little Blossoms sat and stared at Aunt Polly. They had
+completely forgotten the chickens and ducks and the one lame turkey
+shut into the tent till this minute.
+
+"Aunt Polly!" gasped Meg, in a very little voice. "Aunt Polly--please,
+we were just playing, and--and----" Meg could not go on.
+
+"We were playing Indians," said Bobby, coming to the rescue of his
+sister, "and we had to have some captives. So--so----"
+
+"We took the chickens and the ducks," went on the twins in concert.
+
+"And the lame turkey," put in Meg.
+
+"And shut them in our tent!" finished Bobby and Meg together.
+
+"Put them in your tent?" repeated Aunt Polly. "Do you suppose they are
+there now?"
+
+Away dashed the children, Aunt Polly after them, around to the side
+lawn. The tent was just as they had left it, and Meg cautiously
+unbuttoned the flap. A soft, comfortable little singing sound came out
+to them.
+
+"Well, I never!" said Aunt Polly helplessly. "What won't you children
+do next!"
+
+The four little Blossoms ran back to tell Linda that her ducks were
+safe, and you may be sure she was very glad to hear it. And in the
+morning they found the biddies and the ducks none the worse for their
+night in the tent.
+
+Shortly after this, Bobby and Meg were awakened one night by a queer
+noise outside. Bobby heard it first and came creeping into Meg's room
+to see if she were awake.
+
+"Meg! Meg!" he whispered, so as not to wake Dot. "Did you hear
+something?"
+
+"Yes, I did," whispered back Meg. "Under my window. Wait a minute and
+we'll peep out."
+
+Dot and Twaddles wouldn't wake up, "not if there was an earthquake,"
+Daddy Blossom sometimes said, but Meg and Bobby were light sleepers
+and very apt to hear any unusual noise.
+
+Together now they crept over to Meg's window and, raising the screen
+very softly, peeped out. Something large and dark was moving about on
+the lawn below.
+
+"I guess it's Mr. Simmonds' bull," suggested Meg.
+
+"Don't you think we ought to go down and drive him off?" asked Bobby,
+quite as if driving bulls off his aunt's lawn was a nightly task with
+him. "Or I'll go alone--I'm the man of the house."
+
+As a matter of fact, he was. Aunt Polly and Linda slept in rooms
+across the hall at the back of the house, and apparently had heard
+nothing. But Meg had no idea of letting her brother face a bull
+alone.
+
+"I'm coming, too," she whispered. "Let's put on our shoes--you know
+how wet the grass is at night. And here's a blanket, so you won't
+catch cold."
+
+Wrapping herself in another blanket--Aunt Polly kept two light-weight
+blankets folded at the foot of each bed for chilly nights--Meg tiptoed
+carefully downstairs after Bobby. They knew their way about the house
+now, even in the dark. The front door was not locked, for people in
+the country seldom lock their doors.
+
+"Why, Bobby!" Meg called softly. "Look! There's a lot of 'em! See! All
+down the drive! They can't be Mr. Simmonds' bull----"
+
+"Well, not all of 'em," snickered Bobby. "There's only one of him.
+Come on, Meg, I'm going up to one and see what it is."
+
+"Why, it's a calf!" cried Meg, in astonishment. "A darling baby calf!
+They all are! How many are there, Bobby?"
+
+"I can count fourteen," said Bobby after a moment, for the night was
+not pitch black, but one of those soft summer nights with so many
+stars that after your eyes are accustomed to it you can see objects
+distinctly enough to count.
+
+"Somebody's left their barnyard gate open," announced Meg. "What'll
+we do? Drive 'em into our barnyard?"
+
+"Sure!" answered Bobby, just like a farmer. "That'll keep 'em safe
+till morning. And then Jud will find out whose they are."
+
+Driving those fourteen baby calves was not such hard work as they had
+expected, for they were very amiable beasties and only wanted to
+nibble a little fresh sweet grass as they were driven on toward the
+barnyard. But Meg and Bobby had so much fun doing this that they
+forgot to be quiet, and just as they had the last calf safely inside
+and the big gate barred, two figures came running up to them.
+
+"For the love of Pete!" said Jud, breathing heavily. "Meg and Bobby!
+And in their night clothes! Are you crazy?"
+
+"There's fourteen baby calves in there," announced Bobby with
+dignity.
+
+"Yes, and they would have had the whole lawn eaten up if it hadn't
+been for us," declared Meg.
+
+Peter and Jud peered over the gate.
+
+"Those are Tom Sparks' calves he bought for his auction next week,"
+said Peter. "Guess he didn't pen 'em in good to-night. Well, you
+youngsters don't miss anything, do you? You run back to bed now, and
+in the morning we'll do a little telephoning."
+
+And when Jud came up while they were at breakfast the next morning and
+told them that Mr. Sparks wanted to pay a reward of five dollars to
+the person who had saved his calves for him, maybe there wasn't great
+excitement!
+
+Aunt Polly then heard the story for the first time, as did Dot and
+Twaddles and Linda.
+
+"You take it," advised Linda, when Jud repeated the offer of the
+reward. "If the constable had put his calves in the pound it would
+have cost him twice that to get them out."
+
+"But I don't like to have them take money," protested Aunt Polly.
+
+"All right," said Jud suddenly. "Mr. Sparks can pay them back some
+other way."
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XIV
+
+THE PICNIC
+
+
+Jud went off whistling, and soon after they had finished breakfast the
+four little Blossoms saw a tall, stout man drive in. His horse was a
+beautiful, shiny black animal, evidently groomed and tended with great
+care.
+
+"That's Mr. Sparks," Linda informed the children.
+
+The children ran out to see the calves being herded together, and Jud
+embarrassed Meg and Bobby very much by introducing them as the little
+people who had heard the calves in the night and gone downstairs after
+them.
+
+"Meg heard 'em," said Bobby modestly.
+
+"Well, well, well!" almost shouted Mr. Sparks, though that was his
+natural way of talking; he couldn't speak low. "I do certainly admire
+a girl with spunk enough to get up in the middle of the night and
+chase live-stock. You ought to be a farmer's daughter."
+
+He paused and smiled at the children. It was impossible not to like
+this bluff, red-faced man with the loud voice.
+
+"I had intended to give a little reward to the person who did me this
+service," went on Mr. Sparks. "Finding there's two of 'em, rightly I
+should double it. But Mrs. Hayward, I hear, doesn't want you to take
+money--good notion, too, in a way, I guess. Suppose I give you one of
+these little calves now. How would that do?"
+
+"One of those darling little calves?" cried Meg.
+
+"To keep?" echoed Bobby.
+
+"To keep, of course," assented Mr. Sparks. "You pick the critter you
+want, and I guess Mrs. Hayward will pasture it for you."
+
+"Sure she will," promised Jud, who was standing by with a delighted
+smile. "And after you go back to Oak Hill, I'll take good care of it
+and next summer you can come up and see your own cow."
+
+Aunt Polly and Linda and Peter all had to be summoned, and then, with
+every one's help and advice, not forgetting the twins', Bobby and Meg
+selected a handsome cream-colored little calf that Mr. Sparks assured
+them would grow into a Jersey bossy cow like Mrs. Sally Sweet.
+
+"What you going to call her?" he asked curiously.
+
+Bobby looked at Meg.
+
+"You name her," he suggested.
+
+"All right. Let's call her Carlotta," said Meg promptly. "I think that
+is the loveliest name." So Carlotta the calf was named.
+
+Carlotta did not seem to mind at all when her friends and relatives
+were driven off by Mr. Sparks. Apparently she liked Brookside farm and
+was glad she was going to live there.
+
+"Thank you ever so much, Mr. Sparks," said Meg and Bobby for the
+twentieth time, as he drove out of the gateway after his recovered
+property.
+
+A day or two after the finding of the calves Aunt Polly came out on
+the porch where the children were cutting up an old fashion magazine
+for paper dolls, and sat down in the porch swing with her mending
+basket.
+
+"Do you know, honeys," she began, "if we don't have our picnic pretty
+soon, vacation is going to be over. Though what I am to do this long
+cold winter without any children in my house I don't see."
+
+"Bobby and I have to go to school," said Meg. "But Dot and Twaddles
+could stay."
+
+"We're going to school, too," declared Dot, with such a positive snap
+of her blunt scissors that she snipped off a paper doll's head.
+
+"Of course," affirmed Twaddles, with maddening serenity.
+
+"Well, I think we'd better talk about the picnic," interposed Aunt
+Polly. "When to have it, and whom to invite and what to have to eat."
+
+"Sandwiches!" cried Meg, answering the last question first. "Let me
+help make 'em, Auntie?"
+
+"Oh, of course," promised Aunt Polly. "And it seems to me that we had
+better go to-morrow. This spell of fine dry weather can't last
+forever, and when the rain does come we may have a week of it."
+
+"Can Jud come?" asked Bobby.
+
+"Yes, indeed," answered Aunt Polly, who had the happiest way of
+saying "yes" to nearly everything her nephews and nieces asked of
+her.
+
+"And Linda?" asked Twaddles.
+
+"Linda, too," agreed Aunt Polly.
+
+"Where'll we go?" demanded the practical Dot.
+
+"Over in the woods," said Aunt Polly.
+
+"Let's get ready," proposed Meg, who knew a picnic meant work
+beforehand.
+
+Every one scattered, Meg and Aunt Polly to the kitchen to help Linda
+pack the lunch boxes, as far as they could be packed the day before
+the picnic; Bobby to tell Jud that he was expected; and Dot and
+Twaddles on an errand of their own.
+
+They were gone some time, and when they returned acted so mysteriously
+that Meg was quite out of patience.
+
+"Be sure you have enough sandwiches," advised Twaddles, swinging on
+the kitchen screen door, a thing which always made Linda nervous.
+
+"There might somebody come at the last minute," chimed in Dot.
+
+Then she and Twaddles giggled.
+
+"Those silly children," said Meg with her most grown-up air. "I
+suppose they think they sound funny."
+
+Dot and Twaddles apparently did not care how they sounded, and they
+stayed in the kitchen, stirring and tasting, till Linda flatly
+declared that she'd put pepper in the pressed chicken instead of salt
+if they didn't stop bothering her. Jud came just at that moment and
+asked the twins to help him see if the new catch on the chicken yard
+gate worked all right, and the two little torments readily followed
+him.
+
+Nearly everything was ready for the picnic by that night, and every
+one went to bed hoping for a clear day.
+
+"The sun is shining, Meg! Meg, get up!" shouted Dot early the next
+morning. "We're going on a picnic!"
+
+She made so much noise that she woke up Aunt Polly and Linda, as well
+as Bobby and Twaddles, and then, of course, there was nothing to do
+but to get up and have breakfast.
+
+The four little Blossoms found Peter and Jud busy in the barn, putting
+clean straw in the bottom of the box wagon that was used to haul logs
+and brushwood in in the winter.
+
+"Be ready in two jerks of a lamb's tail," announced Peter, using one
+of his favorite expressions.
+
+When the heavy wagon rattled up to the front door, the four little
+Blossoms were already sitting on the straw. Aunt Polly and Linda were
+helped in by Jud, who also lifted in the boxes of lunch, and then
+Peter clucked to Jerry and Terry, and away they went, over the meadow
+into the woods, and up the narrow wagon road.
+
+"See, isn't this pretty?" asked Aunt Polly, as the road suddenly came
+out into a clearing, and they saw the brook a bit ahead of them.
+
+They all jumped out, and Peter turned the horses' heads toward home at
+once. He was anxious to get back to his work, but was coming for them
+at half-past four.
+
+"We must get some flowers for the table," said Aunt Polly, after she
+had helped Linda put the boxes in a low branch of a tree where nothing
+could touch them. "Come, children, let's get a bouquet of flowers."
+
+They gathered wild flowers, and also found some late blackberries
+which, placed on a wide green leaf as a dish, looked very pretty.
+Linda spread a white cloth presently, and was opening the boxes when
+the sound of a rattling wagon attracted her attention.
+
+"If that doesn't sound like Mr. Sparks' old rig," said Linda
+curiously.
+
+"It is," announced Dot complacently. "Twaddles and me asked him to
+come to the picnic, 'cause he gave Meg and Bobby the calf."
+
+Although Aunt Polly murmured helplessly, "what will those children do
+next!" they were all very glad to see Mr. Sparks when he finally
+rattled up. And there was plenty of everything to eat--trust Aunt
+Polly and Linda for that.
+
+Mr. Sparks brought a freezer of ice-cream with him, which his wife had
+made, as his contribution to the picnic, and though he had to go as
+soon as lunch was over, he assured the children that he had had a
+splendid time.
+
+When the crumbs were all scattered for the birds, and the papers and
+boxes neatly buried, except one box of sandwiches they had not eaten
+and which they saved for Peter, Aunt Polly declared that she wanted to
+sit quietly for an hour and knit. Linda, too, had her embroidery, but
+the four little Blossoms wanted to go wading.
+
+"I'll watch 'em," promised Jud.
+
+So Meg and Bobby and Dot and Twaddles took off their shoes and
+stockings and pattered over the pine needles that covered the grass
+down to the edge of the brook.
+
+Bobby dipped one foot in to test the water.
+
+"Wow, it's cold!" he said. "Just like ice, Jud."
+
+"You won't mind it after you've been in a little while," Jud assured
+him. "Now when I say come out, you're to come. No teasing to stay in!
+Is that agreed?"
+
+"All right," promised the four little Blossoms. "Oh, ow! isn't it
+cold?"
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XV
+
+WHAT MEG FOUND
+
+
+The first thing Dot did was to step in a deep hole and get her dress
+and tucked-up skirt wet nearly to her shoulders.
+
+"It's all right," said Meg calmly. "Aunt Polly brought some dry things
+with her. I guess she expected Dot to go in bathing instead of
+wading."
+
+This made Dot very indignant, but she pattered along after the others,
+and in a few minutes forgot to be cross. When you are wading in a
+clear, cold brook with little dancing leaves making checkered patterns
+on the water, and a green forest all around you, you can not stay
+cross long.
+
+"I see something," said Bobby suddenly. "Look! Over there where it's
+wide! Don't you see it, Meg?"
+
+"Looks like clothes," said Meg, shading her eyes with her hand, for
+the sun on the water dazzled her. "Maybe it's a wash. Aunt Polly said
+some of the hired men around here wash their clothes in the brook.
+Let's go and see."
+
+"Here, here! Where are you going?" called Jud, as they began to
+scramble down.
+
+"We saw something on the other side of the brook," explained Bobby.
+"We're going over to see what it is."
+
+"Well, you just wait," ordered Jud. "That's the widest part of the
+brook down there, and all that side is swampy land. You can't land on
+it. You'll sink in. Wait till I take my shoes off, and I'll come and
+help you."
+
+Jud took off his shoes and socks and rolled his trousers up to his
+knees. He wasn't afraid that the four little Blossoms would drown, for
+the brook was not very deep in any part. But it was wide at the point
+where Bobby wanted to cross, and there was no bank, only a piece of
+swamp, on the other side.
+
+"Now I'll take Dot and Twaddles, and you and Meg hold hands," said
+Jud, as he stepped into the water. "Come on, Pirates, let's board
+yonder frigate."
+
+The children giggled and stepped gingerly after Jud. They were glad
+he had come with them, for the mild little brook looked like a river
+to them as they got out into the middle of it.
+
+"What do you suppose that is over there?" said Bobby. "I wish it was
+buried treasure. I never found any buried treasure."
+
+"Maybe it is Indians," Meg suggested a little fearfully.
+
+"With a flag of truce?" said Jud, understanding at once. "Well, Meg, I
+don't believe we have any Indians around here."
+
+He made a dive for Dot and saved her from slipping, but she wasn't a
+bit grateful.
+
+"I almost caught a crab," she sputtered.
+
+Before Bobby could tell her that crabs didn't live in brooks, they had
+reached the piece of swamp land and all four children rushed for the
+fluttering bit of white which had attracted Bobby's attention.
+
+"Why, it's a shirt!" said Twaddles in great disappointment.
+
+Whatever he had expected to see, it certainly wasn't a shirt and he
+felt cheated. Jud had to laugh at the queer expression on his face.
+
+Meg, however, did not laugh. She was eyeing the shirt closely and Jud
+saw that she had something on her mind. Perhaps Meg was his favorite
+among the children, if he had a favorite. He had once told Linda that
+Meg was a "regular little woman" and indeed, quiet as she was, she
+often saw things that other people did not notice.
+
+"Jud," she said now, "that shirt hasn't any buttons on it and the
+pocket is ripped. And Linda brought her sewing basket."
+
+Bobby looked at his little sister as though he thought she was losing
+her mind.
+
+"What's a sewing basket got to do with it?" he demanded.
+
+"It needs mending," said Meg soberly. "Maybe the man who washed it
+hasn't any needle and thread."
+
+The twins declared that everyone had needle and thread, but Jud rather
+spoiled their argument by announcing that he had none.
+
+"I can't sew, so what good would needle and thread do me?" he asked
+them.
+
+Meg, forgetting the shirt for a moment, asked him what he did when
+buttons came off his clothes.
+
+"My mother sews them on again," said Jud, "and Mother darns my socks
+and Mother mends the rips I get in my coats."
+
+"There, you see!" Meg cried triumphantly. "This man hasn't any mother
+to sew buttons on him."
+
+"On his shirt, you mean," giggled Dot.
+
+"Well, maybe he hasn't," Bobby admitted. "I don't suppose he has, or
+he wouldn't have to do his own washing. But Linda's basket is on the
+other side of the brook."
+
+"I'm going to take the shirt over to her and ask her to mend it,"
+announced Meg. "I know she will. Then I'll bring it back and hang it
+on the bush and won't he be surprised!"
+
+Jud chuckled.
+
+"He'll be more surprised if he comes along and his shirt is missing,"
+he laughed. "Why, he'll think the birds made way with it."
+
+This was a new problem for Meg and she thought about it for several
+minutes.
+
+"Dot and Twaddles can stay here," she decided, "and if the man comes,
+they can tell him that I will bring his shirt back as soon as it is
+mended."
+
+But the twins did not take kindly to the idea of being left alone.
+They said they were going back when Jud went.
+
+"Then you take the shirt, and I'll stay," said Meg, who seldom gave up
+a plan, once she had made it. "Please ask Linda to put the buttons on
+and mend the pocket and then you bring it right back."
+
+Jud looked doubtful at the thought of leaving Meg, even when Bobby
+declared he would stay with her.
+
+"I have to go, for the children can't get back alone," he said, "but
+you mustn't go away from here: I want to be able to find you when I
+bring the laundry home."
+
+Bobby and Meg laughed and promised to stay close to the bush. Meg
+folded up the shirt and stuffed it in Jud's pocket, because she said
+Dot would drop it in the water if she tried to carry it and Twaddles
+would want to play with it and might get it dirty. Then Meg and Bobby
+watched the three wade back and when they reached the opposite bank,
+they waved to them.
+
+Though Jud had said they could not land, there was a narrow strip of
+ground firm enough to hold them and it was on this the bush grew where
+the unknown man had hung his washing.
+
+"I don't see any house for him to live in," said Bobby curiously.
+
+"Maybe he lives in a tent," Meg answered absently, trying to see
+across the brook to the tree where she knew Linda was sitting.
+
+"Let's walk down a little way," suggested Bobby. "We'll come right
+back: Jud didn't say we couldn't go wading. He only said to be here
+when he came. Maybe we'll find the man's house."
+
+Meg was willing enough, for she was no more fond of sitting still than
+Bobby was. Holding hands, they began cautiously to wade down stream.
+
+The water rushed more swiftly than they actually liked, but neither
+would say so. Instead they slipped over the stones and tried to walk
+as fast as the water, and presently Meg had to stop to get her
+breath.
+
+"I hear a kitty crying," she said the next minute. "Listen,
+Bobby--don't you hear a cat?"
+
+But as noises often do, as soon as Bobby listened intently, the noise
+stopped. He couldn't hear a thing and said so.
+
+"There! Now don't you hear it?" cried Meg. "It's a little kitty and it
+must be lost. Oh, Bobby, we have to find it!"
+
+Bobby could hear the kitten mewing now and he was as eager to find it
+as Meg was. But how could a kitten be in the brook?
+
+"It's back there!" Meg said, waving her hand toward the marshy land.
+"Maybe, if we call it, it will come."
+
+And together they called, "Kitty! Kitty! Kitty!" but the little faint
+"Meow" sounded just the same.
+
+"Well, I'll have to hunt for it," declared Bobby, looking at the wet
+and soggy ground rather regretfully. "I hope there aren't any snakes
+in there," he added gloomily.
+
+Meg had a horror of snakes and she didn't want her dearly loved
+brother to go where they might be. Neither could she go away and leave
+the kitten. So, like the brave and affectionate little girl she was,
+she said she was going with Bobby.
+
+They hoped with all their hearts they wouldn't see a snake and they
+didn't know what they would do if they did, but they had no intention
+of leaving that forlorn kitty cat to its own fate. And, as sometimes
+happens, it turned out that they did not have to go where they dreaded
+to go at all.
+
+"I see it!" cried Meg suddenly, her sharp eyes having searched the
+bank near them, where it jutted out into the water. "Look, Bobby, in
+that crooked tree, hanging out over the brook."
+
+Bobby looked. At the very tip end of the longest branch, there clung a
+tiny ball of dirty white which must be the kitten.
+
+"Scared to death," commented Bobby. "I don't see how we can get it
+down: the more I shake the tree, the harder it will dig its claws in.
+That's the way cats do."
+
+But Meg was ready with a plan.
+
+"You climb up the tree," she told Bobby, "and I'll stand underneath
+and hold my skirts out; you can pull the cat off and drop it down into
+my lap."
+
+That was easier said than done, as they both discovered the next
+minute. For one thing, the water sucked past the tree in a current
+that forced Meg to brace her feet wide apart to keep her balance. And
+when Bobby had climbed the tree, he found the limb wasn't strong
+enough to bear his weight and he couldn't crawl out to the cat.
+
+"If I had a pole, I could push her off," he shouted to Meg.
+
+"Bend it down," she called. "Bend the branch down and I'll pick her
+off, Bobby."
+
+And, after one or two unsuccessful attempts to bend the branch down,
+that was just what they did do. Bobby managed to bend it within arm's
+reach of Meg, who detached the little cat much as you pick a
+caterpillar off a leaf. Though the cat stuck tighter to the branch
+than any caterpillar was ever known to do.
+
+"You're all right," said Meg soothingly, putting the kitten in her
+dress and gathering it up like a bag. "Soon as you get home, you can
+have something to eat and you'll feel much better."
+
+It was hard work, wading against the current, but they helped each
+other and by good luck reached the bush, just as they saw Jud starting
+out from the other side. Dot and Twaddles danced impatiently on the
+bank, but he had evidently told them to stay there, for they did not
+follow him.
+
+"Jud! Jud!" called Bobby and Meg, beginning to do a dance of their
+own. "You don't know what we found, Jud!"
+
+"If I was you, I'd wait to do my prancing on, dry ground," Jud advised
+them as he waded across. "It's safer and drier."
+
+"Did Linda do the shirt? Is it mended?" Meg asked eagerly, when Jud
+was within easy talking distance.
+
+"Mended tip-top," announced Jud. "Buttons all on, pocket sewed back,
+rip between the shoulders all fixed. Never saw a neater job."
+
+"Linda is good as she can be," Meg said gratefully, holding her skirts
+with one hand and reaching for the shirt with the other. "Let's spread
+it out just the way we found it."
+
+They draped the shirt as Meg insisted she remembered seeing it, Jud
+all the while staring curiously at the little girl.
+
+"What are you holding in your skirt?" he asked when she gave him her
+free hand and they were ready to cross the brook.
+
+"It's a surprise," Meg said mysteriously. "I want to surprise Dot and
+Twaddles. You'll never be able to guess what it is, either, Jud."
+
+And just as she said that, her foot slipped.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVI
+
+THE NEW CAT
+
+
+Meg could not fall flat, for Jud had hold of her hand, but she did
+drop her carefully held skirt. There was a splash, a startled "Meow!"
+and a shriek from Meg.
+
+"Don't let it drown!" she cried. "Jud, catch it, quick!"
+
+If Meg had planned to surprise the twins, she could not have managed
+better. They couldn't quite see what was going on, but they knew that
+something had happened.
+
+"What is it?" they called. "Can we come in, Jud, can't we come see?"
+
+Jud made a quick scoop with his hand and brought out the miserable,
+clawing, spitting little kitten.
+
+"You stay where you are!" he ordered the twins. "Say, where'll I put
+this?" he asked helplessly, turning to Meg.
+
+She held up her skirt again and he dropped the kitten in it, since
+that seemed to be the only place, and as Meg afterward said she was "a
+little damp" from the cat's splash and more water wouldn't hurt.
+
+Then Jud took hold of Meg's hand more firmly and Bobby's, too, and
+they managed to reach the opposite bank without any more mishaps.
+
+"What is it? What is it?" Dot and Twaddles begged, running up and down
+madly. "Did you find something, Meg? Did you see the buttons on the
+shirt? Did the man come and ask you who took it?"
+
+"We didn't see anybody," said Bobby, who felt it was his duty to
+answer this flood of questions. "I don't believe the man lives very
+near, because we didn't see any house. But Meg found something."
+
+By this time Aunt Polly and Linda had come down to the brook, to see
+what was making the twins more excited than usual.
+
+"Meg found something!" Dot told Aunt Polly.
+
+"Did you, dear?" asked Aunt Polly, smiling. "Don't tell me it is
+another shirt, Meg."
+
+Meg stepped back and faced the group dramatically.
+
+"It's a cat!" she said, and held her "find" up for them to see.
+
+To her amazement, Linda and Jud went off into fits of laughter and
+even Aunt Polly seemed to be trying not to smile.
+
+"I don't see anything funny," Meg announced stiffly. "It's a poor
+little almost dead cat. Bobby and I found it down the brook, hanging
+on a tree and afraid to climb off."
+
+"Why, the poor little thing!" said Aunt Polly with ready sympathy. "We
+must take it home and feed it, Meg."
+
+"I'm only laughing," Linda explained, wiping her eyes, "because it is
+such a distressed-looking cat, Meg. It's so dirty and so little and
+so--so mad!" she finished as the cat humped up its back and spit at
+Twaddles who tried to stroke it.
+
+"Stray kittens don't make friends very readily," said kind Aunt Polly.
+"They think everyone is their enemy, till proved otherwise. We must
+teach your kitten, Meg, that at Brookside Farm we like kitty cats."
+
+"Where do you suppose it came from?" Bobby asked.
+
+"Oh, some one had more cats than they wanted, so they turned it loose,
+down by the brook," said Jud. "It's a mean trick and if I ever caught
+a person doing it, I wouldn't waste a second giving him a piece of my
+mind."
+
+Meg stared at the forlorn white kitten gravely.
+
+"You don't suppose it belongs to the man who washed the shirt, do
+you?" she suggested earnestly.
+
+Linda laughed. She was busily wrapping up the cat in tissue paper--of
+all things!--because she happened to have a big wad of it in her
+basket.
+
+"There!" she said, handing the astonished kitten to Meg. "I can't bear
+to have dirty things around me--you carry her like that and as soon as
+we get home I'll wash her. If the cat did belong to the man whose
+shirt I mended, I suppose you'd feel like going back and cutting the
+buttons off, eh, Meg?"
+
+Meg blushed a little.
+
+"No-o, I wouldn't do that," she replied slowly, "but next time I
+wouldn't bother."
+
+However, Jud said that he didn't think a man who had to wash his
+clothes in the brook and dry them on a bush had any cats.
+
+"What are you going to call your find, Meg?" asked Jud when they
+were riding home at half-past four, Peter eating his sandwiches
+gratefully.
+
+"Shirt," Meg answered placidly. "What are you laughing at? It's white,
+like the shirt we found, and if it hadn't been for the shirt we
+wouldn't have found the kitten at all and it might have fallen into
+the water and been drowned."
+
+And in spite of some teasing and much joking, Meg continued to call
+the stray kitten "Shirt." True to her word, Linda washed the little
+creature and when its fur dried it proved to be very pretty, soft and
+silky. The kitty had blue eyes and by the time it was a full-grown
+cat, Aunt Polly was immensely proud of it.
+
+For Shirt lived at Brookside Farm and did not go with the four little
+Blossoms when they went home to Oak Hill. Aunt Polly said Poots would
+miss him and that cats didn't like to change their homes, anyway, and
+Meg knew this to be true. And every year, at Christmas time, Meg
+remembered to send Shirt a Christmas present and when she came to
+visit Aunt Polly, he always seemed to know her.
+
+The week of rain which Aunt Polly had predicted and which had led her
+to hasten the picnic, arrived two or three days after the adventure in
+the brook. The exceedingly practical Meg remarked at the breakfast
+table, the first rainy morning, that she didn't care if it did
+rain--Shirt was safe in a dry place and the man had had plenty of time
+to get his wash dry and take it in off the bush.
+
+"I wonder what he said when he saw the buttons," speculated Dot.
+
+But this was one question that never received an answer, for the
+children never saw the man who owned the shirt and they never heard
+whether he was pleased to find his mending done or not.
+
+"Maybe he thought the birds did it for him," said Twaddles helpfully
+and was delighted when Jud told him that there was a bird called the
+tailor bird.
+
+"Then he did it," Twaddles declared, and when Dot pointed out that
+they had seen Linda doing the work, Twaddles explained that he meant
+the man would think the tailor bird had done it.
+
+It was talk like this between the twins that made Jud say it gave him
+a headache if he listened too long.
+
+"We haven't had a rain like this in a long time," said Aunt Polly,
+glancing out of the dining-room window at the dripping leaves.
+
+"Not since we lost the raft," Bobby reminded her.
+
+"I wonder if we'll ever find that," said Meg for the fortieth time.
+
+"If I were you," Aunt Polly announced briskly, "I'd think up the
+nicest thing to do for a rainy day and have just as much fun as I
+could."
+
+"Let's go out in the barn," suggested Twaddles.
+
+"We could see what Jud is doing," Dot chimed in.
+
+"He's mending the corn shelter," said Bobby, who usually knew what was
+going on at the farm.
+
+"I think it would be fun to play lighthouse in the barn and take our
+lunch and stay all day," Meg declared, having thought of this while
+the others were talking.
+
+None of them knew what the lighthouse game might be, but it sounded
+new and exciting. Aunt Polly said she didn't see why they couldn't
+have a picnic in the barn as well as outdoors and she promised to help
+Linda put up a lunch for them.
+
+"Only remember not to bother Jud, if he is busy," she cautioned them.
+
+The four little Blossoms knew how to run "between the drops" and as
+soon as their lunch was packed, they kissed Aunt Polly and started for
+the barn at breakneck speed. Flushed and breathless and hardly wet at
+all, they burst into the barn and told Jud, who was busy on the main
+floor, that they were going to have another picnic.
+
+"You do manage to have a good time, all right," he said approvingly.
+"Where are you going to play?"
+
+They looked at Meg. It was her game and she was the only one who knew
+the best place to go.
+
+"We have to play in the loft," directed Meg. "We're going to live in a
+lighthouse, Jud, and pull things up and down."
+
+Jud did not understand at first and when she told him, he said that
+lighthouse keepers did not live at the top of the lighthouse and pull
+things up, but instead they lived in a neat little house built on the
+ground, like other houses, and climbed the tall stairs to take care of
+the light.
+
+"Well, I think it would be more fun to live up high," said Meg, and
+Jud said that was the best of a "pretend" play. You could do it to
+suit yourself.
+
+The four children scrambled up the loft ladder--practice had made this
+once difficult feat easy for them--and for a half hour jumped about
+in the clean, sweet hay, forgetting their game. The smooth, slippery
+hay, piled in such masses, never failed to fascinate them.
+
+"Now let's play lighthouse," suggested Meg, when Twaddles had come
+down rather hard on his nose and was trying not to cry. "First thing
+we need is a basket and rope."
+
+They found a basket Jud said they might take and he got a piece of
+rope for them. Then they argued about staying down on the floor of the
+barn to put things in the basket for, of course, each one wanted to
+pull the basket up; that was the interesting part.
+
+"Take turns," Bobby advised. "I'll stay down first, and let Meg pull
+up first, because she thought of this game."
+
+So Meg ran up the ladder and Bobby put in the lunch box and she pulled
+and tugged and at last succeeded in pulling the basket up to the
+loft.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVII
+
+RAINY DAY FUN
+
+
+"I'll bury it in the hay, before Twaddles comes up," said Meg to
+herself. "He always wants to eat everything up right away."
+
+She peeped over the edge of the haymow and saw the twins, one on
+either side of Bobby, staring up. They looked funny, for their mouths
+were open and Meg giggled a little.
+
+"Send the basket back," Twaddles called. "We want to put something in
+it."
+
+"All right--wait a minute," answered Meg.
+
+She ran back and hastily stuffed the lunch box under the hay, pulling
+a pile over it so that it did not show at all. Then she rushed to the
+edge of the mow, but she was in such haste not to keep the others
+waiting that she dropped the basket, rope and all.
+
+It rapped Dot on the head and she looked astonished.
+
+"I don't see why you threw it at me," she said resentfully.
+
+"I didn't," Meg explained. "I forgot to hold the rope. Shall I come
+down and get it?"
+
+"Twaddles will bring you the rope," said Bobby. "Soon as I put
+something in the basket. Let's see, what shall we put in next?"
+
+"There's Poots," Dot suggested, pointing to the cat who had followed
+them.
+
+"I don't think she'll like it," objected Meg, but Bobby was eager to
+send the cat aloft and he and Twaddles together managed to stuff her
+in the basket.
+
+Bobby held her there while Twaddles took one end of the rope in his
+hand and scrambled up the ladder to the waiting Meg.
+
+"Where did you put the lunch?" he asked as soon as he reached the
+loft.
+
+"I put it away," Meg assured him. "Are you going to help me pull the
+basket up, Twaddles?"
+
+Twaddles was eager to help and he forgot the lunch. He stood back of
+Meg and they both began to pull. Poots meowed sadly as she felt
+herself rising and Bobby and Dot shouted to the pullers to "hurry
+up."
+
+"Poots will jump out in a minute," warned Bobby.
+
+Twaddles' foot slipped on the soft hay and he went down, slackening
+his hold on the rope as he fell. Meg turned to see what had happened
+to him, let the rope sag, and the basket fell a foot or two with
+sickening speed.
+
+This was too much for any self-respecting cat and with a wild snarl
+Poots leaped clear over the heads of Bobby and Dot. The angry cat
+landed on his feet on the barn floor ten feet away, and dashed out
+into the rain. Getting his fur coat soaking wet was preferable to
+being hoisted about in a basket, he seemed to say.
+
+"What did you do to Poots?" called Jud. "When he went out of that
+door, his tail was two feet around!"
+
+"We were only playing with him," Bobby said. "But maybe he didn't like
+it much."
+
+"If you have time to play with the cat, you have time to help me,"
+declared Jud. "Don't you and Meg want to come and help me see if this
+sheller is going to work?"
+
+Bobby and Meg loved to help Jud and they left their game cheerfully,
+to go to the corncrib. It was attached to the other end of the barn,
+so they didn't have to go out in the rain. Jud wanted to watch the
+machinery he had mended and he asked Meg to turn the crank and Bobby
+to feed in the ears of corn. They were never allowed to touch the
+sheller unless some older person was around, for little fingers could
+get easily nipped in the cog wheels. So they were rather proud to be
+especially asked to help Jud make it work.
+
+"I thought the twins were coming," said Jud, absently, bending down to
+tighten a screw.
+
+"They must have stayed to play with the basket," Meg replied.
+
+And that was just what the twins were doing, playing with the basket.
+
+"You put something in it and let me pull it up," commanded Dot.
+
+"I haven't anything to put in it," Twaddles offered. "The cat's
+gone."
+
+"Well you don't have to have a cat," said Dot impatiently. "I know
+what we can get--eggs!"
+
+There were always two or three hens that persisted in stealing their
+nests and the twins had a fair idea of where these stolen nests were
+in the barn. They often found the eggs and took them in to Linda.
+
+Now, after a few minutes' search, they found seven eggs and put them
+in the basket with great glee.
+
+"Let me pull it up after you do?" asked Twaddles as Dot climbed up the
+ladder.
+
+"Well--perhaps," she replied carefully. "I might want to pull it up
+more than once myself."
+
+She began to pull on the rope and the basket dangled in the air.
+Whether the sound of voices made Dot nervous, or whether the basket
+was heavier than she had expected, it is hard to say. But just as Jud
+and Bobby and Meg came out on the barn floor, Dot let that basket
+fall.
+
+"Good grief!" exclaimed Jud.
+
+Twaddles seemed glued to one spot and the basket crashed down almost
+under his nose. The eggs broke and some splashed up and sprayed him,
+but most of the contents ran out on the floor in a bright yellow
+stream.
+
+"You took eggs!" Meg said accusingly.
+
+"Well, nobody said not to," answered Dot in a rather frightened voice,
+peering over the edge of the loft.
+
+"All right, I'll say it now," Jud proclaimed. "After this, it is
+against the rules to put anything in the basket which will break.
+Remember that. And now, let me see if I can wipe you off, Twaddles."
+
+Jud found a cloth and mopped the egg off Twaddles--fortunately not
+much had reached him--and then Dot suggested that they do something
+else.
+
+"We could eat," Twaddles said placidly, which made Jud laugh.
+
+"I'm going to start feeding the stock, so perhaps it isn't too early
+for you to have lunch," he said. "That is one sure way to keep the
+twins quiet, Meg."
+
+Dot called after him that she hadn't said anything about eating, but
+Jud didn't hear her. He was already measuring out corn for the
+horses.
+
+"Where is the lunch?" asked Bobby, who began to feel hungry himself.
+
+"I know--I'll get it," Meg replied, and ran up the ladder.
+
+She felt around in the hay where she had buried the box, but she
+couldn't find it. The other children came up and watched her
+curiously, but still she couldn't feel anything like a box.
+
+"What are you looking for?" said Dot curiously.
+
+"For our lunch," Meg told her, almost ready to cry. "I put it under
+the hay and now I can't find it."
+
+Bobby and the twins hastily got down beside her and tossed the hay
+around. They looked where Meg said she put the box and they looked
+where she was sure it couldn't be, but all that happened was that they
+got very warm and tired indeed and not one sign of the lunch did they
+uncover.
+
+"Do you know what I think?" said Twaddles wisely. "I think some rat
+found it and ate it. I've seen rats up here in the loft, lots of
+times."
+
+Meg glanced around hastily. She wasn't at all anxious to see a rat.
+
+"Rats couldn't eat the box and everything in it," Bobby argued. "They
+would leave pieces of paper and things that we would see."
+
+"Then where is the box?" demanded Dot.
+
+Bobby sat down to think and Meg waited respectfully.
+
+"We'll have to get a pitchfork and turn over all the hay," Bobby
+decided. "That's the only way to find the box: it's lost in all this
+hay."
+
+He was willing to go and get the pitchfork, but he was gone several
+minutes. When he came back, Jud was with him.
+
+"Pitchforks and Twaddles won't mix," declared Jud firmly. "We'll have
+to manage some other way. Show me where you hid the box, Meg."
+
+Meg showed him, as nearly as she could remember. Jud knelt down and
+felt under the hay, while the children stared at him as though they
+expected him to work some kind of magic.
+
+"I think I can find it," he announced. "You all sit down and close
+your eyes tightly and don't open them till I give the word."
+
+So they sat down on the floor and Dot put her head in Meg's lap, for
+it was hard for her to keep her eyes closed. She always wanted to see
+what was going on.
+
+Meg counted to ninety-eight before she heard Jud cry, "All right!"
+
+The four little Blossoms opened their eyes and there stood Jud, the
+lunch box in his hand. He was smiling.
+
+"How did you find it?" asked Meg. "Was it under the hay?"
+
+"On top," said Jud mysteriously. "You see, Meg, the box fell through
+the slats and landed on top of a ration of hay in one of the stalls.
+All I had to do was to go downstairs and get it."
+
+Linda had packed the box so neatly and so firmly that nothing was
+damaged and the children had a delightful picnic up in the loft. They
+played there most of the afternoon, too, and often during the rainy
+days that followed. Indeed they amused themselves so well and were so
+little trouble to Aunt Polly, that she promised them one more outdoor
+picnic, the first dry sunny day that came.
+
+"Be sure you save me some sandwiches," said Peter, when he heard about
+it.
+
+They promised and it was Dot who woke up the household bright and
+early when she saw the sun streaming in at the window.
+
+"We can have the picnic!" she shouted joyfully. "Aunt Polly, isn't it
+dry and sunny? Get up, Twaddles, we can have the picnic."
+
+It was a sunny day, but it wasn't so dry, for the ground was still
+damp from so much rain.
+
+"But if we go wading, the water's wet," argued Dot, and Linda, too,
+thought they might as well go.
+
+"Don't forget my sandwiches," Peter reminded them as he saw them
+start.
+
+
+
+
+CHAPTER XVIII
+
+THE END OF THE VACATION
+
+
+The four little Blossoms wanted to go to the same place where they had
+gone before and Jud drove them. Then he was to take the horses and
+wagon back for his father to use during the day and Peter would come
+for the picnickers in the afternoon and get his sandwiches.
+
+"Don't go wading till Jud comes," said Aunt Polly, when good-natured
+Jud had gone back. "Help Linda spread out the rubber blanket, for we
+want to be comfortable while you play around."
+
+The children spread out the blanket and on top of that Aunt Polly
+spread a cotton one and then she and Linda sat down to sew.
+
+"Let's go see if there is another shirt spread out to dry," suggested
+Meg, and she was much excited when they saw a bit of white fluttering
+from a bush.
+
+"'Tisn't the same place," Dot argued.
+
+"Well, it's almost the same place," retorted Bobby. "Only it looks
+ragged," he added.
+
+Meg was eager to go and examine the white thing, but she knew they
+would have to wait for Jud. Aunt Polly laughed when she heard about it
+and said that Meg would have Linda running a mending shop if she was
+not very careful.
+
+"After we have lunch, if Jud is willing to take you, you may go over
+and see what it is," she told her little niece kindly. "You'd have
+every one nicely washed and mended if you could, wouldn't you, Meg?"
+
+Jud came back on foot and after he had rested a minute, declared he
+was willing to wade the brook with the children. But Aunt Polly
+insisted they must have lunch first and of course no one wanted to
+miss that. As soon as the last crumb was gone, however, the children
+began to tease and Jud said they might as well go. He had laughed at
+the idea of another shirt, but half way across the stream he seemed to
+change his mind.
+
+"Guess somebody lost his shirt," observed Jud, keeping a firm grip on
+Dot, who seemed to be trying to dance.
+
+"Say, wouldn't it be funny," began Bobby, but Meg had the same idea at
+the same time.
+
+"Do you suppose it could----" she said slowly.
+
+"It's the raft!" yelled Twaddles, breaking away from Jud, and rushing
+into the bushes. "It's our raft--Oh, Jud!" Twaddles had stepped on a
+sharp stone.
+
+"I wish you'd be a little more careful," said Jud calmly. "Well, it is
+the raft! Can you beat that?"
+
+Tangled in broken reeds and a few prickly bushes, lay their raft,
+Geraldine smiling as sweetly as ever and still propped up against
+Meg's book. Nothing was missing, not even Twaddles' singing bird or
+Bobby's airplane.
+
+"I'm so glad!" Meg kept saying. "I'm so glad! Now let's go home and
+play with them."
+
+"It's lucky we've had this long, dry spell," said Jud, picking up
+Geraldine and eyeing her critically. "If we'd had one good storm,
+good-by toys."
+
+Dot tucked Geraldine under her arm, Twaddles stuffed his bird into his
+pocket, Meg took her book and Bobby his airplane, and Jud offered to
+tow the raft. So slowly and carefully they made their way back to
+where Jud had left his socks and shoes.
+
+Aunt Polly and Linda were surprised and delighted when they saw the
+children coming, for they had begun to wonder what they could be
+doing.
+
+"You don't mean to tell me you found the raft!" exclaimed Aunt Polly,
+when she heard the news. "Why, that's the best luck I ever heard of."
+
+And Linda said "My goodness!" over and over, and wanted to know just
+where they had found it and who saw it first and how they had managed
+to reach it.
+
+"You've played enough in the water," said Aunt Polly, when each child
+had told the story. "Put on your shoes and stockings and see if you
+can't find me a maidenhair fern for my fern-box."
+
+Meg found it first, and then Jud lent her his jack-knife and showed
+her how to take it up so that the roots would not be injured. Then he
+left her for a minute while he went back to get a paper cup from Linda
+to plant it in, and when he came back he found her backed up against a
+tree and looking frightened.
+
+"What scared you?" he asked quickly. "Did you see a snake, Meg?"
+
+"No," she whispered. "I don't know what it was. But it stared and
+stared at me, Jud."
+
+"Well, where did you see it?" demanded Jud briskly. "Let me have a
+whack at it with this branch. Where'd you see it, Meg?"
+
+"In the hole in this tree," answered Meg. "I was shaking more dirt off
+the fern when I looked up and there it was jiggling at me."
+
+"Where?" asked Jud again, a bit impatiently. "I don't see any hole."
+
+"I'm standing over it," said Meg, "so the thing can't get away."
+
+Meg, you see, was frightened, but not too frightened to be interested
+and curious about a strange animal.
+
+"I'm sure it's an animal, 'cause it moves," she told Jud, as she stood
+aside to let him look in the hole.
+
+Jud put his hand in the hole--it was an old dead tree and hollow at
+the top--and drew out something soft and fluffy.
+
+"Just as I thought," he chuckled. "It's a baby owl."
+
+"Oh, how cunning," cried Meg, coming closer and venturing to put a
+finger on the bunch of feathers. "But what a funny face, Jud!"
+
+Indeed the baby owl looked like a very young and foolish monkey as it
+sat in Jud's hands and rolled its head and stared aimlessly.
+
+"He's pretty near blind," Jud explained. "In the daytime owls can
+hardly see at all. I suspect there's a nest in this old tree. Want to
+hold it for me while I feel?"
+
+Meg was certainly not afraid of a baby owl, and she took it tenderly.
+Sure enough, Jud knew what he was talking about--he put his arm away
+into the tree trunk and brought out two more little owls.
+
+Twaddles and Dot had come up by this time, and they were perfectly
+entranced with the queer little birds.
+
+Jud carefully put the baby owls back. Then they planted the fern in
+the paper cup, found Bobby, who was trying to fish with a breadcrumb
+tied to a string, and told him about the owls, and then they heard the
+wagon coming for them.
+
+"Have a good time?" asked Peter, as he helped them all in and the
+wagon started its noisy trip home. Peter was eating one of the
+sandwiches they had saved for him and looked very contented.
+
+"Such a nice time," said the four little Blossoms.
+
+"Was there any mail?" asked Aunt Polly.
+
+"Just one letter," replied Peter.
+
+But that was a very important letter, as the Blossoms found out when
+they were once more at home and Aunt Polly read it to them while
+Linda was getting supper.
+
+"Mother's coming!" cried Bobby, meeting Jud on his way to the barn.
+
+"That's fine," said Jud heartily. Then his face fell.
+
+"But you don't want to go home yet!" he urged. "Vacation isn't over so
+soon, is it? There's lots we planned to do we haven't done."
+
+"Mother's going to stay a week," said Bobby happily. "School doesn't
+open for two weeks, but we have to go home and get ready. Say, Jud, I
+didn't miss Mother--not such a lot, that is--but now I miss her
+dreadful much."
+
+When Mother Blossom came she found all the children in the car with
+Aunt Polly to meet her. And the things they did during that one week,
+from another picnic to having all the new friends they had made at
+Brookside come to supper, including Mr. Sparks--well, Linda said there
+was more going on than there had been all through the summer, and
+Linda ought to have known!
+
+"I s'pect Aunt Polly will miss us," said Twaddles the last morning of
+their visit, as Mother Blossom was buttoning Dot into a clean frock
+and Aunt Polly was on her knees locking the trunks.
+
+"I s'pect I shall," said Aunt Polly, tears in her kind eyes.
+
+This was too much for Twaddles.
+
+"You come and stay at our house," he told her earnestly. "And you can
+come and visit school."
+
+For the twins still insisted they were going to school.
+
+Aunt Polly promised that she would come to see them some time during
+the winter and that she wouldn't cry any more but just remember the
+nice times they had had together that summer.
+
+"And if you go to school, you'll learn to write, and then I shall look
+for letters," she said seriously.
+
+So the four little Blossoms started home for Oak Hill and found a
+Daddy Blossom there very glad to see them, as well as Norah and Sam
+and Philip, who, as Meg observed, had "grown considerable." He wasn't
+lame any more, either.
+
+And if you want to read about what Meg and Bobby did in school, and
+how the twins contrived to go to school, too, in spite of the fact
+that they were only four years old, you must read the next book about
+them which is called "Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School."
+
+"Oh, but it's been a perfectly lovely summer, hasn't it?" said Meg,
+while she was helping unpack her things.
+
+"Best ever," declared Bobby.
+
+"And just think--we own a cow!" cried Dot.
+
+"And maybe--when she gets big--we can milk her," added Twaddles. "Oh,
+I like the country--I do."
+
+"Let's all buy a farm when we grow up," suggested Bobby.
+
+"Let's!" all the others cried in chorus.
+
+THE END
+
+
+
+
+
+End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm, by
+Mabel C. Hawley
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