CHAPTER VII
A BIRTHDAY PARTY
Palmer knew this to be true, for Mr. Carter had expressly said that at the first sign of unfair play the battle would be called off. He made few rules for his pupils, but those he did make were never to be lightly broken.
"I'll bet that Tim Roon threw it!" stormed Meg. "You wait!"
Meg was very quick to think and to act, and the sight of her favorite brother, one blue eye almost closed, roused her to strong measures.
"Come on, and rush 'em!" she cried, her little arms waving like windmills. "Don't stand here, throwing balls. Let's capture their old fort!"
For an instant they stared at her, and then, the idea appealing, the whole Black army poured over the side of the fort, and charged on the enemy, shrieking wildly. Bobby, who could barely see where he was going, was swept along with the rest.
Upstairs in the schoolhouse, the teachers looked at each other in surprise, and Mr. Carter was equally astonished.
"Surrender!" shouted Meg, the first to leap the wall of the Orange fort.
The Orange army simply backed. It was very funny to see them. They had not expected an open attack, and they were too taken by surprise to guard their piles of ammunition. As the opposing forces climbed their wall they dumbly gave way and moved back, back, till, with a cry of joy, the Black fighters swooped upon the orderly mounds of snowballs. With their ammunition gone, of course the Oranges could do nothing less than give in.
Mr. Carter came up laughing.
"Well, Tim, that was a surprise attack for fair, wasn't it?" he asked pleasantly. "I think we'll have to say the Black side won. Congratulations, Bobby. And now, Generals, shake hands, and the biggest fight in Oak Hill school history will be over."
Tim put out his lip stubbornly.
"I didn't know it was fair to play like that," he argued sourly. "We could have taken their fort easy, if you'd said that was the way to play. 'Sides Meg Blossom put 'em to it. Bobby hadn't a thing to do with that."
"Yes, Meg did," said Bobby hurriedly, trying to edge out of the crowd.
"She really won the war."
"Just one moment," Mr. Carter spoke coolly, and yet there was an odd little snap in his voice that made every boy and girl turn toward him. "Look at me, please, Bobby. What happened to your eye?"
"Oh, gee," mumbled Bobby unhappily. He had hoped to get away unnoticed. "I guess—I guess a snowball hit it."
"A packed ball, probably dipped in water first," announced Mr. Carter, gently touching the poor sore eye. "Tim, do you know anything about such a ball?"
"No, I don't," said Tim hastily. "Nobody can say our side packed balls."
"No one can prove your side threw a packed ball," corrected the principal pointedly. "Still, it is hardly likely that Bobby's men would have hit their own general with a frozen ball. I don't intend to try to find out any more, Tim. But I'm sorry that in every game there must always be some one who doesn't play fair."
Mr. Carter said that Bobby should go home at once and let his mother put something on his eye. It was a real victory for the Black's side, he announced firmly. And Bobby, going home with Meg, his handkerchief tied over his puffy eye, felt like a real general, wounded, tired, but successful and happy.
Mother Blossom always knew what to do for the little hurts, and she bandaged Bobby's eye and listened to the account of the snow fight with great interest.
"Meg, Meg!" Dot's voice sounded from the front hall, as Mother Blossom finished tying a soft handkerchief around Bobby's head to hold the eye-pad in place. "Is Meg home yet?"
Dot appeared in the doorway of Mother Blossom's room.
"What's the matter with Bobby?" she asked.
Bobby explained, but Dot was too excited to pay much attention to the story of the fight. She had other matters on her mind.
"Meg, you've got a letter," she announced. "We all have. Only
Twaddles and I opened ours."
"A letter!" repeated Meg, delighted. "Who wrote it?"
"Give Bobby his," directed Mother Blossom. "Open them, dears. That is the only sure way to know what is inside."
Meg and Bobby tore open the square pink envelopes together, but Meg read hers first.
"Marion Green's going to give a birthday party!" she exclaimed. "Isn't that fun! I can wear my white dress. What'll we take her, Mother?"
Mother Blossom said that they would think up something nice before the day for the party came, and then they heard Father Blossom come in, and down the four little Blossoms rushed to tell him about the snow battle and the party.
"I'm glad," announced Dot with a great deal of satisfaction at the supper table that night, "there's something in this town they don't say Twaddles and I are too young to go to!"
Everybody laughed, and Father Blossom said that Dot shouldn't worry about her age, for she was growing older every year.
Marion Green's party was the next Saturday afternoon, and Mother
Blossom and Aunt Polly helped the children to get dressed.
"If I only had my locket," sighed Meg. "It would look so pretty with this white dress. Oh, dear! I wish I had remembered about taking it off."
Bobby and Meg had hunted often after school for the locket, but though they were sure they had been over every inch of ground where Meg had coasted, they could not find the pretty ornament.
"Don't sigh for things gone," said Aunt Polly, giving Meg a kiss. "We all know you will be more careful another time, dear. Now I'm sure you look very nice. And, as your grandmother used to say, 'behave as well as you look.'"
Meg wore a white dress with blue sash and hair-ribbons, and Dot was all in pink—dress, ribbons and socks.
"I hope," remarked Twaddles, as they started for Marion's house, "that the ice-cream will be chocolate."
"I don't think you should think about what you're going to get to eat," reproved Meg primly, feeling very much the older sister because she was wearing gloves, kid ones. "It's colder, isn't it?"
It really was very cold, and the four little Blossoms were glad when they reached Marion's house.
"The party's going on," observed Dot, as they went up the steps. She was seized with a sudden fit of shyness, and pressed close to Meg.
Meg and Bobby were experienced in the matter of parties, and they knew you went upstairs to take off your things and then came down to present your birthday present.
"See my new locket and chain," said Ruth Ellis, a little girl Meg knew, who was fluffing out her hair-ribbon before the glass in Marion's mother's room where the girls were told to leave their wraps. "My uncle gave it to me."
Poor Meg remembered her lost locket again. She thought it much prettier than Ruth's, and she would have been so glad to have it around her neck to show the other girls.
The four little Blossoms met in the hall and went down together. They had brought Marion a knitting set, two ivory needles with sterling silver tops, which folded into a neat leather case, and Marion, who was a famous little knitter, was delighted.
All the presents were put on the center table after they were opened and admired, and then the children played games till Mrs. Green announced that there was something in the dining-room to interest them.
"Gee, it is chocolate," whispered Twaddles shrilly, as the plates of ice-cream followed the sandwiches.
The cake was white with eight pink candles, and if anything looks prettier or tastes better than chocolate ice-cream and white cake, do tell me what it is.
"Now we can fish," remarked Marion, as they left the table.
Back of the wide deep sofa in the parlor, Marion's mother had fixed a "fish pond," and now she gave each guest a rod and line with a hook at the end, and told them all to try their luck.
Twaddles fished first. His hook mysteriously caught something right away, and he drew up a tissue paper parcel that proved to contain a little glass jar of candy sticks. Twaddles liked them very much.
Meg caught a pretty silk handkerchief, and Dot found a soap bubble set on the end of her line. Bobby's catch was a box of water-color paints.
After every child had fished and caught something, it was five o'clock and the party was over. They said good-by to Marion and her mother, and told them they had had the nicest time, which was certainly true.
"My, but isn't it cold!" exclaimed Mrs. Green, as she held open the door for a group of the party guests to go out. "We'll have skating next week if this weather keeps up."
The four little Blossoms hurried home, for the cold nipped their noses and the tips of Meg's fingers in her spandy new kid gloves.
"I like a party," said Dot suddenly, running to keep up with Bobby, "where you get presents, too."
Father Blossom opened the door for them, and they were glad to see the fire blazing cheerily in the living-room.
"Well, well, how did the party go?" asked Father, pulling off Meg's gloves for her, and drawing her into his lap. "Presents, too? Why, Twaddles, I thought this was Marion's birthday."
Twaddles unscrewed the top of his candy jar and offered Father Blossom a green-colored stick.
"We took Marion a present," he explained serenely. "But I guess her mother thought it wasn't fair for her to get 'em all. Everybody fished for something, Daddy."
CHAPTER VIII
DOWN ON THE POND
"A penny for your thoughts, Daughter," said Father Blossom presently.
Meg's lip quivered.
"I want my locket!" she sobbed, hiding her face against her father's shoulder. "All the girls have lockets and mine was nicer than any of them."
"Yes, it was," agreed Dot judicially, from her seat on the rug before the fire. "It had such a cunning snap."
"I don't care about the snap," retorted Meg, sitting up and drying her eyes on Father's nice big white handkerchief. "The forget-me-nots were so lovely and besides it was great Aunt Dorothy's."
Father Blossom now proposed a plan.
"I'll advertise for your locket, Meg," he said. "We'll offer a reward, and perhaps some one will find it. At any rate, it will encourage them to look for it. Right after supper we'll get pencil and paper and write out an advertisement for the Oak Hill Herald."
Father Blossom did not really believe that offering a reward for the lost locket would bring it back. He thought likely that it was buried under the deep snow beyond the sight of every one. But he knew that Meg would feel better if she thought that everything possible was being done to recover the pretty trinket.
After supper that night they wrote an advertisement, describing the locket, telling where it was lost, and offering ten dollars reward to the person who should bring it back. This advertisement was printed for three weeks in the Oak Hill paper, but though a number of people who read it did go out and scuffle about a bit in the snow on Wayne Place hill, partly in the hope of earning the reward, partly with a good-natured wish to help Meg, no one found the locket. The Blossom family were forced to conclude that it was gone forever.
The Monday afternoon following the party Meg and Bobby came rushing home from school with great news.
"Mother! Mother!" they shouted, flinging down lunch boxes and books in the hall and tearing upstairs like small cyclones. "Oh, Mother!"
Mother Blossom, sewing in Aunt Polly's room, looked up at them and laughed.
"Is there a fire?" she asked calmly.
Bobby was almost out of breath, but he still had a bit left to tell the news.
"They've swept off Blake's pond!" he gasped. "Everybody's going skating. The ice is great, Mother. Just like glass."
"Where are our skates? Can we go?" chimed in Meg. "It isn't a bit cold, Mother."
"Just cold enough to skate, I suppose," smiled Mother Blossom. "Well, of course you can't miss the first skating of the season. But I don't believe they want such little folks on the pond, dear. Some of the big boys will be likely to skate right over you."
"We'll keep near the edge," promised Bobby. "Come on, Meg. Where are our skates?"
Meg and Bobby had double runner skates, which are very good to learn on, and they had used them only once or twice because the winter before there had been practically no skating. Mother Blossom said the skates were in a dark green flannel bag, hanging in the hall closet, and the children tumbled downstairs to find them. You would have thought that they were afraid the ice would melt, if they didn't hurry.
Presently Mother Blossom and Aunt Polly heard sounds of argument.
"You can't go," cried Bobby. "You're too little."
"You haven't any skates," said Meg crossly.
"Mind your own business," shouted Twaddles, apparently making a rush at some one, for there was the sound of a scuffle and then a wail from Dot.
Mother Blossom dropped her sewing and went out into the hall.
"Children!" she cried warningly, leaning over the railing.
"Oh, Mother!" Bobby's voice was filled with protest. "The twins want to go skating!"
"Can't we, Mother?" said Dot eagerly, looking up at her mother imploringly. "Bobby and Meg always have all the fun. Can't we go?"
"They're too little," insisted Meg. "They haven't any skates, either.
And Dot will get her feet cold and want to come home right away."
"Won't either," scolded Dot. "I am too going! Can't I, Mother?"
"Well, suppose you go till four o'clock," proposed Mother Blossom, who could always see both sides of a question. "If Bobby and Meg do not get cold, they may stay till half-past four. And you'll have to promise to do as Bobby says, twinnies, and keep out of the path of older boys and girls. You mustn't spoil good fun for other people who really know how to skate."
"I suppose you might as well tag along," conceded Bobby rather ungraciously. "Nobody let us go skating when we were only four years old, did they, Meg?"
"No, they didn't," agreed Meg.
"Next year we're going to have skates," announced Twaddles importantly.
"Daddy said so."
Before they reached the pond, however, all ill feelings were forgotten, and the sight of the glassy oval, well-filled with skaters, completely restored the four little Blossoms to their usual good humor.
"Whee!" cried Dot, skipping with excitement. "Look how smooth! Let's make a slide, Twaddles."
Meg and Bobby sat comfortably down in a snowbank to put on their skates, and as they were working with the straps, Dave Saunders glided up.
"You kids want to keep out of the center of the pond," he advised them, not unkindly. "All the high school folks are out to-day, and when a string of them join hands the line goes almost across the pond. If you once slip, you're likely to be stepped on."
Meg and Bobby promised to stay near the outside edges of the pond, and Dave skated off with long, even steps that carried him away from them swiftly.
"It looks so easy," sighed Meg, standing up on her skates and wobbling a little. "I wish I could skate the way Dave can."
"Well, we have to practice," said Bobby sensibly. "Daddy says if you keep at it, by and by you find you're a good skater. Come on, Meg, let's take hold of hands."
Twaddles and Dot stood watching their brother and sister skate for a few minutes, and wished that they, too, had skates. Then they wisely decided to have as much fun as they could without.
"Smooth the snow down on this bank," suggested Twaddles, "and we can play it's a toboggan slide. I wish we had brought the sled."
Dot helped him to smooth down the snow, and then they joined hands and tried the first slide. It was rather rough in spots, but a good slide for all of that, with a thrilling break at the end where they fell from the bank down on to the ice.
"Let me slide, too?" asked Ruth Ellis, coming up to them after the twins had been enjoying their slide for a few minutes.
Of course they were glad to have company, and in a short time a number of the younger children who had no skates were enjoying the slide. Some of the girls were afraid of the tumble at the end, but Dot, who had always done everything Twaddles did, thought that was the best part of the fun.
Meg and Bobby skated back to them now and then to see that they were all right, and Bobby took off his skates once to try the slide while Twaddles tried to use the skates. They were too large for him, and a fall on the ice dulled his interest. He decided he would rather slide.
"They're going to have a big bonfire to-night," reported Bobby, on one of his trips back to the twins. "Things to eat—oh, everything! I wish Mother would let us stay up to skate."
"She won't, though," said Twaddles absently.
He was busy with a sled Marion Green had loaned him. Marion had tired of playing with her sled, and Twaddles had exhausted all the thrill of sliding down his slide on his feet. He wanted to play toboggan-riding, and when Marion offered him her sled he accepted gratefully.
"You'd better not try that," said Bobby seriously, watching Twaddles carefully drag the sled into the position he wanted. "Look out, Twaddles—you're foolish. How are you going to stop it when you get down on the ice?"
Twaddles, seated on the sled, looked down the glistening slide to the clear ice below the bank.
"With my foot, of course," he said carelessly. "It's just as easy.
You watch."
Bobby watched, and so did Meg. So did a dozen of the children who had been playing on the slide. They saw Twaddles start himself with a little forward push, skim down the slide like a bird, take the jump at the end of the bank, and shoot out into the pond among the skaters.
"I knew he'd make a mess of it," groaned Bobby.
Twaddles apparently had forgotten all about using his foot. His sled swept across the ice, crashed into a skater, and Twaddles was sent flying in the opposite direction. The sled brought up against a tree on the other side of the pond, but Twaddles continued to skim over the pond directly toward a patch of thin ice.
His cry, as he broke through, was heard by every one on the pond.
"He'll be drowned!" wailed Meg. "Oh, Bobby, hurry!"
"He can't drown in that water. It isn't deep," said a man, skating past them and stopping to, reassure Meg. "Come on, youngster, you and I can get him out."
Bobby put his hand into that of the stranger and was pulled along rapidly toward the spot where the howling Twaddles stood in icy water up to his knees.
CHAPTER IX
A NEW KIND OF JAM
As the man said, there was no danger that Twaddles would be drowned. Cold and wet and miserable, he certainly was, but the stranger rescued him easily, stretching out a long, thin arm across the ice and lifting the boy bodily out of the water, over the thin ice, and on to thick, firm foothold.
"There, there, you're just as good as ever," he assured the shivering Twaddles. "You want to run home as fast as you can go and get into dry shoes and stockings, and then you won't ever know you fell into the pond. Scoot, now!"
But Twaddles delayed.
"Is it—is it—four o'clock?" he asked, his teeth chattering. "Mother said we could stay out till four o'clock."
"It's five minutes after four," announced the stranger, consulting his watch. "You'll have to run every step of the way to make up for lost time. Run!"
Dot, of course, would run with Twaddles, and Meg and Bobby promised to return the sled to Marion. They had to walk all the way around the pond to get it for her.
"I fell in," said Twaddles beamingly, when he and Dot reached home.
Mother and Aunt Polly rubbed him dry and had him in dry stockings and sandals in a hurry, and then Aunt Polly and Dot decided to walk uptown and match some wool for the sweater auntie was finishing. Twaddles wanted to go, but Mother Blossom decided he had done enough for that day and had better stay at home with her.
"What are you doing, Mother?" asked Twaddles, watching her curiously, after his sister and aunt had gone down the walk. "Could I do that?"
"Now, Twaddles, you've seen me fill my fountain pen hundreds of times," answered Mother Blossom patiently. "You always ask me that, and you know I can't have you spilling ink all over my desk. Run away and find something pleasant to do till I finish this letter, and then we'll toast marshmallows over the fire."
Twaddles set out to amuse himself. He wished he had Philip to play with, but the dog was out in the garage and Twaddles had been forbidden to make the journey through the snow in his sandals. To be sure there was Annabel Lee, but the cat was in a sleepy mood and refused to wake up sufficiently to be amusing.
"Oh, dear," sighed Twaddles. "There's nothing to do. I wonder where
Norah is?"
He scuttled down to the kitchen, which was in beautiful order, but no
Norah was in sight She was up in her room changing her dress, but
Twaddles did not know that.
"I'm hungry!" he decided, opening the pantry door. "Skating always gives you such an appetite."
He had heard some one say this.
As in most pantries, the favorite place for the Blossom cake box was on the highest shelf. Why this was so, puzzled Twaddles, as it has puzzled many other small boys and girls.
"I should think Norah might leave it down low," he grumbled, dragging a chair into the pantry with some difficulty and proceeding to climb into it.
By stretching, he managed to get his fingers on the cake box lid and pull it down. He opened it.
The box was perfectly empty.
"Why, the idea!" sputtered the outraged Twaddles, who felt distinctly cheated. "I wonder if Mother knows we haven't any cake. I'd better go and tell her."
But he didn't—not right away. For there were other boxes on the various shelves, and Twaddles felt it was his duty to peep into these to see what he could find. He was disappointed in most of them because they held such uninteresting things as rice and barley and coffee, nothing that a starving person could eat with any pleasure.
Then at last he thought he had found something he could eat. It was in a smooth, round glass jar with a screw lid and was a clear jelly-like substance that looked as though it might be marmalade or honey or some kind of jam.
He opened the jar without trouble and sniffed at the contents. It smelled very good indeed. Twaddles plunged in an investigating finger.
The jam stuck to his finger. Still, Twaddles could not get enough off to taste, and he had liberally covered all the other fingers on that hand before he pulled away from the jar.
"That certainly is funny jam," he puzzled, trying to scrape his fingers clean with the other hand.
"Twaddles!" called Mother Blossom. "Oh, Twaddles, where are you?
Aren't you going to help me toast marshmallows?"
Twaddles backed out of the pantry, into Norah who had come downstairs, freshly gowned, to start her supper.
"Glory be!" she ejaculated. "Twaddles, what have you been up to now? If you've been messing in my pantry, I'll tell your mother. What's that all over your hands?"
"Jam," said Twaddles meekly.
Norah eyed him with suspicion.
"There's no jam there," she said. "Come over here to the light where I can see ye."
Norah took Twaddles' wrists in her hands gingerly, for he was a very sticky child, and turned his hands over to examine them.
"Jam, is it!" she snorted indignantly. "You just go and show yourself to your mother. See what she says about the jam. I declare, you can't keep a thing from the young ones in this house!"
Twaddles was glad to escape from the kitchen before Norah should discover the many things out of place in her pantry, and he went into the living-room, carefully holding out his gummy hands before him, to find his mother.
"Now, Mother," he began hesitatingly, "I was real hungry, so I thought
I'd eat a little piece of cake. I knew you wouldn't mind."
"I didn't know we had any cake in the house," said Mother Blossom, in surprise.
"We haven't," explained Twaddles hastily. "So then I thought bread and jam would be nice. But I never saw such funny jam; I can't get it off."
Then, as Norah had exclaimed, Mother Blossom cried: "What in the world have you been into, Twaddles?"
She looked at his sticky fingers and then burst out laughing.
"My dear child," she said seriously, "I'm afraid you've found Daddy's pot of glue!"
And that is just what Twaddles had been into, and a fine time he and Mother had getting the sticky stuff off his fingers. It took them so long, using hot water and sand soap, that Mother Blossom declared they could not toast marshmallows that afternoon, and then Twaddles was sorry he had not waited.
"Such a lot of fuss about a little glue," he complained to himself, for Father Blossom scolded when he came home and found half of his glue wasted and he said that Twaddles should have no dessert for his supper; and Norah was very cross because she had to give her pantry an extra scrubbing, Twaddles having managed to track the floor with glue. "I have bad luck all the time," sighed poor Twaddles, blaming every one but the one small boy who was responsible for the bad luck.
"Daddy," said Bobby that evening, "I'd like to earn some money."
"Yes, Son?" answered Father Blossom encouragingly. "What do you want money for?"
"I heard Miss Mason saying to Miss Wright to-day at noon that Mrs. Jordan and her son are having an awful hard winter," explained Bobby. "Folks want to send Paul to a home, but Mrs. Jordan won't let 'em. She wants to go out doing day's work. But she's too old. Miss Mason says old people are so heady."
Father Blossom smiled.
"I think almost any mother, old or young, would fight to keep her son from being placed in a home," he said gently. "Do you want to earn money for the Jordans, Bobby?"
"Yes, sir," replied Bobby sturdily. "If you'd lend me the snow shovel, Daddy, Palmer Davis and I figured out we could earn a lot shoveling walks."
"Oh, no, Daddy," interposed Mother Blossom from the piano where she was helping Meg with her music lesson and yet listening to the conversation between Bobby and his father. "He's too little for that heavy work, isn't he?"
"I can, too," argued Bobby heatedly. "Can't I have the shovel, Daddy?
Mother's always afraid I'm going to hurt myself. I'm not a girl."
"Well, Mother happens to be right," said Father Blossom firmly. "You and Palmer are altogether too little to try shoveling snow from walks; it's packed now and is work for a grown boy or man. If you had a shovel of your own, I shouldn't consent to any such scheme for earning money."
"There are other ways, Bobby," Mother Blossom assured him brightly.
"I'm sure the other children will want to help when they hear about the
Jordans. Why don't you, and some of the boys and girls in your class,
give a little fair? We'll all help, won't we, Daddy?"
"But I don't know how to give a fair," objected Bobby.
CHAPTER X
WORKING FOR THE FAIR
"I do," said Meg, turning around on the piano bench. "You have tables, and on 'em things to sell, and everybody comes. Where could we have the fair, Mother?"
"I think here in the house," answered Mother Blossom thoughtfully. "We live near enough to the center of town for people to get here easily."
"But how do you have a fair?" persisted Bobby. "Where do we get things to sell? Can we do it all ourselves?"
"Certainly you can," declared Father Blossom. "You want the money to be your own gift, so you boys and girls must do the work. We older folk will help with advice. Mother can tell you all about it. Her church society gives two fairs every year."
Mother Blossom smiled as Bobby looked at her expectantly.
"You want to know how we do it?" she asked. "Well, first we choose our committees and plan the tables. There is usually a refreshment table; a table for fancy work, aprons, bags, and pretty handkerchiefs; if the fair is held in summer, we have a flower table; then a grab-bag table for the little people. After we plan how many tables we will have, the committees set out to collect the things to be sold. They go to the baker and ask for cake donations; and to ladies and ask them to bake cakes; they ask other ladies to make aprons and bags; Mr. Barber, the grocer, usually gives us something for the canned goods table. You see, the idea is to ask people to give all these things and then whatever they are sold for can go outright to the purpose for which the fair is held."
"Like new carpets for the church," put in Meg wisely.
"Yes, new carpets for the church, or new books for the Sunday-school library," agreed Mother Blossom. "Your fair will be for the Jordans, and the money you raise will help them through the winter."
Bobby was silent a long time, puzzling over the idea of a fair. Before his bed hour came he had decided that perhaps that was the best way to raise money, and anyway he would talk it over with the boys at school.
"I've been thinking," announced Mother Blossom at the breakfast table the next morning. "As our living-room isn't very large, I think three tables will be all we can comfortably arrange. As an extra attraction for the fair, why don't you give a little play?"
"A stuffed animal play," suggested Aunt Polly mysteriously. "If the children like the idea, don't you say another word. I'll make the costumes and drill them."
A stuffed animal play and a fair sounded delightfully exciting, and when Bobby mentioned his plans to a group of close friends at recess he found them most responsive.
"There's nothing much to do 'round now," said Palmer Davis. "I'm dead tired coasting every day. I'd like to help Mrs. Jordan."
Mrs. Jordan was an old woman who lived in a tumbled-down house. She had a crippled son, and had supported herself, since the death of her husband, by going out to work by the day. As she had always worked faithfully and never complained, Oak Hill people really did not know that this winter she had had a hard time to get enough to eat and coal enough to burn. Her son was unable to earn anything, and Miss Mason, for whom Mrs. Jordan washed, had thought that it would be a kindness to put him in a home where he would be well taken care of at no expense to his mother.
"I'll not hear of it!" declared Mrs. Jordan angrily, when the teacher mentioned this plan to her. "He's going to live at home with me as long as I have a roof to cover us."
Miss Mason, who, like many kind-hearted people, did not like her well meant offers to be refused, had told Mrs. Jordan plainly that she was ungrateful, and that she need not bother to come for the wash any more. So the poor old woman, who counted on this dollar and a half weekly, was deprived of that money. In Oak Hill so many housewives did their own work that there was not a great deal of extra work to be had.
Two or three of the boys backed out when Bobby explained that they must ask people for the things to be sold at their fair. But enough promised to go with him after school that afternoon to make it worth while to go on with the planning.
"Aunt Polly and Mother and Norah have promised to fix the 'freshment table," explained Bobby. "We're going to sell ice-cream and lemonade and cake. And Meg and Dot and the girls are going to get the things for the fancy work table. So we only have to get enough for one table."
"What kind of table?" asked Bertrand Ashe practically.
"All kinds I guess," returned Bobby. "Let's go to all the stores.
And, oh, yes, we're going to rehearse the stuffed animal play to-night.
Aunt Polly says as many as can, come over to our house."
After school that afternoon Bobby and his committee started out to get the things to sell at their fair. Now, no one likes to ask for things, perhaps, but Father Blossom had explained that it was very different when one is asking for something for some one else and not for one's own gain or pleasure.
"When you go into a store, remember that you are doing something for poor Paul Jordan and think bow you would feel if you were poor and lame," he had said to Bobby. "When you ask Mr. Barber for something from his shelves you're not asking for Bobby Blossom, but for Paul. That will make asking easy for you."
The first store the boys went into was the hardware store. Mr. Gobert, the proprietor, came forward when he saw the six boys.
"Want your skates sharpened?" he asked cheerfully.
The committee looked hopefully at Bobby. He had promised to "ask first."
"We're going to have a fair," gulped Bobby, his cheeks red, but his blue eyes looking at Mr. Gobert squarely. "It's for Paul Jordan and his mother. And we thought maybe you'd give us something we could sell."
"For that lame Jordan and his mother?" repeated Mr. Gobert. "Do you mean to tell me they need help? Is Mrs. Jordan sick?"
"She has rheumatism in her hands," said Bobby earnestly. "And she's so old and slow lots of folks don't have her wash any more. She's chopped down all the fence to build a fire with. And she doesn't want to put Paul in a home."
"Well, well," Mr. Gobert stared at Bobby thoughtfully. "So you're going to help her out by giving a fair, are you? Where's it going to be? Can I come?"
"At our house. Three weeks from Saturday," answered Bobby, wishing his committee would back him up with a few words and not stand by with their mouths and eyes so wide open. "We're going to have a play, too."
"I'm busy Saturday afternoons," said Mr. Gobert regretfully, "but I'll send Mrs. Gobert up to buy something. Now I wonder what I have you would like? How about a couple of nice penknives?"
Bobby thought knives would be very good indeed, and Mr. Gobert led them over to the case where all the penknives were displayed and let the boys choose any two they wanted. On his advice they chose a pearl-handled knife for a woman and a stag-handle which would please a boy or a man.
"Stop in at Hampton's," said Mr. Gobert when they thanked him warmly, the knives neatly wrapped and safe in Bobby's reefer pocket. "He ought to have something nice for you."
Mr. Hampton kept the stationery store, and when he heard about the fair he promptly gave the committee two boxes of writing paper, a pad of bright new blotters, and a bottle each of red, white, and blue ink. "To be patriotic," he said.
"They all want to know what it's for, then they're all right," said Bobby, as the boys hurried along to another shop. "Talking takes a lot of time, though."
The boys were really surprised to find how interested people were, and how generous. The grocer gave them six glasses of bright red jelly which, he said, would make their table look pretty as well as sell readily. The baker promised them a plate of tarts the morning of the fair. Steve Broadwell, the druggist, and a special friend of Bobby's, not only gave them three fascinating little weather-houses, with an old man and woman to pop in and out as it rained or the sun shone, and two jars of library paste, but told Bobby that he would save some bottles of cologne for Meg's table. The jeweler gave them four small compasses. Even kind Doctor Maynard, whom they met driving his car out toward the country, when he learned what they were doing, promised them a dollar as his admission to the fair "whether I get a chance to come or not."
"I'll bet we had better luck than the girls," boasted Palmer, as they started for their homes. "And we have more places to go to next week. What kind of play is it going to be, Bobby? Can we all be in it?"
"Aunt Polly said as many as wanted to could," replied Bobby. "She calls it a stuffed animal play. I don't know what that is, but Aunt Polly is lots of fun."
The boys promised to be over "right after supper," and Bobby ran in to find his family and tell them his afternoon experiences. He had to wait a few moments, because Meg and Dot were busy telling what had happened to them.
"We've got ever so many things," bubbled Meg enthusiastically. "The drygoods store gave us yards of ribbon; and Miss Stebbins said she had six pin-cushions she didn't want." (Miss Stebbins kept a small fancy-work store in the town.) "We saw Miss Florence, and she is going to dress two dolls for us. And we've got belt buckles, and sachets, and bags, and aprons, and, oh, ever so many things."
"Mr. Broadwell says to tell you he is saving some cologne for you," reported Bobby. "Say, isn't getting ready for a fair fun? And the boys are coming over to-night to see about the play, Aunt Polly."
"I'm all ready for you," said Aunt Polly capably.
CHAPTER XI
BOBBY'S MEANEST DAY
Four boys and four girls rang the Blossom door-bell that night after supper, eager to take part in the stuffed animal play. With the four little Blossoms, that made twelve children, a most convenient number, Aunt Polly said.
"I'll show you what we're going to do," she promised them, beckoning to Twaddles and Dot to follow her. "Since the twins will have to go to bed in half an hour, we'll let them be the first demonstrators."
Aunt Polly and the twins went out of the room, and in three minutes there pranced back the cunningest little bear you ever saw. He wobbled about on his four legs, opened a red flannel mouth and yawned, shook hands with the delighted boys and girls and behaved altogether as a well-brought-up bear should.
"Let me do it!" shouted the other boys and girls. "Let me! Let me!"
The bear was unbuttoned down his back by smiling Aunt Polly, and the flushed and triumphant twins stepped out.
"Didn't we do it right?" they demanded happily. "Isn't it fun? But you can't be a bear—Aunt Polly said so. There's only one of everything."
Then Aunt Polly, who had cut out and stitched the white muslin case for the bear and painted his nose and lined his red flannel mouth, explained that for every two children there could be an animal. The play would be an animal play. They would act and talk as people would, only the actors would be lions and tigers and other animals.
"Choose what you would like to be to-night, and I will measure you and start work on the cases," she said. "And if you do not tell outsiders what kind of an animal you are going to be, that will double the fun."
So the other children, long after the twins had gone reluctantly up to bed, paired off and argued about their choice of an animal and changed their minds and finally decided. Then they were measured by Aunt Polly, and it was announced that three rehearsals a week would be held till the Saturday set for the fair. Mother Blossom brought in a plate of cookies and a basket of apples, and after these were eaten it was time to go home.
With all the preparations for the play and fair, school went on as usual. The children sometimes thought that it might be interrupted for a week or two without loss to any one, but the school committee never took kindly to this idea. They were sure that nothing in the wide world could be of more importance than regular attendance at school.
"I know enough now," grumbled Bobby one morning, scowling at his oatmeal.
"We could stay at home and play with the animal bags," said Meg, who never tired of trying on the muslin cases that so quickly transformed them into different animals. "It's really snowing ever so hard, Mother."
"Not half as hard as it often has when you have plowed cheerfully through it," Mother Blossom reminded her. "Come, Bobby, finish your oatmeal. Norah has your lunches packed."
Dot and Twaddles stared at the two older children in astonishment. They wanted to go to school with all their hearts, and the idea that any one could tire of that magical place, where chalk and blackboards and goldfish and geography globes mingled in riotous profusion, had never entered their busy minds.
"It's an awful long walk," mourned Bobby.
"I'll take you in the car," said Father Blossom quickly. "Hurry now, and get your things on. I think there's been too much staying up till nine o'clock lately, Mother."
"I think so, too," agreed Mother Blossom. "We'll go back to eight o'clock bedtime beginning with to-night. What is it, Dot?"
"Can we go, too?" urged Dot. "Sam will bring us back."
"Oh, for goodness' sake!" frowned Bobby, pulling on his rubber boots and stamping in them to make sure they were well on. "Why do you always want to tag along every place we go?"
Dot looked hurt, and Bobby was really ashamed of himself. He wasn't cross very often, but nothing seemed to go right this morning. No one said anything, but Mother Blossom sent the twins out into the kitchen on some errand, and then the car came around and Meg and Bobby and Father Blossom tramped through the snow and climbed in under the snug curtains. Bobby would have felt better if some one had scolded him.
"Guess we're going to have enough snow this winter to make up for last," remarked Sam Layton cheerfully. He was not cross, and he was blissfully unconscious that any one else had been. "Fill-Up and me is getting kind of tired of clearing off walks every single morning," he went on, giving the dog his nickname.
Philip, who sat beside Sam on the front seat, wagged his tail conversationally.
"Maybe we'll have another snow fight," suggested Meg. "That would be fun, wouldn't it, Bobby?"
"No, it wouldn't," snapped Bobby ungraciously. For the life of him, he did not seem able to feel pleasant.
Meg talked to Father Blossom and Sam after that, and in a few moments they were set down at the school, and the car rolled on to the foundry office.
Bobby had bad luck—bad luck or something else—all the morning. He blotted his copy book; he had the wrong answer to the example he was sent to work out at the board; at recess he was so cross to Palmer Davis that that devoted friend slapped him and they had a tussle that ended in both being forced to spend the remainder of the play time sitting quietly at two front desks under Miss Mason's eye. Altogether Bobby seemed to be in for a bad day.
"Everybody's so mean," he scolded, going off in a corner by himself to eat his lunch at noon. "I never saw such a lot of horrid folks."
To add to his unhappiness, Norah had forgotten that he didn't like tuna fish sandwiches and had given him all that kind. Bobby knew that very likely she had packed egg or some other good mixture in Meg's box and that by merely asking he could trade with his sister. But no, it suited him to feel that Norah had deliberately spoiled his lunch for him.
"Robert, you haven't been out of the room this morning," cried Miss Mason, swooping down on him. "Go out and get some fresh air and see if you can't be pleasanter this afternoon. What you need is to play in the snow."
Bobby dashed downstairs and out into the yard, wishing violently that he could punch some one. He even rolled several snowballs in the hope that some of his friends would come along and offer themselves as targets. Then a mischievous idea popped into his mind.
"I'll fill up Miss Mason's desk," he chuckled. "She needs to play in the snow, too."
This very bad boy proceeded to fill his arms with snowballs and stole up the back stairway, where he would be less likely to meet any one, into his classroom. The room was empty, and Bobby arranged his snowballs neatly in Miss Mason's desk, which happened to be an old-fashioned affair with a hinged lid.
"She can play with it," murmured Bobby, closing the lid softly and running downstairs again so that he might come in with the others when the bell rang.
It had stopped snowing, and the sun was shining warm and bright, dazzling to the eyes. Bobby felt better already, for some mysterious reason, and he plunged into a hilarious game of tag that lasted until the signal rang.
When he went into his classroom he glanced quickly at Miss Mason's desk. It looked as usual, and when the reading lesson was given out, he quickly forgot the hidden snowballs. Palmer Davis was standing up to read a paragraph when the class first heard something.
"Drip! drip! drip!" went a soft little tapping noise.
Miss Mason heard it, too. She thought the pipes in the cloak room had sprung a leak perhaps.
"Teacher!" Tim Roon's hand waved wildly. "Teacher, your desk's leaking!"
Tim, for once, did not have a guilty conscience in connection with a piece of mischief, and he was delighted to have an opportunity to call attention to the fact.
"It's leaking all over!" he volunteered.
"That will do, Tim," said Miss Mason calmly.
She raised her desk lid and peered in. Then she closed it and surveyed her class. Bobby could feel his face getting red. He looked down at his book.
"Robert Blossom," said Miss Mason, "come here to me."
Bobby went up the aisle which seemed at least two miles long. Miss Mason did not ask him if he had put the snow in her desk. She merely raised the lid again and pointed to the half melted snowballs.
"Take those out," she commanded coldly. "Throw them out of the window.
Then get a cloth and dry the inside of this desk and mop up the floor.
And you may stay an hour after school to-night."
Bobby had to make a separate trip for each mushy snowball, the eyes of the class following him from the desk to the window and back again with maddening interest. When he came back from a trip to the cellar to get a cloth from the janitor, for Miss Mason refused to help him, and began to dry the inside of the desk, they snickered audibly; but when he got down on his hands and knees and mopped the floor under the desk, they seemed to think it was the biggest kind of joke. They did not dare laugh aloud, but Bobby could feel them smiling and nudging one another.
"Next time, I hope, you will leave the snow outside where it belongs," said Miss Mason, when he had stayed his hour after school that night and she dismissed him.
"Yes'm," murmured Bobby meekly.
"My, it's been the worst day," he confided to Father Blossom that evening. "Nothing went right. I had the meanest time!"
CHAPTER XII
BUILDING A SNOW MAN
The rehearsals for the play went on merrily, and the children were faithful in attendance. Meg, though, was an hour late getting home from school one afternoon, and as Bobby could not practice without her, he was very much put out.
"Where have you been?" he demanded. "Everybody's been waiting for you.
Miss Mason didn't keep you in, did she?"
Meg looked uncomfortable.
"No, I didn't have to stay in," she admitted.
"Then where were you?" insisted Bobby.
"I was hunting for my locket," confessed Meg. "I heard Daddy say the snow melted a lot last night, and I thought maybe I could find it. But I didn't." She sighed deeply.
Meg still clung to the hope of finding her locket, though the rest of the family had long ago given up the idea that it would ever be found.
A day or two later when the children came into the school yard they were surprised to find a small army of snow soldiers drawn up to receive them. There were six men in a row, headed by a captain, wearing a rakish snow hat and carrying a fine wooden sword.
"Who did it?" asked every one. "Did Mr. Carter make 'em?"
Miss Wright was ready to tell them.
"Some poor tramp who was once a sculptor made them for you," she told the wondering pupils. "John, the janitor, tells me that he was here all last night keeping the fires going because he was afraid the pipes would freeze. This poor artist saw the light, and knocked at the door to ask if he might come in and get warm. I'm glad to say John asked him in and shared his midnight lunch with him. Then he took him home to breakfast with him. But first the artist made these snow men to please you, and perhaps to see if his old skill still was left to him."
"Let us make a snow man in our back yard," proposed Bobby to Meg on the way home from school that afternoon. "Dot and Twaddles tried it, but there wasn't enough snow then. We can make a good one."
They found the twins ready to help them, and in a very short time they had rolled a huge snowball that was pronounced just the thing for Mr. Snowman's body.
"We can't make long thin legs like the soldiers," said Bobby regretfully. "I wonder how the man made 'em like that. We'll have to have short roundish legs for ours."
The short "roundish" legs finished, they had still to make the head. This was done by rolling a smaller snowball and mounting it on the large round one.
"Now he needs a face," said Dot, gazing with admiration on their work.
"How'll you make his eyes and nose, Bobby?"
"With coal," said Bobby. "Meg, will you go and get some lumps of coal? And ask Mother if there is an old hat we can have. He ought to have a hat."
Meg ran info the house, and was back again in a few seconds, carrying a handful of coal done up in a bit of newspaper.
"Mother's hunting up an old derby hat," she reported. "She'll throw it to us. Oh, Bobby, doesn't he look funny?"
The snow man was a bit cross-eyed, but he had a cheerful, companionable look for all of that, and the children were well pleased with him.
"But arms!" cried Meg suddenly. "He hasn't any arms, Bobby."
Sure enough, they had forgotten to make him any arms. This omission was quickly remedied. Mother Blossom called to them, as they were putting the finishing touches on the right hand.
"Here's an old hat of Daddy's," she said, stepping out on the porch.
"Will it do? Here, Meg, catch."
She tossed the hat over to Meg.
"Wait and see how it looks, Mother," begged Dot. "Want a chair, Bobby?
I'll get it."
The snow man was so tall that Bobby could not reach the top of his head, and when Dot came back, dragging a chair for him to stand on, even then he had to get up on his tiptoes to place the hat.
"He's a beauty, isn't he?" said Mother Blossom enthusiastically.
"We'll keep him there to guard our yard as long as the snow lasts.
You haven't built him where he will bother Norah when she wants to hang
out clothes, have you?"
The four little Blossoms were sure they had not; and Norah herself, when she came to the door presently to have a peep at the wonderful snow man, declared that he wouldn't be in her way at all.
"'Tis fresh cookies I've been baking," she announced smilingly. "I don't suppose any one will be after wanting to sample 'em? Ye do? Well, then, wipe your feet on the mat and come in. And, for the love of goodness, leave the kitchen door open. I'm near perishing for a breath of cool air."
The kitchen was very warm, for Norah had been ironing. She was a thrifty soul, and when she had a big fire to heat her irons she liked to bake good things to eat in the oven at the same time. A basket full of beautifully ironed and starched clothes sat on the table, ready to be carried upstairs, and a bowl of crisp sugar cookies sat beside it.
"Leave the door open," ordered Bobby, his eyes on the cookies. "My, they look good, Norah. How many may we have?"
"Two apiece, and no more," said Norah firmly. "'Tis blunting your appetite for supper if ye take more than two. Are they good, Twaddles?"
Twaddles' mouth was too full for an answer, but his eyes spoke for him.
Those cookies were simply delicious.
"Bobby!" cried Meg from the window where she had wandered with her cakes. "Oh, Bobby, here's that horrid Tim Roon and Charlie Black. Look! They're going to throw snowballs at our snow man."
There was a rush for the window. Sure enough there stood Tim Roon and Charlie Black, just outside the fence, and as the four little Blossoms watched, Tim flung a snowball smack at the poor defenseless snow man.
"Leave 'em alone," counseled Norah, putting a restraining hand on Twaddles, who was making for the door. "As long as 'tis only the snow man they're aiming at, let 'em be."
But as Norah spoke, whiz! through the kitchen door came a big snowball. It landed right on top of the basket of wash, and lay wet and dirty on top of a ruffled guimpe of Dot's.
"The dirty ragamuffins!" The angry Norah snatched the slushy ball and flung it into the coal-scuttle. "The miserable spalpeens!"
Bobby seized his cap.
"I'll fix them!" he muttered, as he dashed out of the house.
Tim Roon and Charlie Black saw him coming, and they judged that it would be better to run. They didn't want to fight Bobby, even two to one, so close to his own house. Some one might come out and help him.
The two boys tore up the street, Bobby after them. Unfortunately, Bobby ran head-first into an old gentleman who, before he let him go, collared him and read him a lecture on the rights of people in the street. This gave Tim and Charlie a chance to hide behind some bushes on a vacant lot.
"Jump on him when he comes along," advised Tim, who was not a fair fighter.
So when Bobby came running by, for he did not know how far up the street the boys had gone, Tim and Charlie pounced on him and rolled him in the snow.
"None of that," said a strange voice. "Two to one's no fair. One of you leave off, or I'll stop the fight."
The strange voice belonged to a high-school boy, Stanley Reeves, and both Tim and Charlie knew he was a member of the gymnasium wrestling team and quite capable of stopping any small-boy fight.
"You're too old to fight a boy of that size, anyway," declared Stanley, surveying Tim with disgust.
"But I'm going to punch him," announced Bobby heatedly.
"Oh, you are?" said Reeves with interest. "Go ahead, then, and I'll sit here and keep an eye on this chicken to see that he doesn't pitch in at the wrong moment"
Reeves took a firm hold on Charlie's coat collar and backed him off to one side.
"Wash his face for him—it needs it," the high-school lad went on to
Bobby.
Like a small but angry bumble bee, Bobby flew at Tim. They clinched and plunged head-long into the snow, where they pounded and wrestled and grunted and gasped as all boys do when they are fighting a thing out. Tim was not a fair fighter, nor a very brave one, and most of his victories had been won over smaller boys or by using unfair methods. Now with Stanley Reeves looking on, he did not dare cheat, and so Bobby unexpectedly found himself, after perhaps five minutes of tussling, sitting on Tim's chest, with Tim breathless and beaten.
"Wash his face," insisted Stanley, suddenly scooping up a handful of snow and beginning to rub it thoroughly into Charlie's eyes and mouth.