“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 128 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 129 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,” 130 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 131 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.”
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 133 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 134 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 135 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 136 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 138 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 140 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?”
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 142 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 143 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 144 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 147 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 148 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 149 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 150 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 151 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 152 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.
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 156 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 158 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,” 159 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 161 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 162 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.
“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 165 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 166 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.”