The Curlytops at Cherry Farm

For a moment Jan and Ted stood looking at their little brother, fast in the mud, while Trouble, laughing and gurgling, held out the green watercress “posy-tree” to the cow.

“Oh, how will we ever get him out?” questioned Jan. “Mother will be so worried! What shall we do, Teddy?”

“I’ll wade in and get him.”

“But you’ll get all mud too!”

“I’ll take off my shoes and stockings,” and the boy began to do this.

There came a laugh from Trouble.

“What’s the matter now?” asked Jan, who had been looking to see if she could not find a board with which to make a little bridge over the mud so she could reach her baby brother without getting her feet wet. “What did you do, Trouble?” asked Jan.

“Bossy-cow frow water on Trouble. Make Trouble all wet!” and he laughed joyously.

“Oh, look!” gasped Jan.

Ted, who by this time had taken off his shoes and stockings and rolled up his knickerbockers, looked and cried:

“Oh, he’s soaking wet! He might just as well have gone in swimming!”

Trouble was certainly wet. The cow, in stamping her front legs to get rid of some biting flies, had splashed water from the brook over the little boy standing in front of her, still holding out the “posy-tree” of watercress. Trouble was splattered from his head to his waist, which was all of him that was out of the brook, his fat, chubby legs, far past his knees, now being sunk deep in the water and mud of the brook.

“Get him out quick!” ordered Jan. “The cow might bite him!”

“Cows don’t bite,” declared Ted. “I’m not scared.”

“Well, get him out anyhow,” went on Jan. “Oh, Trouble!”

Ted waded in, and, putting his arms around Trouble, pulled out his baby brother, who tossed the greens to the cow. Then, laughing and kicking, thus splashing mud and water on Ted, Trouble was dragged to dry ground and hurried into the house.

“Oh, my dear Trouble!” cried Mother Martin, who was just coming out to look for him, “you are such a sight! As if there wasn’t trouble enough without this!”

“Is there more trouble, Mother?” asked Jan, while the maid, Nora, carried off the wiggling little fellow to wash him.

“Yes, there is more trouble,” said Mrs. Martin slowly, while Nora was putting some clean clothes on Baby William. The children’s mother still held in her hand the letter Jan had taken to her from the postman. “There is much more trouble.”

“What about?” asked Ted.

“It’s about Cherry Farm.”

“You mean grandpa’s—where we’re going for our vacation?” inquired Jan, looking at her mother with wide-open eyes.

“Yes. But I don’t know whether or not we’re going there for the vacation days. That’s the other trouble, children.”

There was silence for a moment. Ted and Jan, looking with wondering eyes at one another, felt as if, for them, the bottom had somehow or other dropped out of the world.

From the bathroom could be heard the giggles and squeals of Trouble as Nora was combing his hair. It was not as curly as the tousled wigs of his brother and sister. To Ted and Jan, at that minute, the baby’s cries seemed the only real thing in the house.

Not to go to Cherry Farm for their vacation! Could such a thing happen? They just stared at their mother and then at the letter still in her hand.

“Can’t we—can’t we ever go to grandpa’s?” asked Jan slowly.

“Then where can we go on our vacation?” Ted questioned, before his mother had a chance to answer his sister.

To the Curlytops Cherry Farm meant a great deal. Ever since they could remember they had heard it talked of at home, and more than once they had gone there for visits, sometimes in winter and again in summer. Grandpa was Daddy Martin’s father, and Cherry Farm was the nicest place in the whole world, so the Curlytops thought.

There was a big white house. There were red barns, broad, green fields, shady trees, horses, cows, sheep, a little brook, a lake—oh, so many delightful things! And now——

“Why can’t we go to Cherry Farm?” asked Jan again.

“Because there may not be a Cherry Farm any more,” answered Mother Martin, and her voice was sad.

“Did—did somebody take it?” asked Ted, and yet he did not quite see how anyone could pick up a big farm and walk off with it, especially when it had on it houses and barns to hold it down, as teacher used to put a weight on the papers of her desk to keep the wind from scattering them about the room.

“Somebody may take it,” said Mother Martin. “It’s too much for you little folks to understand. However, I’ll tell you about it as well as I can. But here comes daddy. Wait until after supper, then we’ll talk.”

“Hello, everybody!” cried Daddy Martin, coming into the room and catching up first Jan and then Ted. “Where’s Trouble?” and he looked around for Baby William.

“Oh, Trouble had—trouble,” said his wife with a smile. “He waded in the mud of the brook. Nora is cleaning him now.”

Daddy Martin laughed as he made up this little verse. Then came a patter of bare feet in the room, and a joyous cry.

“Ah, here’s my bunch of Trouble!” exclaimed Mr. Martin as he caught up the little fellow who, now all sweet and clean, ran crowing and laughing into his father’s arms.

“Well, I guess all the trouble is over now,” said Daddy Martin, as he tossed William toward the ceiling, being careful, of course, not to bump it, which might have made the plaster fall down. Oh, yes, and it might have hurt Trouble too. I almost forgot that part.

“There’s more trouble,” said Jan, as her father sat down in the easy chair to wait for Nora to say that supper was on the table.

“More trouble? I hope our old rooster hasn’t caught cold! We must send for the doctor at once!”

“No, it isn’t that,” answered Ted, laughing, for his father was always making some joke about the rooster catching cold.

“What is it then?”

“Grandpa is going to lose Cherry Farm!”

Jan gave a gasp as Ted said this.

“Lose Cherry Farm!” cried Daddy Martin, as he looked over at his wife in surprise.

“Yes, there is bad news,” she said. “But maybe it will turn out all right in the end, as Nora would say. I’ll tell you after supper. There’s the bell.”

And while the family is at table I will tell you just a little about them, so you will feel that you have been properly introduced. I did not have time to do it before, on account of so much happening—Trouble getting stuck in the mud and all that.

I have told you why Ted and Jan were called Curlytops, so you know that much about them, anyhow. And you have really met all the family, from daddy and mother, down to Trouble and Nora, with Ted and Jan coming in between, you might say.

The Martins lived in the town of Cresco in an Eastern State, and Mr. Martin owned a store. He also owned a nice home just outside the place.

Grandpa Martin, who was Daddy Martin’s father, lived with Grandma Martin on Cherry Farm. This was near the country village of Elmburg, close to Clover Lake. And, while I am about it, I may as well tell you that the children had an Uncle Frank Barton, who owned a large cattle ranch near Rockville, Montana. Then there was Aunt Josephine Miller, a maiden lady who lived in Clayton and had a summer place at Mt. Hope near Ruby Lake. She was a sister of Mrs. Martin’s. The children always called her Aunt Jo.

Theodore, Teddy or Ted Martin, any of which names he answered to, was aged seven and his sister was six years old. The children’s birth anniversaries came on the same day, but they had been born a year apart. I have told you of their curly hair, and I can’t do more than add that never were such ringlets, twists, whorls, waves and whatever else goes to make up curly hair, seen on children before. Once Grandma Martin’s thimble was lost and—well, I’ll tell you about that when we get to it. At any rate “Curlytops” was the best name in the world for Jan and Ted, just as Trouble was for Baby William.

I call him a baby, though really he was getting to be quite a good-sized boy. He was “half-past two years growing on three,” as Jan always said whenever anyone asked his age, and he was bright and quick.

“Well, now let’s hear about the trouble,” said Daddy Martin, as, having finished his supper, he pushed back his chair from the table, and took his little boy up in his lap.

“I gived posy-tree to bossy-cow, an’ bossy sneezed an’ I got wet-muddy,” said William, reaching up to kiss his father.

“Yes, I heard about what happened to you, Trouble,” said Mr. Martin, pretending to bite off one of the baby’s ears as a sort of dessert after his meal. “But what is worrying you, Mother?” and he looked over at his wife.

“There is trouble at Cherry Farm.”

“What kind of trouble?”

“High water has spoiled the wheat, your father has lost money, and now he may lose the farm.”

Mr. Martin gave a long whistle.

“That is bad,” he said. “Who told you about it?”

“A letter came this afternoon. It was from Grandmother Martin. Here it is.”

Jan and Ted watched their father as he read what the postman had left. Then Mr. and Mrs. Martin talked together in low voices.

Jan and Ted did not know what it was all about, but they heard enough to tell them that it was real trouble. Something had happened to grandpa’s farm, he had lost much money, and unless he paid some men more money to get rid of some queer thing called a “mortgage,” he might have to move away from Cherry Farm.

And that, Jan and Ted knew, would be dreadful. Dreadful not only for them, for they would have no place to spend the long vacation, but bad also for grandpa and for Grandma Martin. For Cherry Farm was their home.

“However,” said Daddy Martin after a bit, “it may not be so bad as it seems now. I’ll see what I can do.”

Ted and Jan felt better. When Daddy Martin talked this way something good was always sure to happen. It always had, and it always would, they were sure. Daddy Martin could do almost everything.

“Do you think we can go to Cherry Farm?” asked Ted anxiously.

“Oh, yes, I think so,” answered his father slowly. “Even if trouble comes it will not get here right away. You’ll have the summer there anyhow.”

“And cherries?” asked Jan, who was very fond of them.

“Oh, yes. Grandma writes that they’ll have a bigger crop of cherries than ever before. They weren’t hurt by the high water that flooded and spoiled the wheat.

“And now I think I’ll write grandpa a letter,” went on Daddy Martin. “I’ll tell him I’ll help all I can, and——”

“So will we!” chimed in Jan and Ted, while Trouble gurgled:

“Me help too!”

“Yes, I guess you will—help eat cherries and get sick!” laughed Jan, throwing her arms about him.

“Maybe grandpa won’t want us all to go out there for the summer,” said Mother Martin. “If he has to save his pennies——”

“Oh, there’ll be plenty to eat—there always is at Cherry Farm,” said her husband; “and that’s all the children want. The old house is big enough for us all, and more. We’ll go surely enough. It wouldn’t seem right if we didn’t. Summer would not be summer without Cherry Farm.”

Jan and Ted thought so too.

Daddy Martin had set Trouble on the floor, to go away to write his letter. Mrs. Martin was talking to Nora about the work, while the Curlytops drew their chairs to the table, now cleared of dishes, and began to talk of what they would do in the country.

“Maybe we can pick cherries and sell ’em,” said Ted.

“Maybe,” agreed Jan. “If we had a little cart and a pony——”

“Oh, that would be great!” cried her brother. “I could drive and you could dish out the cherries! Let’s write a letter to grandpa and ask him——”

Just then, before Ted could finish what he was saying, there came a crashing sound from the kitchen. A look around showed that Trouble had slipped away. The reason for the crash was consequently explained—at least, in part.

“Oh, Nora, what is it?” called Mrs. Martin who had just gone upstairs.

“Oh, nothin’ much, Ma’am,” was the answer. “It’ll be all right, I guess.”

“But, Nora! What was it?”

“Oh, nothin’; only William pulled a big pan full of milk over on himself. I was goin’ to make junket of it, but now Turnover is lappin’ it up. It’s all right; she hadn’t had her supper yet, and the milk’ll do her good.”