“Well you don’t have to have a cat,” said Dot impatiently. “I know what we can get––eggs!”
There were always two or three hens that persisted in stealing their nests and the twins had a fair idea of where these stolen nests were in the barn. They often found the eggs and took them in to Linda.
Now, after a few minutes’ search, they found seven eggs and put them in the basket with great glee.
“Let me pull it up after you do?” asked Twaddles as Dot climbed up the ladder.
“Well––perhaps,” she replied carefully. “I might want to pull it up more than once myself.”
She began to pull on the rope and the basket dangled in the air. Whether the sound of voices made Dot nervous, or whether the basket was heavier than she had expected, it is hard to say. But just as Jud and Bobby and Meg came out on the barn floor, Dot let that basket fall.
“Good grief!” exclaimed Jud.
Twaddles seemed glued to one spot and the basket crashed down almost under his nose. The 168 eggs broke and some splashed up and sprayed him, but most of the contents ran out on the floor in a bright yellow stream.
“You took eggs!” Meg said accusingly.
“Well, nobody said not to,” answered Dot in a rather frightened voice, peering over the edge of the loft.
“All right, I’ll say it now,” Jud proclaimed. “After this, it is against the rules to put anything in the basket which will break. Remember that. And now, let me see if I can wipe you off, Twaddles.”
Jud found a cloth and mopped the egg off Twaddles––fortunately not much had reached him––and then Dot suggested that they do something else.
“We could eat,” Twaddles said placidly, which made Jud laugh.
“I’m going to start feeding the stock, so perhaps it isn’t too early for you to have lunch,” he said. “That is one sure way to keep the twins quiet, Meg.”
Dot called after him that she hadn’t said anything about eating, but Jud didn’t hear her. He 169 was already measuring out corn for the horses.
“Where is the lunch?” asked Bobby, who began to feel hungry himself.
“I know––I’ll get it,” Meg replied, and ran up the ladder.
She felt around in the hay where she had buried the box, but she couldn’t find it. The other children came up and watched her curiously, but still she couldn’t feel anything like a box.
“What are you looking for?” said Dot curiously.
“For our lunch,” Meg told her, almost ready to cry. “I put it under the hay and now I can’t find it.”
Bobby and the twins hastily got down beside her and tossed the hay around. They looked where Meg said she put the box and they looked where she was sure it couldn’t be, but all that happened was that they got very warm and tired indeed and not one sign of the lunch did they uncover.
“Do you know what I think?” said Twaddles wisely. “I think some rat found it and ate it. 170 I’ve seen rats up here in the loft, lots of times.”
Meg glanced around hastily. She wasn’t at all anxious to see a rat.
“Rats couldn’t eat the box and everything in it,” Bobby argued. “They would leave pieces of paper and things that we would see.”
“Then where is the box?” demanded Dot.
Bobby sat down to think and Meg waited respectfully.
“We’ll have to get a pitchfork and turn over all the hay,” Bobby decided. “That’s the only way to find the box: it’s lost in all this hay.”
He was willing to go and get the pitchfork, but he was gone several minutes. When he came back, Jud was with him.
“Pitchforks and Twaddles won’t mix,” declared Jud firmly. “We’ll have to manage some other way. Show me where you hid the box, Meg.”
Meg showed him, as nearly as she could remember. Jud knelt down and felt under the hay, while the children stared at him as though they expected him to work some kind of magic.
“I think I can find it,” he announced. “You 171 all sit down and close your eyes tightly and don’t open them till I give the word.”
So they sat down on the floor and Dot put her head in Meg’s lap, for it was hard for her to keep her eyes closed. She always wanted to see what was going on.
Meg counted to ninety-eight before she heard Jud cry, “All right!”
The four little Blossoms opened their eyes and there stood Jud, the lunch box in his hand. He was smiling.
“How did you find it?” asked Meg. “Was it under the hay?”
“On top,” said Jud mysteriously. “You see, Meg, the box fell through the slats and landed on top of a ration of hay in one of the stalls. All I had to do was to go downstairs and get it.”
Linda had packed the box so neatly and so firmly that nothing was damaged and the children had a delightful picnic up in the loft. They played there most of the afternoon, too, and often during the rainy days that followed. Indeed they amused themselves so well and were 172 so little trouble to Aunt Polly, that she promised them one more outdoor picnic, the first dry sunny day that came.
“Be sure you save me some sandwiches,” said Peter, when he heard about it.
They promised and it was Dot who woke up the household bright and early when she saw the sun streaming in at the window.
“We can have the picnic!” she shouted joyfully. “Aunt Polly, isn’t it dry and sunny? Get up, Twaddles, we can have the picnic.”
It was a sunny day, but it wasn’t so dry, for the ground was still damp from so much rain.
“But if we go wading, the water’s wet,” argued Dot, and Linda, too, thought they might as well go.
“Don’t forget my sandwiches,” Peter reminded them as he saw them start.
The four little Blossoms wanted to go to the same place where they had gone before and Jud drove them. Then he was to take the horses and wagon back for his father to use during the day and Peter would come for the picnickers in the afternoon and get his sandwiches.
“Don’t go wading till Jud comes,” said Aunt Polly, when good-natured Jud had gone back. “Help Linda spread out the rubber blanket, for we want to be comfortable while you play around.”
The children spread out the blanket and on top of that Aunt Polly spread a cotton one and then she and Linda sat down to sew.
“Let’s go see if there is another shirt spread 174 out to dry,” suggested Meg, and she was much excited when they saw a bit of white fluttering from a bush.
“’Tisn’t the same place,” Dot argued.
“Well, it’s almost the same place,” retorted Bobby. “Only it looks ragged,” he added.
Meg was eager to go and examine the white thing, but she knew they would have to wait for Jud. Aunt Polly laughed when she heard about it and said that Meg would have Linda running a mending shop if she was not very careful.
“After we have lunch, if Jud is willing to take you, you may go over and see what it is,” she told her little niece kindly. “You’d have every one nicely washed and mended if you could, wouldn’t you, Meg?”
Jud came back on foot and after he had rested a minute, declared he was willing to wade the brook with the children. But Aunt Polly insisted they must have lunch first and of course no one wanted to miss that. As soon as the last crumb was gone, however, the children began to tease and Jud said they might as well go. He 175 had laughed at the idea of another shirt, but half way across the stream he seemed to change his mind.
“Guess somebody lost his shirt,” observed Jud, keeping a firm grip on Dot, who seemed to be trying to dance.
“Say, wouldn’t it be funny,” began Bobby, but Meg had the same idea at the same time.
“Do you suppose it could–––” she said slowly.
“It’s the raft!” yelled Twaddles, breaking away from Jud, and rushing into the bushes. “It’s our raft––Oh, Jud!” Twaddles had stepped on a sharp stone.
“I wish you’d be a little more careful,” said Jud calmly. “Well, it is the raft! Can you beat that?”
Tangled in broken reeds and a few prickly bushes, lay their raft, Geraldine smiling as sweetly as ever and still propped up against Meg’s book. Nothing was missing, not even Twaddles’ singing bird or Bobby’s airplane.
“I’m so glad!” Meg kept saying. “I’m so 176 glad! Now let’s go home and play with them.”
“It’s lucky we’ve had this long, dry spell,” said Jud, picking up Geraldine and eyeing her critically. “If we’d had one good storm, good-by toys.”
Dot tucked Geraldine under her arm, Twaddles stuffed his bird into his pocket, Meg took her book and Bobby his airplane, and Jud offered to tow the raft. So slowly and carefully they made their way back to where Jud had left his socks and shoes.
Aunt Polly and Linda were surprised and delighted when they saw the children coming, for they had begun to wonder what they could be doing.
“You don’t mean to tell me you found the raft!” exclaimed Aunt Polly, when she heard the news. “Why, that’s the best luck I ever heard of.”
And Linda said “My goodness!” over and over, and wanted to know just where they had found it and who saw it first and how they had managed to reach it.
“You’ve played enough in the water,” said 177 Aunt Polly, when each child had told the story. “Put on your shoes and stockings and see if you can’t find me a maidenhair fern for my fern-box.”
Meg found it first, and then Jud lent her his jack-knife and showed her how to take it up so that the roots would not be injured. Then he left her for a minute while he went back to get a paper cup from Linda to plant it in, and when he came back he found her backed up against a tree and looking frightened.
“What scared you?” he asked quickly. “Did you see a snake, Meg?”
“No,” she whispered. “I don’t know what it was. But it stared and stared at me, Jud.”
“Well, where did you see it?” demanded Jud briskly. “Let me have a whack at it with this branch. Where’d you see it, Meg?”
“In the hole in this tree,” answered Meg. “I was shaking more dirt off the fern when I looked up and there it was jiggling at me.”
“Where?” asked Jud again, a bit impatiently. “I don’t see any hole.”
“I’m standing over it,” said Meg, “so the thing can’t get away.”
Meg, you see, was frightened, but not too frightened to be interested and curious about a strange animal.
“I’m sure it’s an animal, ’cause it moves,” she told Jud, as she stood aside to let him look in the hole.
Jud put his hand in the hole––it was an old dead tree and hollow at the top––and drew out something soft and fluffy.
“Just as I thought,” he chuckled. “It’s a baby owl.”
“Oh, how cunning,” cried Meg, coming closer and venturing to put a finger on the bunch of feathers. “But what a funny face, Jud!”
Indeed the baby owl looked like a very young and foolish monkey as it sat in Jud’s hands and rolled its head and stared aimlessly.
“He’s pretty near blind,” Jud explained. “In the daytime owls can hardly see at all. I suspect there’s a nest in this old tree. Want to hold it for me while I feel?”
Meg was certainly not afraid of a baby owl, 179 and she took it tenderly. Sure enough, Jud knew what he was talking about––he put his arm away into the tree trunk and brought out two more little owls.
Twaddles and Dot had come up by this time, and they were perfectly entranced with the queer little birds.
Jud carefully put the baby owls back. Then they planted the fern in the paper cup, found Bobby, who was trying to fish with a breadcrumb tied to a string, and told him about the owls, and then they heard the wagon coming for them.
“Have a good time?” asked Peter, as he helped them all in and the wagon started its noisy trip home. Peter was eating one of the sandwiches they had saved for him and looked very contented.
“Such a nice time,” said the four little Blossoms.
“Was there any mail?” asked Aunt Polly.
“Just one letter,” replied Peter.
But that was a very important letter, as the Blossoms found out when they were once more 180 at home and Aunt Polly read it to them while Linda was getting supper.
“Mother’s coming!” cried Bobby, meeting Jud on his way to the barn.
“That’s fine,” said Jud heartily. Then his face fell.
“But you don’t want to go home yet!” he urged. “Vacation isn’t over so soon, is it? There’s lots we planned to do we haven’t done.”
“Mother’s going to stay a week,” said Bobby happily. “School doesn’t open for two weeks, but we have to go home and get ready. Say, Jud, I didn’t miss Mother––not such a lot, that is––but now I miss her dreadful much.”
When Mother Blossom came she found all the children in the car with Aunt Polly to meet her. And the things they did during that one week, from another picnic to having all the new friends they had made at Brookside come to supper, including Mr. Sparks––well, Linda said there was more going on than there had been all through the summer, and Linda ought to have known!
“I s’pect Aunt Polly will miss us,” said Twaddles 181 the last morning of their visit, as Mother Blossom was buttoning Dot into a clean frock and Aunt Polly was on her knees locking the trunks.
“I s’pect I shall,” said Aunt Polly, tears in her kind eyes.
This was too much for Twaddles.
“You come and stay at our house,” he told her earnestly. “And you can come and visit school.”
For the twins still insisted they were going to school.
Aunt Polly promised that she would come to see them some time during the winter and that she wouldn’t cry any more but just remember the nice times they had had together that summer.
“And if you go to school, you’ll learn to write, and then I shall look for letters,” she said seriously.
So the four little Blossoms started home for Oak Hill and found a Daddy Blossom there very glad to see them, as well as Norah and Sam and Philip, who, as Meg observed, had “grown considerable.” He wasn’t lame any more, either.
And if you want to read about what Meg and Bobby did in school, and how the twins contrived to go to school, too, in spite of the fact that they were only four years old, you must read the next book about them which is called “Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School.”
“Oh, but it’s been a perfectly lovely summer, hasn’t it?” said Meg, while she was helping unpack her things.
“Best ever,” declared Bobby.
“And just think––we own a cow!” cried Dot.
“And maybe––when she gets big––we can milk her,” added Twaddles. “Oh, I like the country––I do.”
“Let’s all buy a farm when we grow up,” suggested Bobby.
“Let’s!” all the others cried in chorus.
THE END