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.