OLD HORNBECK’S PICTURE
Tim met Bobby half way, and they grappled. The other boys closed in around them.
“Pound him good, Bobby!” advised Palmer excitedly. “The sneak! Kicking a player like that!”
“Sit on his head,” squeaked Bertrand in a funny little voice excitement always gave him. “Sit on his head, the big coward!”
Bobby did not even hear these. He was hitting wherever he could, and grunting like a small pig as Tim rained blows upon him. Tim was so much older and stronger that all the advantage was on his side. Charlie Black was hovering around the outside of the circle, not daring to say anything for Tim, but hoping his chum would win.
“Hornbeck!” suddenly cried Charlie in wild alarm. “Hey, fellows, here comes old Hornbeck. If he catches us–––”
Charlie never finished his sentence, but took 103 to his heels, followed by the rest of the boys. Only Tim and Bobby, rolling over and over on the ground, had not heard the warning.
“Quit this this instant, I tell you!” roared a hard voice, and some one grasped Bobby by his collar, jerking him to his feet. “Fighting like two wildcats! What do you mean by such performances on the school grounds?”
It was Mr. Hornbeck, and he had Bobby in one hand and Tim in the other, and as he spoke he shook each boy violently.
“What do you call it you’re doing?” he roared again.
Tim ran out an impudent tongue, but said nothing. The committeeman’s eyes under his high silk hat glared at Bobby.
“We were just playing football,” stammered Bobby hastily.
“Football!” cried Mr. Hornbeck, giving each of them a tremendous shake. “Football! You young imps! Don’t tell me you don’t know of the rule that primary-grade boys are to stay off the field during football practice. If I ever catch you around here again I’ll have you up 104 before Mr. Carter. He’ll teach you to remember.”
Still retaining his grip on their collars, Mr. Hornbeck marched them across the lot to the street.
“Now scoot,” he ordered.
They needed no second command. Tim fled up the street and Bobby ran down, each as fast as he could go.
“My stars and stripes!” ejaculated Sam Layton, meeting Bobby as the boy came running in the driveway, “is that what they do to you at school? Learning must be rather hard work.”
No wonder Sam was surprised. Bobby’s coat was torn, his blouse grimed with mud. A great bruise was on one cheek, and his cap was crushed and dirty. His hands and face looked as though he had been rolling in the mud, which, as we know, he had.
“I had a fight,” explained Bobby coolly. “I guess I do look a little dirty.”
“Come on out to the garage and I’ll brush you off. No sense in scaring your mother stiff,” said Sam. “Who won the fight?” 105
“I guess old Hornbeck did,” answered Bobby thoughtfully, rubbing a finger that was sore from handling the ball. “Anyway, he had a lot to say about it.” And then he gave Sam a few particulars as he cleaned himself.
A few days later Meg and Bobby were going home from school when Meg suddenly remembered that she had forgotten her books.
“Well, I suppose we can go back and get ’em,” grumbled Bobby, “but why won’t to-morrow do? What do you want them for to-night?”
“I told you,” said Meg patiently. “Mother is going to cover them with calico, the way she had her books when she was little. Some of the covers are so torn I hate to have to use them.”
“All right,” sighed Bobby. “We’ll go back. I think girls have the worst memories!”
By the time they reached the school––they had been half way home––all the other children had gone. The janitor was sweeping out the lower hall and grinned cheerfully at them without stopping his work. Then they passed on to their own room.
“Doesn’t it seem funny without anybody 106 here?” asked Meg, beginning to take the books out of her desk.
“Suppose I was the teacher!” Bobby seated himself in Miss Mason’s chair and rapped on the desk with her ruler. “First grade, go to the board!”
“Oh, don’t,” giggled Meg, half frightened. “She might come in and catch you. Bobby, stop it!”
Bobby jumped from the chair and scrambled off the platform as the door opened.
“Hello!” said a cheerful, chirping voice, and Dot and Twaddles marched into the room.
“We thought we’d come after you,” announced Dot serenely. “Mother said it was time for you to be coming. But we didn’t meet you.”
“I had to come back and get my books for Mother to cover,” explained Meg. “Don’t touch anything, Twaddles. You can carry my reading book. Come on, Bobby, don’t let’s stay.”
But the twins had no intention of leaving that minute.
“Isn’t it nice in school?” beamed Twaddles, eyeing the bowl of goldfish on the window sill 107 with interest. “Oh, Bobby, won’t you draw us a picture?”
Twaddles had spied the chalk and the blackboard.
“All right, just one,” promised Bobby. “What’ll I draw?”
“Old Hornbeck,” snickered Twaddles, who had never seen the head of the school committee, but who never missed a word of anything the older children brought home.
Meg and Dot and Twaddles watched with absorbing interest as Bobby took up a piece of chalk and began to draw.
“These are his whiskers,” explained Bobby, making a lot of curly marks. “Here’s his chin. This is his coat collar. And now I’ll make his high silk hat.”
Bobby had to stand on his tiptoes to draw this, and the chalk screeched piercingly as he bore on it heavily. But the high hat really did look like the one Mr. Hornbeck wore.
“Now some funny little legs, and he’s done,” announced Bobby, drawing two wavering lines that had to serve the figure for legs. 108
“Come on now,” urged Meg. “Mother will be looking for us. Rub it out, Bobby. Suppose Miss Mason found it in the morning?”
“The janitor cleans the boards every night,” replied Bobby indifferently.
“Rub it out,” insisted Meg. “It would be mean if some one found it and blamed you.”
The spirit of mischief seized Bobby. He picked up the eraser as if to do what Meg asked, then dropped it and took up a piece of chalk.
“This is Old Hornbeck,” he scrawled under the picture, the words running downhill across the board.
A noise at the door caused them all to look around. There stood Mr. Hornbeck!
Luckily Bobby stood before the drawing he had made, and quick as a flash Meg darted forward. Slipping in behind her brother, she managed to rub the sleeve of her dress over the writing and smudged the greater part of the picture. Bobby, who had stood as if paralyzed, the chalk in his fingers, turned and with a sweep of the eraser blotted out the rest. 109
“What are you children doing here?” demanded Mr. Hornbeck severely.
He had not noticed the blackboard at all, for Twaddles had fixed him with such a fascinating stare the moment he entered the room that he had not been able to see any one else at first.
“Do these small children come to school?” he asked. “Why are they here, then? And aren’t you the boy I stopped from fighting only last week?”
“Ye-s, sir,” answered Bobby. “We’re going now. My sister had to come back for her books.”
“There must be no loitering about the building after school hours,” said the committeeman sternly. “I’ll speak to Miss Wright. When you have finished your school work, you are to go home immediately. Do you understand?”
“Yes, sir,” murmured the four little Blossoms, the twins joining in.
“Then go,” ordered Mr. Hornbeck majestically.
The four were very glad to go, and they lost no time in getting out of the building.
“My, I’m glad you rubbed that out, Meg!” 110 said Bobby gratefully. “Just suppose he had seen it!”
“What would he do?” clamored Twaddles. “Keep you in?”
“He might expel me,” Bobby informed him gloomily. “Going to school is no joke, Twaddles. Is it, Meg?”
“No, it isn’t,” returned Meg absently, her eyes and thoughts on something else. “What does that big poster say, Bobby?”
She pointed to a large poster pasted on a pole across the street.
“Let’s go over and read it,” suggested Bobby.
They crossed over, and Bobby spelled out the large black and red letters for them.
“Goody,” he announced, “it’s a circus! With a p’rade, and everything! We’ll ask Daddy if we can go.” 111
CHAPTER XII
AT THE CIRCUS
Although a cold wind was blowing, the four little Blossoms stayed till Bobby had read aloud every word on the poster.
“It’s next Wednesday,” he announced. “I guess they’ll let us out of school for the parade. Oh, here are some more pictures. Look at the monkeys!”
The board fence surrounding the corner lot was plastered with gorgeous circus posters of prancing yellow lions, ladies in gauzy skirts riding on pretty ponies, and mischievous monkeys climbing up ropes and doing the most wonderful tricks.
“I wish we had a monkey,” said Meg, who did her best to keep a menagerie.
“What’s that man doing?” demanded Twaddles, pulling at Bobby’s sleeve and pointing to a trapeze performer.
“He does things like that,” answered Bobby. “You didn’t go to the circus when it was here 112 two years ago, did you, Twaddles? You and Dot were too little. But I guess maybe you can go this time.”
The four little Blossoms talked of nothing but the circus after this, and Norah said she knew that Meg dreamed of lions and tigers every night. All but one of the Blossoms were going, the children with Father Blossom in the afternoon, and Norah with Sam at night. Mother Blossom had planned to spend the night with a friend in the city, and as she didn’t care much about circuses anyway, she thought she wouldn’t postpone her trip.
“What about school?” asked Father Blossom, coming home one evening to find Twaddles wrapped up in the fur rug and playing he was a polar bear, while Meg and Bobby, each under a chair, growled like panthers, and Dot swung from the curtain pole pretending that she was a trapeze performer. “What do you do about getting excused, Bobby? Really, Dot, you’ll have that curtain pole down in a minute.”
Flushed and smiling, Dot dropped to the floor, and Twaddles came out of his rug. 113
“School lets us out at eleven o’clock, so we can see the parade,” announced Bobby. “Then there isn’t any more after that. Some of the school committee said it was nonsense to close the school for a circus, but Mr. Carter said he wasn’t going to give us a chance to play hooky. Everybody’s going, Daddy.”
“Dot and Twaddles want to meet the children up town to see the parade. So you think that is safe, Ralph?” asked Mother Blossom, coming into the room to tell them that supper was ready. “There will be such a crowd.”
“They mustn’t go alone,” said Father Blossom quickly. “Let Sam take them. They can all sit in Steve Broadwell’s window. He asked me to-day if they didn’t want to come. And as soon as the parade is over, come home to lunch. I’ll meet you here and we’ll get an early start.”
The Wednesday morning, circus day, came at last. Very little work was done in school, and the teachers were as glad as the boys and girls when the dismissal bell rang, for trying to keep the minds of restless little mortals on geography and arithmetic when they are thinking only of 114 monkeys and bears and lions is not an easy task.
“Going to see the parade?” asked Palmer Davis, as Miss Mason’s class poured down the stairway.
“Going to see the parade?” the girls asked Meg.
“Sure,” Bobby answered for both. “We’re going to sit in Mr. Steve Broadwell’s window. You can see fine from there.”
Stephen Broadwell was a druggist, and his window upstairs over his drugstore was a coveted place for parades of all kinds in Oak Hill. Everything paraded up the main street past the drugstore.
Meg and Bobby found Sam and the twins already waiting for them when they hurried up the steep dark stairs that led to the storeroom over the drugstore.
“Been here half an hour,” grinned Sam. “Dot was so afraid she’d miss the start that she wanted me to bring her in the car.”
The four little Blossoms squeezed into the window and Sam looked over their shoulders. 115
“Music!” cried Dot. “I hear it! They’re coming!”
“I see ’em!” shouted Bobby, leaning out to look. “My, see the horses, Meg!”
Sam pulled him in again, and in another minute the parade was marching by in full swing. You know how wonderful a circus parade is; that is, if you have ever seen one. And if you haven’t, goodness! we couldn’t begin to do it justice. Of course the very largest circuses didn’t come to Oak Hill; but still this one had many things to see. There were cream-colored horses and black ones, with girls dressed in pink and blue and white fluffy dresses and gorgeous long red coats, riding them. There were cages of animals, some of them sleeping and some switching their tails angrily and showing their teeth. There was a whole wagon load of monkeys, two bands, and even an elephant and a camel.
“Wouldn’t it be awful if we couldn’t go to the circus?” said Bobby solemnly, as the last of the procession, the clown driving his own cunning pony and cart, went up the street. “After 116 seeing that parade I never could be happy ’less I saw them at the circus.”
“Well, we are going,” Meg reminded him practically.
“Let’s hurry,” urged Twaddles. “Maybe all the seats will be gone.”
“Daddy bought tickets,” said Dot dreamily. “Wasn’t the first pony pretty? And did you see the little dog riding on him? Do you suppose Philip could ride a pony, Meg?”
Meg was sure Philip could, if he had a pony to ride and some one to teach him.
As the four little Blossoms and Sam went downstairs whom should they meet but Doctor Maynard, an old friend of the whole Blossom family, and the doctor who had helped them set Philip’s leg when he had broken it.
“Well, well,” said the doctor, smiling, “I think I know what you have been doing upstairs––watching the circus parade. And now where to?”
“Home,” replied Meg. “We have to hurry, ’cause Daddy is going to take us to the circus this afternoon.” 117
“Do you suppose you would have time to have a soda?” asked the doctor.
The children thought they would, and Doctor Maynard lined them up before the fountain and let each one choose. Meg and Bobby, who always liked the same things, took chocolate, and Dot asked for strawberry, while Twaddles said he would have orange. Doctor Maynard and Sam had ginger-ale, which Meg privately thought unpleasant stuff, it tickled one’s throat so.
“Have a good time at the circus,” said the doctor, as they said good-by. “Don’t tease the elephant, and don’t let the monkeys tease you.”
“I should think the monkeys would be cold in the winter,” mused Meg, as they walked home. “Bears and lions have warm furry skins, but monkeys don’t.”
“Oh, the circus rests up in winter,” Sam assured her. “This is about the last stop they’ll make this season. When it gets too cold for folks to sit out in tents, you know, a circus goes into winter quarters. They are just as cozy then as you are. All the circus people mend their 118 clothes and rest and plan out new tricks for the spring. And the animals rest and sleep and get their coats into good condition, and have all they want to eat.”
At home the four little Blossoms found Father Blossom, and as soon as they had finished lunch they started for the big tent. It was pitched in the same place every time the circus came to Oak Hill, a wide open space just outside the town limits, and Bobby remembered it very well.
“See all the people!” cried Dot, jumping up and down with delight. “There’s Nina and Mary and Freddy, and oh, everybody!”
It did seem as if all Oak Hill had turned out to go to the circus, and Bobby wondered if there would be any left to see it that night when Sam and Norah went.
“Tickets,” said the man at the gate. “All right, five of you.”
They went into the big tent and found their seats down near the ring. The clown was already driving around and around in his pony 119 cart, and he waved to Dot quite as if he knew her.
“I guess he remembers me from this morning,” she said with satisfaction.
More people kept coming in, and soon the tent was crowded. Then the matinée began, with a grand parade all around the ring, horses prancing, whips cracking, the monkeys shrieking shrilly. For three hours the four little Blossoms were enthralled by the antics of the clever beasts and the men and women performers, and they could hardly believe it when Father Blossom said they must put on their hats, for the performance was over.
“Won’t there be any more?” begged Dot, putting on her hat backward in her excitement. “Just a little more, Daddy?”
“Why, we’ve been here three hours,” said Father Blossom, smiling. “The circus has to have its supper and be ready for the evening crowd, you know. You wouldn’t want them to be too tired to go through their tricks for Norah and Sam, would you?”
Of course Dot didn’t want the circus to get 120 completely tired out, so she agreed that perhaps it was time to go home.
They brought Norah such glowing accounts of the things they had seen that she was “all in a flutter,” she said, and indeed she did serve the potatoes in a soup dish. But as Father Blossom said, most anything was likely to happen on circus day.
“You must all go to bed extra early to-night,” he warned the children. “If Meg and Bobby are late for school to-morrow, the circus will be blamed. Dot looks as if she couldn’t keep her eyes open another minute.”
Meg and Bobby went to bed when the twins’ bedtime came, for they were tired, and they fell asleep at once. But suddenly the loud ringing of the telephone bell woke them.