No, she didn’t meddle with the package at all. Everything had gone well. Johnny Blossom took careful aim and sent the snowball flying toward the flagstaff at his own home.
The church bells began to ring, ushering in the holy tide. Christmas Eve! Oh, he must hurry, hurry home!
Bim! Boom! How the great bells chimed!
CHAPTER VII
A Present from Uncle Isaac
THE unexpected certainly happened to Johnny Blossom that day. He had just swung round on the road leading toward Kingthorpe, with no thought of going the whole way, for Uncle Isaac was ill and had gone to a sanitarium, and there wasn’t the least bit of fun to be had just in Kingthorpe itself with all its elegance. So early in the summer as this there were no ripe berries in the garden; and he must not go into the stables, for Carlstrom the coachman was a regular crosspatch.
“Be off with yourself, boy!” he would always say if Johnny Blossom but put his nose in at the stable door.
Carlstrom was a Swede, with a big black moustache whose ends stuck straight out in the air. He looked exactly like a stylish colonel to say the least—a very cross colonel though! No, there was no use going to the stable.
The cow-barn was under the rule of a Swiss who was almost as cross as Carlstrom. He always said that the cows ought to be sleeping; so Johnny Blossom got the idea that the cows at Kingthorpe never did anything but lie and sleep.