“Yes, we’ll have Uncle Ben get your red ball if he can,” his mother told him. “And now we might as well go back and have our lunch.”
“But maybe the bear in the growlery hole will take Trouble’s red ball while we’re gone,” said Teddy.
“It isn’t a bear in there—that’s sure,” answered Mrs. Martin. “There are no bears around here.”
They all went back to the little grassy hill under the shade of the trees, and near the spring of clear, cold, bubbling water. There Mrs. Martin set out the lunch on a big flat stump for a table, and the children sat down on the ground to eat it.
“Oh! Ah! Um!” murmured Teddy and Janet when they saw their mother set out some jam tarts on a little wooden plate.
“You may pass them, Janet,” said her mother, and Janet, very politely, passed the jam tarts first to Lola, she being company, and next to Tom, he being company also.
“Me want jam tart!” cried Trouble, reaching across the stump-table.
“Yes, you shall have one, dear,” said Janet, and she passed the plate to him next, at the same time smiling at Tom and Ted. They understood what this meant—that Ted would have to wait until his little brother had been served. Then came Ted’s turn, and next Janet offered the plate to her mother.
“Help yourself, dear,” said Mrs. Martin. “I am not very hungry.”
But the Curlytops were, and so were Trouble and Tom and Lola. And I wish you could have seen them all eat! No, on second thought, I don’t wish that. It would have made you so hungry that you would go right out to the kitchen, I’m sure, and ask whoever was there to make some jam tarts. And there might just happen to be no jam, you know.