The four little Blossoms knew how to run “between the drops” and as soon as their lunch was packed, they kissed Aunt Polly and started for the barn at breakneck speed. Flushed and breathless and hardly wet at all, they burst into the barn and told Jud, who was busy on the 161 main floor, that they were going to have another picnic.
“You do manage to have a good time, all right,” he said approvingly. “Where are you going to play?”
They looked at Meg. It was her game and she was the only one who knew the best place to go.
“We have to play in the loft,” directed Meg. “We’re going to live in a lighthouse, Jud, and pull things up and down.”
Jud did not understand at first and when she told him, he said that lighthouse keepers did not live at the top of the lighthouse and pull things up, but instead they lived in a neat little house built on the ground, like other houses, and climbed the tall stairs to take care of the light.
“Well, I think it would be more fun to live up high,” said Meg, and Jud said that was the best of a “pretend” play. You could do it to suit yourself.
The four children scrambled up the loft ladder––practice had made this once difficult feat easy for them––and for a half hour jumped 162 about in the clean, sweet hay, forgetting their game. The smooth, slippery hay, piled in such masses, never failed to fascinate them.
“Now let’s play lighthouse,” suggested Meg, when Twaddles had come down rather hard on his nose and was trying not to cry. “First thing we need is a basket and rope.”
They found a basket Jud said they might take and he got a piece of rope for them. Then they argued about staying down on the floor of the barn to put things in the basket for, of course, each one wanted to pull the basket up; that was the interesting part.
“Take turns,” Bobby advised. “I’ll stay down first, and let Meg pull up first, because she thought of this game.”