“Take us?” begged Meg. “Daddy won’t care. Dot, you run and ask Mother.”
“Can’t take you,” Sam informed her regretfully. “Your father’s going on to Clayton for a meeting. Maybe we won’t get back till eight or nine o’clock to-night.”
Meg thought this over.
“Take us as far as the foundry,” she suggested. “We can walk home.” 52
“Yes, and maybe I’ll find some specimens,” said Bobby. “I’ll go and get my bag and hammer.”
Bobby meant the little hammer he used to crack stones with and the bag he kept to put the cracked bits in. Bobby was very much interested in pebbles and stones. He thought some day he might succeed in finding a valuable piece of mineral.
“You ask your mother if it’s all right,” insisted Sam, beginning to brush his suit and getting out his cap and gloves from the wall closet. “You’re going to be on hand, Dot, aren’t you?”
Dot had already climbed into the car and was sitting on the front seat smiling serenely at the others. She looked very pretty in a fresh pink frock that had replaced the torn dress before lunch, and her cheeks were pink, too.
“Mother says all right, but we mustn’t go a bit further than the foundry,” reported Bobby, coming back in a few minutes with his precious hammer and little white canvas bag. “Let me drive, Sam?”
“I should say not,” responded Sam promptly. 53 “I’ll teach you to drive, Bobby, the day you’re old enough to run a car and not one minute before. In with you now, Meg?”