“There won’t anything hurt ’em,” protested Bobby earnestly. “Go on, put ’em in––please, Meg.”
Meg seldom could resist anything Bobby asked of her, and Dot was always ready to follow her older sister’s lead. So Geraldine and Mary Maud were placed inside the tower of chairs and stools and rugs that Bobby and Twaddles called their house, and the architect set himself to work to construct the chimney.
The children who were so busily employed in the pleasant living-room this rainy September afternoon were known to all their friends as “the four little Blossoms.” 10
There was a Father Blossom and a Mother Blossom, of course, and when you were introduced to the children separately––though the four were usually to be found, as Norah, the good-natured maid, said, “right in a bunch”––you met Robert Hayward Blossom, always known as Bobby, seven years old and as devoted a brother to six-year-old Margaret Alice as you would ever find. Margaret was much better known as Meg.
Then came the twins, Dot and Twaddles. And a pair they were, into everything and remarkable for the ease with which they managed to get out of scrapes for which they were generally responsible. The twins were four years old, dark-haired and dark-eyed, while Bobby and Meg had blue eyes and yellow hair.
The Blossoms lived in the pretty town of Oak Hill, and they knew nearly every one. Indeed the children had never been away from Oak Hill till the visit they had made to their Aunt Polly, about which you may have read in the book called “Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm.” They had spent the summer with Aunt 11 Polly, and had made many new friends and learned a great deal about animals. Meg, especially, loved all dumb creatures. And now that you are acquainted with the four little Blossoms, we must get back to that chimney.
“The umbrella rack will do,” suggested Twaddles suddenly.
He ran out into the hall and dragged the rack in.
“That’s fine,” said Bobby enthusiastically. “Come on, Twaddles, help me lift it up.”
Strangers always thought that Twaddles was such an odd name. Perhaps it was; and certainly no one knew how the small boy had acquired it. “Twaddles” he was though, and he himself almost forgot that he had a “real” name, which was Arthur Gifford. His twin was never called Dorothy, either, but always “Dot.” Dorothy Anna Blossom was the whole of Dot’s name.