"Now tell us, Daddy," begged Dot when, supper over, they were gathered about the fireplace in the living room. "Tell us, 'fore Twaddles and I have to go to bed."
"It isn't such a long story," began Father Blossom. "You can hear it all before you have to go to bed. I don't know whether Mother has told you, but when Bobby was a baby we spent a summer on Apple Tree Island."
"It's funny I don't seem to remember much about it," remarked
Bobby anxiously.
"Well, old man, not so funny considering that you were about eight months old," returned his father with a smile. "We rented a rather pretty cottage very near the spot where Mr. Winthrop, a year or so later, built his bungalow. Your mother started off for a walk one day with Bobby, and she walked too far; he was heavy for a baby, and she should never have tried to carry him. But she did, and she walked as far as the other end of the island before her strength gave out. Then what do you suppose she did, Meg?"
Meg looked serious.
"I don't know," she admitted. "Maybe she cried?"
"Mothers don't cry," said Twaddles in fine scorn. "Do they,
Daddy?"
"I cried," confessed Mother Blossom, smiling at the astonished Twaddles. "I'll never forget how I felt—so far from home and with a heavy, fretting baby in my arms. I just sat down on a rock and cried. And Bobby cried with me."
The four little Blossoms were too amazed to speak. To think of
Mother crying!
"Pretty soon some one came along the road," Father Blossom went on with the story, "and, of course, they saw Mother and Bobby crying. This some one was a woman in a gray wrapper, pushing a baby carriage in which were two little children and a great many packages. The children were two boys about three and four years old, and the woman was their mother. She said her name was Mrs. Harley and that she lived about a quarter of a mile further on. She was very good indeed to Mother—made her little boys get out and walk and put Bobby in with the bundles. Then she helped Mother as far as her house, gave her hot tea and some bread and butter, and kept her until Mr. Harley came home. He had a rickety old buggy and a shabby horse and he harnessed up and brought Mother and Bobby home in great style."