“I meant to get a rag,” said Bobby quickly. “Norah will give me one. What shall we do to the potatoes, Sam?”
Sam explained that he thought the best thing to do was to borrow a pan from Norah and scrub the vegetables with the brush in water not too cold for their hands and yet not hot enough to shrivel the skin of the turnips and potatoes.
“How you going to get your stuff over to school?” he asked, when Bobby had gone after the pan and returned with both pan and Norah, who declared that she knew she would have to help them. “Potatoes weigh heavy, when you try to carry them.”
“Daddy said you’d take us in the car,” replied Meg. “You will, won’t you, Sam? We have potatoes and carrots and turnips and apples and four jars of fruit to take.”
“Then you certainly can’t walk,” said Sam, shaking the heater and raising his voice above the racket he made. “I guess I can take you before your father is ready to go in the morning.”
When the vegetables were all nicely washed, and the laundry floor mopped up, and Dot placed before the heater to dry off, since she refused to go upstairs and get into another dress, and the apples polished to Bobby’s liking, then it was time to choose the cans of fruit.
The twins could not make up their minds. Dot wavered between her two favorites, blackberry jam and orange marmalade, and Twaddles insisted on peach butter and mustard pickles.
“Mother said one,” Meg reminded him. Meg had her own jar of canned pears she had filled herself and labeled with a little red label. “Filled by Meg, October 2,” Mother Blossom had written, and Meg was eager to give the jar away because, as she said, it was something she had done herself.
“Well, pickles don’t count,” argued Twaddles. “Pickles are extra.”
Bobby had chosen his favorite strawberry jam and he was anxious to go upstairs and see if dinner wasn’t almost ready.