Bobby nodded and Father Blossom laughed.
“Now, Twaddles, don’t begin to see a nice comfortable walnut bureau like the one in Mother’s room going around collecting food for the poor folk,” he said teasingly. “I can see your big eyes beginning to wonder what a Charity Bureau is. That is only a name for the kind men and women who go around taking care of hungry and cold people.”
But though Dot continued to tease to be allowed to go to school the next day, Twaddles’ busy little brain kept thinking about the “Charity Bureau.” He couldn’t understand—Twaddles was only four years old—exactly why men and women who collected food for hungry people should be called a bureau, and the more he thought about it, the more tangled up he became. When bedtime came for him and Dot he was still puzzling over it and it was not till the next morning that he decided what he should do.
Meg and Bobby were seated on the front seat of the car with Sam Layton, and the vegetables and apples and fruit jars were carefully arranged on the back seat, when Twaddles came running out of the house. Mother Blossom had said the twins were not to go to school—much to Meg’s and Bobby’s relief—and Meg at first thought Twaddles was determined to have his own way.
“Go back, Twaddles! Mother said you couldn’t go,” she cried, when Twaddles bounced on the running board.
“I’m not going! I brought you something!” gasped Twaddles, breathless from running. “It’s for the Charity Bureau.”
Meg took the little box, wrapped in white tissue paper, and Sam started the car. The twins stood and waved to Bobby and Meg as though they were going on a voyage instead of to school where they went every school day morning, and Meg did not look at the package till Sam suggested that it might be well to see what was in it.
“You never can tell what Twaddles is going to do,” observed Sam sagely, “and if I were you, I’d want to know what I was taking to the Bureau for him.”
Meg unwrapped the box while Bobby and Sam stared curiously. When she lifted the cover, there lay a bottle of cologne!
“It’s his own bottle, the one he bought with his own money and Daddy laughed at him so,” said Meg. “Twaddles does love cologne! And why do you suppose he wants to give it to the poor people?”