UNCLE DAVE and Aunt Miranda went home the next morning. They did not know that Bobby had almost run away. Neither did Meg and the twins. Mother Blossom knew, for Father Blossom told her. But she only hugged Bobby when she came into his room to call him the next morning and whispered that he must never think of running away and leaving her, no matter what happened.
“I couldn’t get along without my big boy,” she said earnestly.
Bobby and Father Blossom had reached home before Mother Blossom and Uncle Dave and Aunt Miranda came in from Mrs. Ward’s, so Bobby had been spared any explanations. He himself told Meg several weeks afterward and she was much surprised to hear what he had planned to do.
The carpenter apparently had not made up his mind that the boys were responsible for the destruction of his shop, for he caused no arrests to be made. Father Blossom and Fred’s father found out that one of the tramps seen around the shop was supposed to have once worked for Mr. Bennett, but beyond that they could not get a description of the men.
“But if they set fire to the shop, we’ll find them,” said Father Blossom. “You tell the boys to stop worrying over this, Bobby. No one is going to do anything to you, and sooner or later you’ll hear that Mr. Bennett has discovered who burned down his shop.”
A cold snap that brought wonderful skating helped Bobby and his chums to forget their troubles. And when Charlotte Gordon, one of the girls in Bobby’s class at school, sent out invitations for a New Year’s party, they were sure that nothing could ever bother them again.
“Isn’t she nice to ask me!” exclaimed Meg, when she came home from the ice pond one afternoon to find two square pink invitations on the hall table, one addressed to Bobby and one to herself. “Hester Scott told me this morning that she invited all your class, Bobby, but I’m in the next grade. Hester didn’t get an invitation.”
“I suppose Charlotte thought it would be nice to ask you, because of Bobby,” said Mother Blossom. “When I was a little girl I always went to parties with my brother.”
“But she forgot us!” chorused the twins excitedly. “Can’t we go, Mother? Maybe Charlotte didn’t know about us.”
Mother Blossom laughed and said she thought that Charlotte knew about Dot and Twaddles.