Sam Layton chuckled.
“Don’t you see, this isn’t for the poor folks,” he explained. “Twaddles said it was for the ‘Charity Bureau’—the poor kid has the bureau idea in his mind in spite of what your father told him. Pretty nice of him to give away his own cologne, though, isn’t it?”
Nora had told Sam how Father Blossom had tried to explain what the Charity Bureau was to Twaddles the night before, and Meg and Bobby remembered, too. They laughed a little at poor Twaddles but it was at the idea of the cologne bottle to stand on the Charity Bureau, and not at the little boy himself.
“We won’t make fun of him a bit, will we, Bobby?” said Meg, as the car stopped before the school. “Twaddles was as good as gold to give away his own bottle of cologne, and perhaps someone will like to have it.”
CHAPTER II
THE THANK-OFFERINGS
SAM helped carry the vegetables into the school and we’ll leave him for a minute, “toting” as he called it, the potatoes and shiny apples up the walk, and introduce you to the Blossom children.
You may already know them and if you have met them before you’ll remember that Meg and Bobby had other and longer names, although their best friends often forgot that Meg was named Margaret for her mother, and that Robert Hayward Blossom was Bobby’s real name, the one he would use when he grew up and went in business with Father Blossom. The four-year-old twins, too, Dot and Twaddles, when they were old enough to go to school would be written down on the teacher’s roll book as Dorothy Anna and Arthur Gifford Blossom. In case you do not know, we’ll tell you that these four children lived in the town of Oak Hill, with their father and mother, and with Norah who had lived with them for years, and with Sam Layton who lived over the garage and was right-hand man to Father Blossom.
The first book about the Blossoms describes the lovely summer they spent at Brookside Farm, visiting Aunt Polly, who was Mother Blossom’s sister. The friends they made there and the fun they had are all told of in “Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm.” The children would have been sorry to leave Aunt Polly and the farm if there had not been other exciting days to look forward to. Meg and Bobby had to go to school, of course, and their first winter in the school room, and the persistent efforts of Dot and Twaddles to go to school, too, though they were not old enough to be enrolled in any class, and their final success, is related in the second volume called, “Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School.” The third book about the Blossoms tells of the blue turquoise locket Meg lost and how it was found, and how even Meg and Bobby themselves were lost, though they were also found. The children had some exciting days in this book, “Four Little Blossoms and Their Winter Fun,” but all the excitement ended happily.
As soon as school closed in the spring, away went the Blossom family for a good time. What happened to them is told in the fourth book called, “Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island.” Living on an island is great fun and the little Blossoms enjoyed every day of the long summer. It did seem as though they were always finding something, and they helped to find a whole missing family while they were on Apple Tree Island and also helped to rescue a girl and two younger children who were “lost” on another island. They found a great friend in Captain Jenks who ran the motor boat, and they might have stayed happily on the island the whole year round if the same important business that had brought them home from Brookside Farm the summer before had not called them back to Oak Hill the middle of September. School opened, you see.
Back came the Blossom family and Norah was very glad to see them. So was Sam Layton, who had been working on a farm in Canada during the summer, and had taken Philip, Meg’s dog, with him. Sam had had enough of Canada, he said, and he liked Oak Hill much better; he had found no one in Canada, he declared, who could cook like Norah.