Decorating Mr. White. See page [134]

FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS
THROUGH
THE HOLIDAYS

BY
MABEL C. HAWLEY
AUTHOR OF “FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS AT BROOKSIDE FARM,”
“FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS ON APPLE TREE ISLAND,” ETC.

Illustrated By
ROBERT GASTON HERBERT

NEW YORK
GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY

Copyright, 1922, by
George Sully & Company

Four Little Blossoms Through the Holidays
MADE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

CONTENTS

FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS
THROUGH THE HOLIDAYS

CHAPTER I
TWADDLES MAKES A GIFT

“WHERE’S the soap, Norah?” demanded Meg importantly. “The soap and the scrubbing brush and a clean towel, please. I need them very much.”

Norah looked at her calmly.

“And why do you be wanting to take a scrubbing brush and the soap down cellar?” she asked. “What are you all up to down there, anyway? I can’t get Twaddles to go to the store for me, and Dot has been poking about in the pantry till she has me wild. What are you doing anyway?”

“Why, you know, Norah, I told you last week,” replied Meg. “We’re getting the Thanksgiving stuff ready to take to school; all the children bring something good to eat and then it is collected and the poor people have a Thanksgiving Day dinner.”

“Well, I’ve been poor in my time,” said Norah, tying on her clean, white apron and preparing to start her dinner, “but never have I been so starved that I could eat soap or, for that matter, a scrubbing brush or a towel, even if ’twas a clean one.”

Meg’s blue eyes widened in surprise, and then she laughed.

“Oh, Norah, how funny you are!” she cried. “You know I don’t want the soap for the poor people to eat! I want to wash the potatoes for them!”

And then it was Norah’s turn to laugh. She laughed till the tears came in her eyes and she had to take her clean apron to wipe them away.

“Meg, Meg, you’ll be the end of me yet!” laughed Norah. “Who ever heard of scrubbing potatoes with soap and water and using a towel to dry ’em? Won’t Sam snicker when I tell him!”

“I don’t see anything funny about that,” said Meg, edging toward the cellar door. “I want to take nice, clean potatoes and you wash those we eat, you know you do, Norah.”

“Yes, child, that I do,” admitted Norah kindly and her voice was sober though her eyes still twinkled. “But water and a good stiff brush will be all your potatoes need. They’ll dry of themselves and you won’t need the towel; and the soap would spoil ’em completely if the poor people should be wistful to have ’em baked.”

“Meg, what you doing? Did you get the soap yet?” shouted Bobby from the bottom of the cellar steps.

“Here’s the brush,” said Norah, hastily giving Meg the small vegetable brush from the shelf over the sink. “Now be off with you and don’t let me find water all over the laundry floor either; drowning Dot in water isn’t going to help the poor folks.”

Meg ran down the steps and joined the other children who were exceedingly busy. Bobby was sorting over the apples in the apple bin and trying to keep Twaddles from eating the perfect ones he selected. Dot had filled the laundry tubs with hot water and was only waiting Meg’s return to put in the turnips and potatoes to be thoroughly washed. As for Twaddles, he was walking up and down before the preserve closet, munching apples, and trying to decide which jar of preserves he would choose. Mother Blossom had promised each of the children one jar of jelly, jam or canned fruit, to take to school.

“And Dot and Twaddles may send something, too,” she had said, when the twins as usual declared that they never had any of the fun because they were too young to go to school. “Meg and Bobby will take your thank-offering to school for you, twinnies.”

It was warm and dry in the cellar and the electric light made it bright even though it was already dark outside at half-past four that November afternoon. The glowing heater occupied one end of the cemented room and the laundry tubs the other. In between were the vegetable and fruit bins and closets where food that would keep through the winter had been stored.

“Norah says we don’t use soap on the potatoes,” reported Meg to Dot. “Maybe we shouldn’t have hot water, either.”

“Course we need hot water,” insisted Dot, who was already splashed from head to foot. “Hot water is the only way to get ’em clean.”

“There’s Sam—we’ll ask him,” said Bobby as someone opened the door of the cellar and came in, bringing a blast of cold, fresh air.

“Well, you look happy,” smiled Sam Layton, who ran the car and mowed the lawn in summer and took care of the heater in winter for the Blossom family. “What mischief are you into now?”

“Sam, don’t you wash turnips and things like that in hot water?” demanded Dot earnestly.

“So that’s it,” cried Sam. “I knew, soon as I saw the cloud of steam from the laundry tubs, that something was going on. Are you counting on washing vegetables in Norah’s pet tubs and in that boiling hot water?”

“They’re for the poor folks,” explained Bobby, polishing an apple by the simple method of rubbing it on his stocking. “We have to take ’em to school tomorrow and we want them to be clean.”

“Very nice and quite correct,” approved Sam seriously. “But somehow it doesn’t fit in with my sanitary ideas to wash vegetables where the clothes are done or polish apples on stockings, Bobby.”

“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.

“Hurry up, Twaddles!” he urged his small brother. “We can’t wait all night. Which do you want, Dot?”

“Blackberry jam,” said Dot, shutting her eyes and gulping as she always did when she had to make a choice.

“Children, dinner will be ready in a minute!” Mother Blossom called down to them.

“Now, you see,” scolded Bobby. “Take the pickles, Twaddles, and put them over there with the apples. I have to lock up the closet.”

Bobby took the jar of peach butter out of Twaddles’ hands and put it back on the shelf. Then he locked the door of the preserve closet and put the key in his pocket to give his mother.

Twaddles scowled.

“I didn’t want pickles,” he said. “You’re mean, Bobby Blossom. I hope the poor folks will throw away your old apples.”

Twaddles never could stay cross very long, though, and before dinner was over, he was teasing with Dot to be allowed to go to the school the next day with Meg and Bobby.

“Please, Daddy,” pleaded the twins. “We’re sending things for the poor people to eat and can’t we go and see them?”

“They won’t be there,” said Meg hastily. “The Charity Bureau comes and gets the stuff and gives it to the poor people; don’t they, Bobby?”

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?”

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.

Between going to school and playing after school and taking care of Philip and Annabel Lee, the cat, and running errands and going with Father Blossom for rides in the car, the days passed swiftly and, almost before they realized it, Thanksgiving Day was just around the corner. And at Thanksgiving time, the children in school were asked to bring donations of food which were taken in charge by the Charity Bureau and by them given to people who otherwise might not have any dinner on the holiday.

And now that you know all about the four little Blossoms, we’ll go back to where we left Sam carrying the potatoes and apples into the school.

“Is that all?” he asked, when he had cleared the back seat of the boxes and bundles. “All right, then, I must go right back for your father. Don’t forget to see that the Bureau gets the cologne, Meg,” and he grinned.

Sam drove off in the car and Meg and Bobby ran down the stone steps into the basement of the school where the thank-offerings were to be stored. Once it had been the custom of the school to arrange everything in neat rows on the platform in the assembly hall, but after a handsome pyramid of apples had shifted during the opening prayer and had bumped—one at a time—down over the edge of the platform and into the aisles and, another time, a jar of preserves had burst and stained the green velvet carpet, it was wisely decided that everything should be carried into the basement and kept there.

“Oh, look at all the stuff!” cried Bobby when he saw the collection of gifts spread out on the plain wooden tables which were used for lunch tables on the days when it was too stormy to go home at noon. “Look, Meg, someone even brought a turkey!”

Sure enough, there was a fat turkey, neatly folded into a basket lined with orange crepe paper. One of the pupils who lived on a farm had brought him as her thank-offering and if the fortunate family who found that turkey in their basket Thanksgiving Eve admired the gift as much as the boys and girls of Oak Hill school did, there could have been no doubt of their thankfulness.

Mr. Carter, the principal of the grammar and primary grades, and Miss Wright, the vice-principal of the primary school, were busy taking the things the children brought and finding places for them on the tables.

“What fine, clean potatoes!” said Miss Wright, smiling at Meg. “You scrubbed those well, didn’t you, dear? I’m so glad when the children take special pains to make their gifts attractive, for I believe the pleasure is doubled for the giver and the receiver. What is that in your hand, Meg? Something for the thank-offering?”

Meg had forgotten Twaddles’ bottle of cologne which she held tightly in her hand.

“My little brother, Twaddles, sent it,” she explained shyly, blushing a little. “It’s—it’s cologne, and he meant it for the Charity Bureau. He’s only four years old and he doesn’t understand about the Bureau very well.”

Mr. Carter laughed and so did Miss Wright, and the children who were listening giggled. But in a moment Mr. Carter put out his hand.

“Let me take it, Meg,” he said gently. “I know just the place for it. One of the Bureau workers told me yesterday about a poor old lady who has no one to love and take care of her. She sits all day long in a ward with seven other old ladies and we are going to make up a special little basket for her because she is ill. It will be a pretty basket with a little tea and candy and other dainties old ladies like in it and on the very top we’ll put Twaddles’ bottle of cologne. How will that be?”

“And I’ll put a bow of cheerful red ribbon on it,” promised Miss Wright. “Be sure and tell Twaddles, Meg, that we think it was lovely of him to send such a gift.”

“He’ll be—he’ll be thankful!” stammered Meg and then Mr. Carter and Miss Wright and the children laughed again, but as the principal said, proper laughing was good for them all.

“Now upstairs with you, every one,” he said presently, when everything was in order, “the assembly bell will ring in five minutes and we don’t want any stragglers. Tim Roon, put that apple back; I’m surprised I should have to speak to anyone about touching the gifts meant for the poor and sick.”

Tim Roon, a boy in Bobby’s room, though two or three years older than Bobby who was seven and a half, tossed the apple he had taken from the table angrily back and it fell to the floor and rolled under the table. Bobby crawled under and brought it out and dusted it off carefully with his clean handkerchief. Then he put it with the other apples and went upstairs with Meg who had waited for him.

“Won’t Twaddles be glad about the cologne?” said Meg happily. “I do think Mr. Carter is just as nice!”

“Yes, he is,” agreed Bobby, “and you could see he remembers Twaddles. So does Miss Wright. Well, I’ll see you at recess, Meg.”

Twaddles and Dot had paid a visit to the school the term before and it was not likely that anyone who had met the twins would ever forget them. Mr. Carter did not and neither did Miss Wright. As for Miss Mason, who had taught Bobby and Meg last year and in whose class Meg was this term, she was always asking about Twaddles and Dot, and she declared she quite looked forward to the time when they should be old enough to come to school.

Meg missed Bobby very much and often wished that they could go through school in the same grade. But he was a class ahead of her and they saw each other only at recess, once the school day had started. This morning, as soon as the recess gong sounded, a stream of children headed for the basement to inspect the thank-offerings again.

“What’s that, Edward?” Bobby asked a fat little boy who had dashed to the basement door and came back lugging something yellow and round. “What’s that for?”

Edward Kurler was in Meg’s class. He was a good-natured, not particularly quick child, and very ready to do whatever anyone else suggested. When he played “tag” with the other boys, Edward was apt to be “it” the greater part of the game; but he was so good-natured he never was known to be cross about it.

“I brought a pumpkin,” he explained, his own face as round and shiny as the pumpkin he carried. “I didn’t have time to bring it in ’fore school opened. I guess the poor folks will like a pumpkin—they can make pies out of it.”

Tim Roon came up to the pumpkin and looked at it closely.

“Why, it’s a jack-o-lantern!” he said in surprise.

“Yes, it is,” nodded Edward. “I had it left over from Hallowe’en. My uncle made it for me.”

“But you haven’t any candle in it,” said Tim. “I never heard of a pumpkin lantern without a candle, did you, Charlie?”

Charlie Black was Tim Roon’s chum and the two boys usually helped each other when they planned any mischief.

“No, I never heard of a pumpkin without a candle,” said Charlie seriously. “And I don’t think you ought to give one away ’less you have a candle for it, Edward.”

Bobby and Meg leaned up against the table and stared at Edward anxiously. They knew a candle should go inside a pumpkin lantern, too. The other pupils began to think Edward had made a mistake and that his thank-offering had something very wrong with it. Edward felt that way himself.

“I’ll lend you a candle, if you like,” offered Tim Roon. “Of course I’ll have to have it back, but you can have it till school closes.”

“Oh, give it to him,” said Charlie Black. “Light it for him and let’s see how the lantern looks. Maybe it isn’t a good lantern.”

“All right, I will,” agreed Tim, his black eyes snapping with naughtiness. “Wait a minute, Edward, and I’ll show you how to do things right.”

Mr. Carter had gone over to the grammar school to see how their thank-offerings were coming in, and Miss Wright was busy in her office. There was no one in the basement to stop Tim Roon as he pulled what looked like a red candle from his pocket and fitted it in the hollow pumpkin. He stood the lantern in the center of a pile of apples and took a match from his pocket. None of the boys were allowed to carry matches and they looked at him in surprise.

“Now I’ll light it for you,” said Tim, touching the match to the candle he had placed inside.

Meg leaned forward to watch and her pretty hair was almost touching the pumpkin when Bobby shouted, “Look out!” and pulled her back.

Then with a loud noise the pumpkin blew into many pieces, scattering in all directions and sending the apples rolling to the floor!

CHAPTER III
FOUR GRATEFUL CHILDREN

JUST as the pumpkin burst, two things happened; Mr. Carter stepped inside the door and the gong rang to announce the end of recess.

Tim Roon shot for the door and the children followed. Tim was eager to escape the principal and the others did not want to be late in returning to their classrooms. But Mr. Carter stood in the doorway and did not move to let them pass.

“What was that noise I heard just now?” he asked. “It sounded like an explosion.”

No one answered and Mr. Carter turned to Miss Wright who had come downstairs to see why so many pupils were absent from their rooms.

“Say to the teachers, please,” he said, “that I am detaining the children; they will come up presently.”

“Oh, dear!” whispered Meg to Bobby, “now he’s going to scold.”

The principal heard her and he smiled a little.

“Not scold, Meg, unless someone deserves it,” he said pleasantly. “What was that noise I heard?”

“The pumpkin blew up,” replied Meg uncomfortably.

“The pumpkin blew up!” repeated Mr. Carter in astonishment. “Whose pumpkin? What made it blow up?”

Meg was silent.

“Bobby,” said Mr. Carter, “was it your pumpkin?”

“No, sir,” answered Bobby.

“Please, Mr. Carter,” said Edward bravely. “It was my pumpkin. I brought it for the poor people. But it was only a hollow one.”

“Well, why did you want to blow it up?” asked Mr. Carter, puzzled. “And what did you do to it to make it blow up, Edward?”

“I didn’t do anything to it,” protested Edward.

“I want to know and I want to know at once, what caused that pumpkin to explode,” said the principal sternly and Tim Roon wished suddenly that he had had nothing to do with it. “Edward!”

“Yes, sir?” poor Edward replied faintly.

“What made your pumpkin explode?” asked Mr. Carter.

“A candle,” said Edward, who really believed that Tim Roon had put a candle in his pumpkin. “They said a hollow pumpkin had to have a candle in it.”

“Nonsense,” declared Mr. Carter. “No candle ever exploded. Who put the candle in your pumpkin?”

Bobby thought “telling tales” under any circumstances, the most dreadful thing anyone could do. He did hope that Edward would not give Tim away. Tim had the same hope, but he did not trust the fat boy. Instead, he leaned against him and pinched him.

“You know what will happen to you, if you tell,” he whispered warningly.

“Ouch!” cried Edward, but the principal’s sharp eyes had seen Tim.

“So you’re the culprit, Tim,” he said severely. “I might have known. What did you put in the pumpkin? Tell me the truth.”

“A firecracker,” replied Tim sullenly.

“Did you light it?” persisted Mr. Carter.

Tim nodded. He knew what was coming.

“Very well,” said the principal. “I will wait for you, Tim, while you put the scattered apples back as you found them and carry out the pieces of pumpkin. Then you and I will go up to the office and have a little talk. I think your father will be surprised to hear that you are carrying matches in your pocket. You may go back to your rooms, children, and please go quietly.”

It was all very well to tell then to go quietly, but such a buzzing of tongues as sounded in the halls and corridors as the boys and girls went upstairs! They talked about how frightened they had been when the pumpkin exploded and they talked about what might happen to Tim and they wondered what made him think of lighting a firecracker and how Mr. Carter had happened to come just in time to hear the noise of the explosion.

“I think it was a silly thing to do,” said Bobby indignantly. “Meg was so close to that pumpkin her hair would have been burned if I hadn’t pulled her back. And now Edward hasn’t even a jack-o-lantern to give the poor people.”

School closed at one o’clock that day because the next day was Thanksgiving, and of course as soon as Meg and Bobby reached home the twins demanded to know about the thank-offerings. Twaddles was delighted to hear about his bottle of cologne and he said that he was sure it would look nice on the Bureau. As Meg observed, there was no use in trying to explain that again to him, so she didn’t try.

When they told of the pumpkin Edward Kurler had brought and of the trouble Tim Roon had made for himself, Twaddles listened breathlessly, but Dot turned up her small nose.

“Huh!” she said scornfully. “I think Edward is a very queer boy. Nobody could eat a hollow pumpkin, could they, Norah?”

“Not a very hollow one,” admitted Norah, “but neither can I make tarts from a hollow bowl, Dot. If you don’t stop ‘tasting’ pretty soon, we’ll have no tarts for tomorrow.”

The four little Blossoms were in the kitchen, helping Norah who was very busy getting ready for the Thanksgiving Day dinner. Bobby and Meg had found the twins hovering around the kitchen table when they came home from school and they had had their lunch in the kitchen, for Mother Blossom was in the city for the day and Father Blossom seldom came home to lunch.

“And now we’ll help you,” said Meg, as soon as they had finished lunch. So Norah had four helpers for the rest of the afternoon.

“I’d as lief have four whistling winds to help me rake leaves,” said Sam, coming in for a drink of water and finding Norah surrounded by willing hands and exceedingly willing little mouths. “But then, ’pears to me you are managing to turn out some work, Norah,” and Sam helped himself to a couple of sugar cookies from a golden-brown pile left to cool on a clean cloth.

“You’re as bad as the children,” sighed Norah, but she gave Sam two more cookies before she told him to “be off.”

“Sam says he’s thankful it hasn’t snowed yet,” reported Meg at the dinner table that night. “He says he wants to finish painting the garage roof before it snows.”

“What are you thankful for, Meg?” asked Father Blossom suddenly.

“Tarts!” cried Dot, before Meg could answer, managing to tip her glass of milk into her lap.

“Dot, you must learn to be more careful,” said Mother Blossom. “I suppose I ought to be thankful it wasn’t cocoa you upset. And you answered when Daddy was speaking to Meg.”

“I can’t think in a hurry,” apologized Meg, while Dot was being mopped up with a clean napkin. “Could you wait a minute, Daddy?”

“I’ll ask you again tomorrow morning,” said Father Blossom. “I’ll expect each one of you to be able to tell me then why you are thankful. Think it over carefully and then you’ll be ready.”

“Why am I thankful?” said Meg to herself, over and over that evening till bedtime came. “Why am I thankful, I wonder?”

“Oh, Daddy!” Bobby called down over the banisters, after he was supposed to be in bed. “Daddy! Is it just the same to think why you are thankful and what you are thankful for?”

“Just about the same,” answered Father Blossom. “If you think about what you are thankful for you’ll soon know why you are thankful. Do you understand?”

“I—I guess so,” said Bobby doubtfully and he went back to bed.

In the morning the four little Blossoms found a chocolate turkey at each plate and Mother Blossom explained that they were a present from Daddy.

“Well, who can tell me for what they’re thankful?” asked Father Blossom, as Norah brought in the oatmeal.

“I know, Daddy!” cried Twaddles. “I’m thankful I found Bobby’s knife.”

“You found my knife?” said Bobby, frowning. “You found my knife? Why, my knife isn’t lost—I left in the top drawer of my desk in my room.”

“Yes, I know you did,” admitted Twaddles, “and I borrowed it to whittle a new mast for my boat and I couldn’t remember where I left it. But Norah found it on the back stoop,” concluded Twaddles cheerfully.

“If you don’t leave my things alone!” began Bobby wrathfully. “I’ll—I’ll——”

“Now we won’t have any quarrels Thanksgiving morning,” said Father Blossom quietly. “Bobby, suppose you tell me what you are thankful for.”

“For turkey,” said Bobby promptly, forgetting to be angry at Twaddles as he remembered the plump bird he had seen hanging in the “cold room” where Norah kept her food supplies and the refrigerator.

“I’m thankful for the maple sugar Aunt Polly sent us,” cried Dot. “You said we could have a piece after breakfast, Mother.”

“Meg?” asked Father Blossom. “What are you thinking of, dear?”

Meg raised her blue eyes and smiled sunnily.

“I’m thankful Mr. and Mrs. Harley and Dick and Herbert found each other,” she said simply.

Meg, you see, remembered the Harleys who had once lived on Apple Tree Island and the trouble and sorrow they had known when the family was separated.

“I think we’re all thankful for the Harleys,” said Mother Blossom, “and I’m thankful for my whole Blossom family this morning!”

Thanksgiving dinner was to be at one o’clock and little Miss Florence, the dressmaker, was coming, and Mrs. Jordan and her lame son Paul, for whom the four little Blossoms had once given a fair.

“If we can’t have Aunt Polly, or any of the dear farm folk, at least we can make a happy day for someone else,” Mother Blossom had said, when she sent Bobby to invite Miss Florence and Mrs. Jordan.

“And after dinner, I’ll take everyone for a ride,” promised Father Blossom, “that is, if it doesn’t snow.”

So the four children spent their morning between the kitchen, where Norah and Mother Blossom were cooking the most delicious smelling things to eat, and the garage, where Father Blossom and Sam were going over the car to make sure that it would be in good order for the drive that afternoon.

“It’s my turn to sit up with you, isn’t it, Sam?” asked Dot eagerly. “You always take Meg, but it is my turn, really it is.”

“Your father is going to drive,” replied Sam to this. “I’m going to lend Norah a hand with all the dinner dishes. You can argue with him about riding on the front seat, Dot.”

Though Father Blossom had bought the car the spring before, the four little Blossoms still argued about whose turn it was to ride with the driver nearly every time they went for a ride. They had a system of “taking turns,” but this did not always prevent friction because sometimes the twins both squeezed into the front seat and then neither one was willing to admit that “counted.” As a rule, though, they settled the dispute amiably and without any suggestion from Sam or Father Blossom.

“Mother says we must come in and put on our best dresses, Dot,” said Meg, coming back to the garage from a trip to the kitchen. “The table is all set and it’s most time for the company to come.”

“All right, I’m coming,” Dot answered, brushing past Father Blossom who was washing his hands at the lavatory in one corner of the garage.

“Wait a minute, Dot,” he said, catching hold of her blouse. “What on earth have you in your pockets, child?”

CHAPTER IV
DRIVING WITH DADDY

DOT wore a blue serge sailor suit and she had four pockets, two in the skirt and two in the blouse, and in addition there were two pockets in the blue reefer coat she wore. Apparently all six pockets were stuffed full of something.

“Mother said you shouldn’t put things in the pockets of your cloth dress,” Meg told her little sister. “They get stuck up and gummy and she can’t clean them.”

“Well, I thought I was going to wear this dress all day,” explained Dot, looking earnestly at Father Blossom, “so I wanted some raisins in case anyone was hungry while we’re out driving this afternoon.”

Dot showed them her coat pockets stuffed with raisins, packed in so tightly that they made two hard lumps. It was these hard lumps Father Blossom had felt when she brushed past him.

“What’s that in your blouse?” asked Bobby.

“My choc’late turkey,” said Dot. Alas, the chocolate had melted and the turkey was now sadly mixed with blue serge and red flannel.

“What’s in the other pocket?” suggested Twaddles.

Dot looked a little confused.

“Cookies,” she said. “I thought Norah wouldn’t mind. I only took three.”

“And both her skirt pockets are stuffed full of nuts!” announced Meg, who had been examining them. “Salted nuts. I’ll bet you didn’t ask Mother if you could have them, either.”

“Well, I was going to afterward,” said Dot, half crying. “I didn’t eat a single thing. I was saving them for folks to have this afternoon. So there!”

“Run along in and get ready for dinner,” directed Father Blossom, trying not to look at Sam, lest he laugh. “Next time, ask Mother, Dot; you are old enough to know you mustn’t help yourself to food without asking.”

Mother Blossom sighed a little over the stuffed pockets, for Dot’s dresses seemed to be always in need of cleaning and repairing. But she said that she knew her little girl had not meant to be careless and that no one should be scolded on Thanksgiving Day.

“And I don’t believe even you will be hungry after you eat the dinner Norah has for us,” said Mother Blossom smiling as she tied Dot’s pretty new red hair-ribbon on the thick dark hair. “There is the bell—suppose you run down, Dot, and that will save Norah a trip to the door.”

Dot, looking very neat and pretty in her red and white dotted challis dress, danced downstairs to let Miss Florence in. Dot had such dark hair and eyes that all shades of red just suited her. Meg’s frock was blue and white challis and her hair-ribbon matched her blue eyes.

By the time old Mrs. Jordan and the lame Paul had arrived and had warmed their cold hands at the blazing wood fire in the living-room, Norah said dinner was ready. And such a dinner as it was! Aunt Polly had sent the turkey from Brookside Farm and most of the vegetables, too! And the currant jelly was the reddest you ever saw, and certainly the pumpkin pie was the yellowest! Pale little Miss Florence, who sewed all day long, day after day, week after week, for the people in Oak Hill and who had no family of her own to love her, said she had never tasted such delicious stuffing as came out of the big brown turkey, and as for Mrs. Jordan and Paul they ate as though a good dinner was a solemn and important affair, and perhaps it was to them.

“It isn’t snowing, is it, Daddy?” said Twaddles, the moment dinner was over.

“No, I shouldn’t say it was actually snowing,” answered Father Blossom teasingly, “but it looks very much to me as though it might snow. The paper said snow today and those clouds are pretty heavy.”

“But you said if it didn’t snow, you’d take us,” urged Bobby. “Didn’t he, Meg?”

“Yes,” nodded Meg. “Yes, you did, Daddy.”

“Then I must keep my word,” said Father Blossom gravely. “Mother, have you enough wraps to keep us all warm?”

Mother Blossom had brought down heavy coats and robes and blankets early that morning, and now she and Norah began to wrap up the guests to make them comfortable for the drive. Father Blossom’s car was big and roomy, with side curtains that could be put up in case of a storm, but it was not a closed car. All the Blossoms were fond of plenty of fresh air and they liked to be warmly bundled up and then to ride through the wind and cold and come home with rosy cheeks and bright eyes and, goodness, such appetites!

Sam brought the car around and first Mrs. Jordan was helped in, then Paul next to her, and then little Miss Florence who, as Father Blossom said, hardly took up any room at all. Mother Blossom took one of the folding seats and Meg the other. Meg wanted very much to sit next to her father, but she was little woman enough not to tease when she knew there were others to be considered. Mother Blossom had explained to the children that this ride was really to give pleasure to Miss Florence and Mrs. Jordan and Paul, who seldom enjoyed an automobile trip.

“Tuck Dot away in there with you, Mother,” said Father Blossom, lifting that small girl in, “and I’ll take the boys with me. Then coming home, Dot may changes places with Twaddles, if she likes.”

Finally everyone was nicely packed in and away they went, leaving Sam and Norah to talk over the dinner and eat their own and wash the dishes and put them away.

“Don’t forget to feed Philip and Annabel Lee,” cried Meg, and Sam shouted back that he would see to “Fill-Up.” This was Sam’s name for the dog and although Meg did not like it she was used to it by this time.

“Did you bring anything to eat, Dot?” asked Bobby, mischievously, twisting in his seat to speak to his small sister. Dot was almost buried under the wraps and blankets in the tonneau.

“No, I didn’t,” she said indignantly. “I meant to bring my turkey, but he’s stuck to my serge dress.”

“Daddy!” cried Twaddles suddenly. “Oh, Daddy, I dropped Bobby’s knife!”

Twaddles never went out in the car that he didn’t drop something. His family were used to his habit and sometimes Father Blossom stopped the car and sometimes he didn’t. It depended on what Twaddles dropped. This time Father Blossom knew he could not have dropped anything in the road because he was safely tucked in between Bobby and himself.

“Daddy, make Twaddles leave my knife alone!” said Bobby. “He never even asks me if he can have it and he’s always losing it. It’s my knife.”

“I’ll get down and pick it up for you,” offered Twaddles generously.

“You leave it alone!” cried Bobby furiously. “I’ll get it myself, and if you ever touch it again——” Bobby didn’t say what would happen, but from the frown on his face Twaddles was left to guess that it would be mighty serious.

However, Twaddles had a will of his own and he began to wriggle, intending to slip down to the floor and recover the knife. Bobby flung his arm around him to hold him and then, as Twaddles kicked, Bobby began to kick, too.

“Children!” said Mother Blossom in warning, but she was too late.

Father Blossom stopped the car.

“Meg and Dot, change places with Bobby and Twaddles,” he said very quietly. “Hurry, please, and don’t keep us waiting.”

Sam Layton often threatened to make them change places when they argued, but this was the first time it had ever really happened to them. Poor Bobby and Twaddles got slowly down and Meg and Dot crawled out and up on the front seat with Father Blossom. Then, when the robes and blankets were all fixed again, they drove on. Bobby and Twaddles were very quiet for half an hour and Meg and Dot did not talk much, either. Father and Mother Blossom and the guests had the conversation all to themselves.

“Ralph!” said Mother Blossom, when they had driven several miles, “Ralph, I do believe it is beginning to snow.”

“I thought so myself a few minutes ago,” answered Father Blossom. “I’ll go on to the next cross-roads and turn. We can be home before it storms heavily.”

But the white flakes began to come faster and faster and the road was white when they reached the cross-road. Father Blossom turned the car and they started back to Oak Hill. Dot was half asleep, though she would have been much aggrieved if anyone had said so, when Meg said excitedly that she saw something in the road.

“Look, Daddy, over under that bush!” she insisted. “Let me get out and see. Oh, maybe it’s lost in this snowstorm!”

“Let Bobby go, Daughter,” said Father Blossom stopping the car. “Bobby, don’t you want to run over and see what that is under the bush?”

Bobby was very glad to go and he was out in a minute and running across the road.

“It’s a dog, Daddy,” he shouted. “A little white dog. And he is so cold!”

“Bring him here and we’ll take care of him,” said Father Blossom, smiling at Meg who was nearly jumping up and down with anxiety. “Trust Meg to see an animal in trouble. I never should have noticed that bit of fluff under the bush. Why, he’s almost the color of the snow!”

The little white dog Bobby brought back in his arms was so tiny and so soft and silky that he might easily have been overlooked in a snowstorm. He was evidently lost and had crawled under the bush in an effort to keep warm. Meg held him on her lap and put her muff over him to keep the cold air off.

“He has a silver collar on,” she reported, “but I can’t read it. Can you, Bobby?”

Bobby leaned over the back of the seat and looked at the collar.

“M-A-T-S-I-E,” he spelled out slowly. “What a funny name. But there’s some more—C-L-I-F-T-O-N P-A-R-K.”

“Why, Clifton Park is thirty miles from here,” said Father Blossom in surprise. “The poor dog never could have come that distance. I wonder——”

Before he could say what he wondered, a handsome shining limousine, coming down the road slowly from the other direction, stopped. The chauffeur held up his hand.

“Have you seen anything of a dog?” he asked anxiously. “A little white dog, with a silver collar?”

And maybe that chauffeur wasn’t surprised when four children shouted at him, “Is the dog’s name ‘Matsie’?”

“Yes, we found such a dog,” said Father Blossom, smiling. “Back about forty rods, under a bush. He was pretty cold, but he seems to be all right.”

The chauffeur came over and took the dog Meg held out to him.

“I’m much obliged to you,” he said awkwardly. “It would cost me my job if I went home and told ’em I’d lost Matsie; that dog’s worth a thousand dollars and took first prize at the last dog show. Mrs. Hemming thinks a heap of him.”

“Well, it is easy to lose a small animal like that,” said Father Blossom. “Don’t you think you’d better shut him up in a safe place till you get home?”

“You bet I will,” grinned the chauffeur. “I guess Matsie dropped out when I went into a rut back there; the rest of the trip he rides down under the seat tied fast.”

He thanked the Blossoms again for finding the dog for him and went back to his car, and Father Blossom continued the journey toward home. Twaddles, who had been remarkably silent the whole trip, spoke just as they were coming into Oak Hill.

“Well, I never dropped a dog out of the car, did I?” he said seriously, and Mother Blossom kissed him and said no, he never had.

“But you’ve dropped about everything else,” declared Bobby gloomily.

CHAPTER V
THE FOOTBALL GAME

FATHER BLOSSOM drove Mrs. Jordan and Paul home and left Miss Florence at her house. They all said it had been the happiest Thanksgiving they had known in years and the four little Blossoms were happy, too.

“I like to have company come to our house,” said Meg, as she was going to bed that night. “Don’t you, Dot?”

“Yes, I do,” replied Dot sleepily. “I’m thankful for company.”

The next day there was no school, of course, and though Bobby had planned to play with Meg and the twins, two boys came to ask him to play football before he was through breakfast.

“Fred Baldwin has a football, Mother,” said Bobby earnestly. “And we’re getting up a football team. Do you care if I go over to his house and play?”

“Let me be on the team?” begged Twaddles. “I can play football, Bobby. Can’t I, Dot?”

“You’re too little,” answered Bobby impatiently. “Fred is waiting to know if I can come, Mother.”

“But, dear, I don’t see where you are going to play,” protested Mother Blossom. “You can’t play on the school field, because the older boys have that for their use.”

“They’re all through playing football now,” explained Bobby. “The last game was Thanksgiving. There’s a vacant lot back of Fred’s house, Mother, and we can play there. I’m the captain.”

“All right, dear, run along and have a good time,” said Mother Blossom, giving him a kiss. “Be sure you come home at twelve o’clock. And, Twaddles, I’ll think of something nice for you to do at home. When you are as old as Bobby, you may play football, too.”

Fred Baldwin and Palmer Davis, two boys in Bobby’s class at school, were waiting for him. Fred had his football under his arm.

“We’re going over to Bertrand Ashe’s,” Fred explained. “His cousin is visiting him over Thanksgiving and his brother is captain of the football team at the State University. So he ought to be a good player.”

Bobby thought a boy who was fortunate enough to have a brother captain of a University team ought to be a good player, too, and he did not wonder that Fred had decided to play in Bertrand’s yard.

“Hello,” said Bertrand, when he saw the three boys. “This is my cousin, Elmer Lambert.”

“Hello,” said Elmer, a tall thin boy with a freckled face and nice, merry blue eyes. “I see you have a football.”

Fred was proud of his football. It was a present from his grandfather, he explained. In five minutes the boys were lined up ready for a game. Of course they knew a real football team needs eleven players, but as Bertrand sensibly said there wasn’t room for eleven in the yard anyway and they could get alone with five.

But from the start the game didn’t go smoothly. Bobby kicked the ball over the fence and then, when he had climbed after it and brought it back, Fred kicked it over the fence on the other side.

“There isn’t room enough here,” complained Elmer. “Can’t we play somewhere else, Bertrand?”

“Back of the carpenter shop, across the street,” suggested Bertrand. “The shop’s built on the edge of the street and there’s an open place in back. Come on, I’ll show you.”

The snowstorm which had begun so briskly the afternoon before when the four little Blossoms were out automobiling had not amounted to much after all. It had melted during the night and though there was a sharp wind and it was cold, the ground was almost bare.

The carpenter shop “on the edge of the street,” was a one-story building on the street end of a long, narrow lot that stretched through to the next block. There was no one around when the boys went around back of the shop and it seemed to be locked up securely. Bertrand said he thought the man who owned the shop had gone away to spend Thanksgiving with his son in another town.

“Will he mind if we play here?” asked Elmer.

“He won’t care a bit,” replied Bertrand confidently. “We won’t hurt anything, and besides he won’t know about it.”

Which wasn’t a very good argument and would have made Father Blossom laugh if he had heard it. But the boys were too eager to resume their game to pay much attention to anything Bertrand said.

Bobby, as captain, had his “signals” written down on a piece of paper and he first explained them to his players and then called off the numbers as he had seen the high school captain do. And when they had tried all the signals three times, Elmer suggested that they practice punting.

“That’s very important,” he explained, “and my brother says if you can develop a good punter on your team, half your troubles are settled. I think Bobby does pretty well now.”

Bobby was very much pleased at this praise from a boy whose brother was a big football captain and he resolved, more firmly than ever, to make the football team the first year he was in high school.

“Punt now,” urged Elmer. “Stand back, fellows, and give him a chance. Go on and try, Bobby.”

Bobby took the ball from Fred, held it a moment in his hands and dropped it. Before it reached the ground he kicked and his toe sent it curving in a long line over the lot toward the carpenter shop.

“My goodness, it went in the window!” gasped Palmer Davis. “Bobby, you’ve kicked it into the carpenter shop!”

“How’ll we get it out?” asked Fred anxiously. “All the doors are locked, the back one, too. I saw the padlocks. How’ll we get my ball back?”

The five boys looked at each other anxiously. There was Fred’s new, expensive football inside the locked shop. What would the carpenter say when he found it there and would he give it back?

“Do you know the man who owns the shop, Bertrand?” asked Elmer sensibly. “Is he cross?”

“Yes, he is,” said Bertrand quickly. “He’ll be mad anyway ’cause we’ve been playing here and I don’t believe he’ll give the ball back. He doesn’t like boys much, ever since a gang used to play round his shop and steal pieces of wood and tin and solder. That’s why he had the locks put on the doors; he used to have just bolts.”

Bertrand had a memory like a great many other people. He remembered these small details after something had happened.

“Well, I didn’t break a window,” said Bobby hopefully. “The ball went through that little window that was left open; ’tisn’t as if I had broken a window in his shop.”

“That won’t make any difference,” said Bertrand gloomily. “I tell you he will be mad ’cause we played on his lot. I think we’d better go home before he comes and finds us here.”

“I won’t go without my ball,” protested Fred. “It’s brand-new and I want it. Bobby, you have to ask the man for it, ’cause you kicked it through the window.”

As they talked the boys had been walking slowly toward the carpenter shop, and now they stood directly under the open window. It was smaller than the three regular-sized windows which were closed—and presumably locked. Bobby could reach the sill of the small window with the tips of his fingers.

“I’m going in to get it,” he said quietly to Fred. “You watch, and if you see the man coming sing out.”

“Are you going in?” asked Fred, surprised. “Maybe you can’t get out. Aren’t you afraid, Bobby?”

Bobby considered. He was a very honest little boy.

“Yes, I’m afraid, kind of,” he said truthfully. “But I’d be more afraid to go and ask the man for it. Be sure you yell if you see him coming.”

He scrambled up to the window sill and the boys helped push him through the small opening. They heard him drop down to the floor and begin rummaging around.

“I don’t see where it went,” he cried. “Gee, there’s a lot of things in here.”