BOBBY IS RESCUED
Before the frightened gaze of three pairs of eyes Bobby slid backward
over the edge of the porch roof, out of sight.
"He'll be killed!" sobbed Meg, dashing for the door.
She unlocked it and fled down the hall, followed by Dot and Twaddles.
"What is it? What is it?" screamed Norah, as she caught a glimpse of
Meg's white face from the dining-room where she was beginning to set
the supper table. "Has anything happened to any of ye?"
Meg was already out of the front door. Norah caught up her red shawl
and ran after her.
Norah had lived with the Blossoms ever since Bobby was a baby. He was
now seven years old. There were four little Blossoms now, and never a
dispute about the "baby of the family," for there were two of them!
Dot and Twaddles were twins, you see. They were four years old, but
liked to be considered older, as many of the younger children do.
If you have read the first book of this series, called "Four Little
Blossoms at Brookside Farm," you already know many of their friends,
and above all their Aunt Polly Hayward, who was their mother's older
sister. Brookside Farm was Aunt Polly's home, and the four children
spent a beautiful summer there with her and learned about farm life and
were given a calf, "Carlotta," for their very own. This first book,
too, explains about the real names of the four little Blossoms. Bobby
was Robert Hayward Blossom, Meg's right name Margaret Alice, like her
mother's, and Dot's, Dorothy Anna. Twaddles had a very nice name, too,
Arthur Gifford Blossom, and no one ever knew why he was called
Twaddles. It seemed to suit him, somehow.
The Blossoms, Father and Mother Blossom and the four children, lived in
a town called Oak Hill, where Father Blossom owned a large foundry at
one end of the town. Meg and Bobby, of course, went to school. You
may have read the book before this one, called "Four Little Blossoms at
Oak Hill School," which tells about the troubles Bobby encountered and
how he came safely through them, and of how the twins were so eager to
go to school that they finally did in spite of the fact that they were
only four years old. If you read that book you will remember that Aunt
Polly came down to visit Mother Blossom over Thanksgiving and went to
the school exercises to hear Meg and Bobby recite. She stayed for
Christmas, too. And finally, because every one loved her very much and
because she had no little people of her own at Brookside, she yielded
to the persuasion of Father and Mother Blossom and promised to spend
the rest of the winter in Oak Hill.
Besides Norah, there lived with the Blossoms Sam Layton, who ran Father
Blossom's car and did all the outside work about the place; Philip, a
very intelligent and amiable dog, and Annabel Lee, an affectionate and
much beloved cat. Dear me, Twaddles had some rabbits, too. He would
want you to know those. And now that you are properly introduced, let
us go and see what happened to Bobby.
Meg fell down every one of the front steps in her anxiety to reach her
brother, and Norah alone saved the twins from a like fall. They
tumbled into her and the three held each other up. At least that is
the way Twaddles explained it.
"Bobby! Oh, Bobby, are you dead?" wailed Meg, looking, for some
inexplicable reason, toward the porch roof. Of course Bobby couldn't
be up there when he had fallen off.
"Of course I'm not dead," the indignant voice of Bobby assured her.
"I'm all right, not hurt a bit. But I'm stuck in this old bush."
He had had the good fortune, for he might have been seriously hurt if
he had struck the ground, to tumble into a large bush planted a short
distance from the porch. This bush had not been trimmed for years, and
new shoots had grown up and mingled with the old branches until it was
very tough and tangled and strong. Plunged in the middle of this
sturdy old friend, was Bobby.
"Why don't ye come out?" demanded Norah, relieved to find that he was
not hurt. "I left the teakettle boiling over to come and see if ye
were killed."
"I can't get out," said Bobby, struggling. "Lend us a hand, can't you,
Twaddles?"
Bobby had fallen with enough force to wedge himself tightly into the
heart of the bush, and indeed it was no easy matter to dislodge him.
Norah took one hand and Meg the other, and they tugged and pulled till
Norah was afraid they might pull him out in pieces.
"Where's Sam?" panted Meg. "He could bend down some of the branches."
"Sam," said Norah, "has gone to meet your father with the car."
"Here comes Mother!" shouted Twaddles, as a familiar figure came up the
path. "Oh, Mother, Bobby's stuck!"
Mother Blossom was used to "most anything." She said so often. The
four little Blossoms had heard her. So now, though Aunt Polly gasped
to see the front door wide open and the hall light streaming out over
the snow, three children dancing about in the cold with no wraps on and
a fourth nearly buried in a tall bush, Mother Blossom merely put down
the two or three bundles she carried, leaned her weight against the
bush and directed Norah how to bend down other branches. Then, holding
on to his mother's arm, Bobby crawled out.
"Run in, every one of you, before you take cold," commanded Mother
Blossom quickly. "What have you been doing? Dot looks as though she
had been through a mill."
Sweeping them before her, Mother Blossom soon had them marshaled into
the house. Aunt Polly closed the door and Norah flew to her neglected
kitchen. It was dark outside by this time, and the steadily falling
snow had spread a thick carpet on the ground.
"Did you bring us something?" asked Dot expectantly, her hair-ribbon
over one eye and both pockets torn from her apron.
"Did you bring us something?" inquired Twaddles, shaking Mother
Blossom's packages to try to find out what was in them.
"Did you bring us something?" said Meg and Bobby together, each holding
out a hand for overshoes.
Mother Blossom gave hers to Bobby, and Aunt Polly handed hers to Meg,
to be put away in the hall closet under the stairs. Just as Meg closed
the door of the closet the doorbell rang.
"There's the boy now," announced Mother Blossom. "He's bringing you
the something nice I promised."
The boy from Gobert's, the hardware store uptown, probably had never
received a more enthusiastic welcome in his life than that he
experienced at the Blossom house. Four children flung open the door
for him and fell upon him crying: "Where is it? Who's it for? Let me
see it!"
He was a tall, thin boy, with a wide, cheerful grin, and four children
pouncing upon him at once could not shake his self-possession.
"Got two sleds," he said impressively. "Mrs. Blossom said to send 'em
right up. Where do you want them?"
"Put them down there on the rug," directed Mother Blossom, smiling.
"Don't you want to come in and get warm, Ted?"
"No thanks," replied Ted, putting on his cap, again. "Want to hustle
right home to supper. Looks like a big storm."
He stamped down the steps into the snow, and Meg closed the hall door.
"Two sleds!" Twaddles was round-eyed with admiration. "Now I won't
have to wait all afternoon for my turn."
"Unwrap them," said Mother Blossom. "They're just alike, one for the
girls, and one for you and Bobby. Aunt Polly bought one as her gift."
Aunt Polly had gone upstairs to take off her hat, but the shouts of
excitement brought her back quickly.
"Flexible flyers!" cried Bobby. "Oh, Mother, can't we go out to-night?"
"Mercy, no," answered Mother Blossom. "To-morrow's Saturday, and
you'll have plenty of time to play in the snow. Hurry now, and get
ready for supper. I shouldn't want Daddy to come home and find his
family looking like wild Indians."
It was too much to expect that the children could think or talk
anything but sleds and snow that evening, and many were the anxious
peeps taken through the living-room windows after supper to see how
deep the feathery stuff was.
"Still snowing," reported Sam, as he brought in a great armful of wood
for the fireplace. "Looks like real winter at last."
Mother Blossom was mending the twins' mittens, for their thumbs had a
way of coming through, no matter how often she knitted them new pairs
or darned the old.
"I'm going upstairs to hunt my muffler," said Meg. "I think I left it
in the bureau drawer, but I'd better look."
Father Blossom laughed.
"You all evidently plan to start out right after breakfast, don't you?"
he teased them. "Where is the best coasting, Bobby?"
"On Wayne Place hill," replied Bobby. "My, I'm anxious to let Fred
Baldwin see the new sled."
Aunt Polly folded up her embroidery.
"I'll go upstairs with you, Meg," she said. "I've something I want to
show you. Come into my room after you find your scarf."
As they went upstairs they met Twaddles coming down, carrying the cat,
Annabel Lee, in his arms.
"Going to give her a ride on the sled--just in the hall," he informed
them. "If she gets used to sleds in the house, maybe she'll like to
take a ride outdoors. Philip could pull her."
Aunt Polly was doubtful about Annabel Lee's feelings toward sleds, but
Twaddles was sure she would learn to like coasting.