BROKEN WIRES
Nan jumped so, because of Freddie’s shouts and Flossie’s screams, that
she almost dropped the batch of biscuits she was just then putting into
the oven. But she managed to get them in and close the door. Then she
turned and said to Freddie:
“You shouldn’t fool me that way! Oh, how you startled me!”
“He isn’t fooling you,” said Bert. “Flossie did really sit in the
biscuits!”
By this time the little girl herself had come to know that something
was wrong. She felt something soft in the chair where she had been
sitting--something soft with a hard rim around it that had not been in
it when she got up to watch Nan use the biscuit-cutter.
“Oh! Oh!” screamed Flossie. “What is it?”
“Don’t yell so. You aren’t hurt!” said Nan.
“But the buskits are hurt!” yelled Freddie. “They’re all squashed flat!
Look at ’em!”
This was quite true--Flossie had sat down rather hard on the biscuits
and they were “squashed,” as Freddie said.
“But you can roll ’em out again, Nan,” suggested Bert. “They aren’t
spoiled. Flossie’s dress is clean--I mean it was clean before she sat
in the biscuits.”
“Is my dress--now--is it dirty?” asked Flossie, trying to turn herself
around to look at the back of her garment.
“It’s all sticky dough and flour,” stated Freddie. “You look like a
buskit yourself, Flossie!”
“Oh, dear!” sighed the little girl, and she would have burst into tears
but for Nan, who put her arms about her and kindly said:
“Never mind. Your dress will wash and the biscuits aren’t hurt much. I
can roll them out again, and I’ll give you two with sugar on.”
“Oh, all right,” agreed Flossie, and her face brightened. Then, as
Freddie said, she “squeezed back” her tears, and they all laughed at
the funny accident.
Bert picked most of the dough off Flossie’s dress while Nan took the
“squashed” biscuits from the pan, rolled the dough out again on the
moulding board, and made that batch over. Soon they were baking in the
oven with the others.
“They smell good!” declared Freddie, when his sister opened the oven
door to see how the biscuits were browning.
“They’ll taste a lot better,” laughed Bert, while Nan took Flossie
upstairs to put a clean dress on her.
In spite of the accident, Nan’s biscuits turned out very well, only a
few of them being burned, and the children ate many of them for supper.
“Has Dinah come back?” asked Mrs. Pry, when Nan took her up a tray with
her supper on it.
“Dinah come back? No, what makes you ask that?” inquired Nan, in
surprise.
“Well, I see you have hot biscuits,” went on Mrs. Pry, with twinkles
in her eyes, “and I thought Dinah had come back to make them.”
“No, I did it!” exclaimed Nan, and she felt very proud that Mrs. Pry
should think the biscuits as good as those which Dinah could make.
“You made these biscuits! My, that’s wonderful!” said Aunt Sallie,
tasting one. “You are certainly a good little housekeeper.”
This pleased Nan more than ever and the lonesome feeling that was
coming over her again, as night began to fall, seemed to pass away for
a time.
After supper, or dinner, as it was called when Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey
were at home, Bert and Nan washed and dried the dishes. Flossie begged
so hard to be allowed to help that Nan let her dry a few.
“But you must be careful and not drop any, or they’ll break,” cautioned
Nan.
“I’ll be careful,” promised Flossie.
But alas! She was wiping a saucer when Freddie, who was playing on the
floor with his train of cars, made a sudden movement.
“Look out!” cried Flossie. “Don’t jiggle me!”
But her small brother must have “jiggled” her, or done something, for
the saucer slipped from Flossie’s hands.
Crash! It fell to the floor, breaking into half a dozen pieces.
For a moment Flossie stood there, looking at it with open mouth. Then
as she realized what had happened she burst into tears and gasped:
“Freddie made me do it! That’s all your fault, Freddie Bobbsey. It’s
your fault!”
“Oh, it isn’t!” cried Freddie. “I wasn’t wiping the dish!”
“But you--you--now--you jiggled me!” sobbed Flossie.
“That’s what he did,” declared Bert, who had seen what had happened.
“Never mind, my dear!” soothed Nan. “It was an old saucer anyhow, and
it was cracked.”
“Was--was it?” faltered Flossie.
“Yes, it was,” Nan replied, and this was true. It was an old dish
which had had a fall before. But this was the end of it. “Dinah often
said she was going to throw that old saucer away,” went on Nan. “Now
I’ll do it.”
It made Flossie feel better to know that she had not broken a good
dish. So she dried her tears. But Nan decided that she would take no
more chances with letting the little girl dry dishes.
“You two go in the other room with Bert and pop corn,” she suggested,
looking straight at Bert to tell him to get the small twins out of the
way. “I’ll finish the dishes,” Nan whispered to him.
“Oh, pop corn! Pop corn!” cried Freddie, dancing around. “How I love
pop corn!”
“So do I!” echoed Flossie. “I’m going to have some pop corn, ain’t I?”
she asked.
“Sure!” said Bert.
A little later, when Nan had finished the dishes, she joined Bert and
the small twins in the living room, where Bert popped corn over the gas
log. Flossie and Freddie laughed as the kernels cracked with the heat,
bursting out into queerly shaped, big, white objects.
“They look like crooked snowflakes,” was Freddie’s comment.
“But they taste better’n snowflakes,” said Flossie.
Bert wanted to melt some sugar and pour over the corn, so he could make
balls of it, but Nan said this would be too sticky. So they melted some
butter, poured that into the pan of popped corn, and then sprinkled on
some salt.
“Oh, yum! It’s good!” mumbled Bert as he filled his mouth with the
crisp corn.
“Yes,” agreed Nan, “it is. And it would be jolly fun here if only the
storm would stop.”
“It’s snowing yet,” remarked Bert as they grew quiet a moment and
listened to the flakes striking against the windows.
Though the older Bobbsey twins were a bit worried over keeping house
all by themselves, with Aunt Sallie Pry ill in bed, Flossie and Freddie
were not at all alarmed. It was a perpetual picnic for them, and they
had so much fun, playing about the room, eating pop corn and playing
they were sailors shipwrecked on a desert island, and rushing to door
or window to see the storm that Nan had hard work to get them to go to
bed.
But at last they were tucked in, and then Nan came down to sit for
a while with Bert, having first gone in to see if Mrs. Pry needed
anything.
“We’ll have to get her some more liniment in the morning, Bert,” Nan
told her brother.
“Yes, I’ll go to the store,” he agreed. “I don’t mind the snow.”
“Then you can bring in some bread,” added Nan.
“And I’ll see if there is any mail for us at the post-office,” added
her brother.
The Bobbsey twins were rather surprised the next morning when they
looked out and found that the storm had stopped. At least, the snow had
ceased falling, though a mass of gray clouds in the sky seemed to tell
of more to come.
“I can get out to the store now!” cried Bert as he quickly dressed.
“And I’ll get the mail, too!”
“I’m coming with you!” shouted Freddie.
“So am I!” echoed Flossie.
“Not much, you aren’t!” exclaimed Bert. “You’d freeze your ears off.
It’s cold out!”
He could tell this, even though he had not been out of doors, by
listening to the “squeak” of the snow as wagons were drawn along the
street in front of the house. For the snowfall had been so sudden that
few sleighs were out as yet.
“Well, I don’t want to freeze my ears,” said Freddie.
“I don’t, either,” agreed Flossie. So they no longer teased to be
allowed to go out and play.
Nan got breakfast and then gave Bert Mrs. Pry’s liniment bottle to have
filled at the drug store. She also told her brother what to bring from
the store, besides bread. Then, well wrapped up and wearing his rubber
boots, Bert started out. The snow was deep, and it was cold, as he
had said. But he did not mind even though it took his breath to plow
through it.
He stopped in the drug store first, and handed Mr. Renner the bottle to
fill with liniment.
“How’s everybody up at your house, Bert?” asked the druggist.
“We’re all right--what there is of us,” Bert answered. “My father and
mother are away, and so are Sam and Dinah. And Mrs. Pry’s in bed with
lumbago. The liniment is for her.”
“That’s too bad,” said Mr. Renner. “Winter isn’t the best time to have
lumbago--in fact, I don’t know when it is a good time to have it. Quite
a storm we had. Lot of trains stalled, wires down and all that, I hear.”
“Trains stalled?” exclaimed Bert quickly. “When?”
“Oh, that happened yesterday when the storm was at its worst,” the
druggist said, and Bert felt easier, for he thought his mother and
father had reached Uncle Rossiter’s before they could have been
snowed-in.
“And are the wires down?” Bert asked.
“Yes, a lot of telephone and telegraph wires are broken. My telephone
is out of order and I don’t know when they’ll get it fixed.”
Bert took the liniment and went on to the post-office. There he found
a number of men gathered about the letter window. Mr. Anderson, the
postmaster, was speaking to them and Bert listened.
“There isn’t any mail in--hasn’t been for a couple of days,” said the
postmaster. “I don’t know when there will be any. A lot of mail trains
are stuck in the drifts. And the wires are down to a lot of places so I
can’t get any word as to when the mail will arrive. You’ll just have to
wait--that’s all. Blame it on the storm.”
Bert felt a sinking feeling around his heart. Still he made up his mind
he was going to ask if there was any letter from his father or mother.