AT CHERRY FARM
Ted and Jan rushed to the kitchen. In the middle of the floor, in the
center of a pool of milk that flowed all about him like a little lake,
sat Trouble, a look of surprise on his chubby face. Near him was a pan
that had held the milk. It had bounced right side up after having been
pulled from the table, and a little milk had remained in it. This milk
a maltese cat was now lapping up.
“Oh, Trouble!” cried Ted.
“And you spilled the nice milk!” added Jan. “And you’re all wet again!
Oh, Trouble Martin!”
“He’s wet, sure enough,” said Nora, who did not seem at all angry at
the mess in her kitchen. “There was nigh two quarts of milk in the pan.
I was goin’ to make it into junket, but the baby got ahead of me.” She
laughed. Nora could laugh easily.
“Oh, my dear Trouble!” cried Mother Martin. “How did it happen?”
“He just got hold of the table oilcloth and pulled on it when I wasn’t
lookin’,” explained Nora. “The pan of milk came with it.”
“Oh, Trouble!” said Mrs. Martin with a sigh, “when will you ever learn
not to pull things?”
“Trouble all wet--bossy-cow splash water--bossy-cow give milk,” said
William, rubbing the white fluid out of his eyes.
“He means a cow was to blame for every bit of his trouble to-day,”
explained Nora. “He was in trouble with a cow in the brook, and now
here. But it’ll be all right. I’ve got more milk for junket, and
Turnover is enjoyin’ herself.”
Turnover was the children’s cat. She had learned the trick of lying
down on her back and rolling over when told to do so. Generally she did
that trick to get something to eat.
“Oh, Turnover!” gasped Jan, “what a fine supper you’re having!”
And then the cat, thinking she had been told to do her trick, rolled
right over in the pool of milk on the kitchen floor.
“I ’ike Turnover,” gurgled William, as he clasped the now dripping and
bedraggled pet in his arms, making himself wetter than ever.
“I’ll be glad when this day is over!” sighed Mrs. Martin, but she could
not help laughing at the funny picture Trouble made.
His mother carried the baby off to put him to bed; Nora set the pan out
of the way, where the cat could finish her supper in peace; and then
the maid started to mop the floor.
“I’ll make more junket after William’s asleep,” said Nora to Jan and
Ted.
They were very fond of milk made thick and sweet in this way, and
Trouble too always ate his share of junket.
The day on which so many things had happened came to an end at last.
Trouble was in bed and asleep. So were Jan and Ted. Mother and Father
Martin sat up a little later than usual, talking.
“Then you think, after all, we can go to Cherry Farm?” asked Mother
Martin.
“Oh, yes. We’ll go. Maybe there’ll be some way out of the trouble. I
want the children to have a happy summer.”
“Well, they surely will if they spend their vacation on Cherry Farm.”
And, though neither Mother nor Father Martin knew it, the Curlytops
were also going to do more than just have fun.
“What are you goin’ to do, Teddy?” asked Jan the next morning after
breakfast, as she saw her brother out in the yard with a shovel.
“Huh? Who dropped a ‘g’ letter that time?” asked Ted with a laugh.
“Well, I didn’t mean to,” responded Janet. “I was wondering what you
were going to do with the shovel.”
“I’m going to dig a hole,” and Ted was very particular to put his g
on the ends of words this time, though he forgot oftener than did his
sister.
“A hole! What for?” asked Janet. “Are you going to plant something, as
grandpa does at Cherry Farm?”
“Nope. I’m just going to dig a big hole and see how deep I can make it.
Then it won’t seem so long waiting until it’s time to go to grandpa’s.”
“Oh! Let me help?” begged Jan. “I love to dig!”
“I’ll let you shovel away the dirt I dig,” promised her brother. “But
don’t let Trouble see us.”
“Why not?”
“Because he might fall down the hole, and if I make it deep maybe we
couldn’t get him out.”
“Nora took him to the store with her,” answered Janet. “He won’t bother
us for awhile.”
“All right. Then we’ll dig.”
Part of the Martin yard was the children’s playground, where they were
allowed to do about as they pleased. Ted was fond of digging in the
sandy soil, and he often made forts, tunnels and cities in the earth,
Jan helping in this play.
Picking out a spot where the soil was soft, Ted began to dig.
“You poke the dirt away when I shovel it up,” Ted ordered his sister,
for though she sometimes told him what to do, like a “little mother”
when it came to anything like this Ted was the “boss.”
It was not hard digging, and Ted soon had a hole deep enough for him to
stand in, being down in it as far as his knees. As he was shoveling out
the dirt, which Janet pushed to one side, the iceman came along.
“Hello, Curlytop!” he called to Ted. “What are you doing?”
“Digging a hole.”
“So I see,” and the iceman jingled his tongs. “Are you going clear
through to China?”
“Where’s China?” asked Jan.
“It’s where the laundryman does daddy’s shirts,” explained Ted.
“No, I mean the country where the Chinese laundrymen come from,” went
on the iceman with a laugh. “It’s supposed to be straight down through
this earth on the other side, you know. So, if you dig deep enough, you
may come to China,” and he passed on.
“I’m going to do it,” said Ted after a bit, during which time he had
dug so deep that only his shoulders were out of the ground.
“Do what?” asked his sister.
“Dig to China. And when I get the hole all the way through I’ll take
you with me.”
“I--I guess I don’t want to come,” said Janet slowly.
“Why not?”
She thought for a minute while Ted looked at her over the edge of the
hole.
“’Cause what are you going to stand on when you get all the way
through the hole to China? There won’t be anything there and you’ll
fall. I don’t want to fall.”
Teddy thought this over a minute and then said:
“Well, maybe I won’t go all the way to China. I forgot about falling
through. But I’ll dig a deep hole anyhow.”
And he did--so deep that at last Jan had to stand on the very edge of
it and look down in it before she could see her brother.
“Don’t go down any farther,” she begged. “You maybe can’t get out
again.”
“Yes I can,” declared Ted. “You get the little ladder we play light
street-lamps with, an’ I can climb out.”
This ladder was a side from an old wooden crib that Trouble no longer
slept in, and Ted and Jan often used it in their games.
When Jan brought this and put it down in the hole, Ted could easily
climb out.
“I guess I won’t dig any more now,” he said. “I’ll cover up the hole
with some boards, and maybe to-morrow I’ll go deeper.”
Jan helped her brother put some pieces of wood over the hole and then
she went off to play with her doll while Ted found Tom Taylor, and the
two boys played marbles in the shade.
That night, just as the Curlytops were going to bed, there was a queer
howling in the yard.
“What’s that?” asked their mother.
“It sounds like Skyrocket,” said Daddy Martin.
“Oh, it is our dog!” cried Ted. “Something has bit him.”
“Maybe he has bit some person, or maybe a cat,” said his father. “I’ll
go and see what it is.”
The Curlytops waited anxiously until their father came back. When he
did he was laughing, and he carried Skyrocket in his arms.
“I found him down in a big hole in the yard,” said Mr. Martin. “Poor
Skyrocket couldn’t get up. He had fallen through the boards that were
over the hole. I wonder how it got there?”
“I was going to dig through to China,” explained Ted, “but I didn’t
finish. Is Skyrocket hurt?”
“No,” answered Daddy Martin. “But I guess he was pretty badly scared.
Don’t dig such deep holes any more, Teddy.”
Ted promised he would not, and after he and his sister had petted their
dog they went to bed.
A few days later everything was ready for the start to Grandpa Martin’s
home in the country. Ted and Jan, dressed and ready to start for the
railroad station, were out on the front porch taking care of Trouble.
“Well, well! you look very spruce this morning!” called the postman
as he passed the house. “Where are you going, Curlytop--you and your
brother and sister all dressed up so stylish?” and he patted Ted’s
hair, which seemed more tangled than ever.
“We’re going to grandpa’s Cherry Farm,” Ted answered.
“Save me some cherries,” begged the postman. “I love ’em, but nobody
ever sends me any in the letters I deliver.”
“I guess they’d squash and the juice would run all over if they did,”
laughed Jan.
“I guess so,” agreed the postman. “Well, good-bye, Curlytops, and
Trouble too! I hope you have a good time!”
“Good-bye!” they called to him.
A little while after this they were in the train and on the way to
Elmburg. Many of the passengers in the car looked more than once at the
curly, tousled heads of Jan and Ted, and one woman remarked:
“Did you ever see such wonderful hair?”
“It must be a task to comb it,” said another.
“No wonder the conductor called them what he did as he passed through,”
said the first woman.
“What was it?” asked the second.
“He named them the ‘Curlytops.’ But I suppose they’re used to that by
this time. I never saw such tight curls!”
Nothing much happened on the trip, except that Trouble wanted a number
of drinks of water. Ted or Jan brought them to him in cute, little,
white paper cups, and Baby William thought they were fine to play with,
after he had emptied them.
“P’ease, Teddy, det me a dwink,” Trouble begged for about the eighth
time. “I’s fwirsty!”
So Ted brought the paper cup full of water.
“Dat’s dood! bring me annuver!” demanded Trouble, as soon as he had
drained the last drop, and piled the cup up with others on the
window-sill. “I ’ikes water!”
“Better look out or you’ll have to swim to grandpa’s if you drink much
more,” laughed Daddy Martin.
Then Mother Martin took Baby William on her lap and talked to him,
telling him a little story that sent him to Slumberland, thus giving
Ted and Jan a rest from going up and down the car aisle after drinks of
water for their little brother.
In the afternoon the train reached the village, and there was Grandpa
Martin smiling and looking eagerly at each coach to get the first
glimpse of his loved ones.
“Well, well! Here you are! Here you are!” he cried as he saw them.
“Right over this way is the team! Pile in! Pile in!”
The patient horses stood waiting. The big wagon held the whole family,
trunks and all. Jan and Ted looked curiously at their grandfather at
first, as if to see whether his trouble had changed him any. But if he
was worrying, he did not show it, and the two Curlytops breathed easier.
“Is the farm there all right?” Jan could not help asking, as grandpa
turned the horses down the shady road.
“All there--what the high water didn’t wash away,” he answered with a
laugh, and hearing this the children felt better.
“And how is Trouble?” asked grandpa, looking at the baby. “Did he cut
up any coming down?”
“No, he was pretty good,” laughed the baby’s mother, and then she and
daddy and grandpa talked, while Jan and Ted looked at houses and other
things along the road, trying to remember what they had seen on their
last visit to the country.
“Oh, there’s the house!” cried Ted as the horses trotted around a turn
in the highway.
“And there’s grandma waving to us!” added Jan. “Oh, I’m so happy!”
“Bless your hearts!” cried grandma, as she kissed them all, snuggling
her withered cheeks--like well-kept apples--down on the chubby face of
Baby Trouble. “Bless your hearts--every one!”
“You dot any bossy-cows?” Trouble demanded when everyone had seen
everyone else, and it was quiet for a minute in the old farmhouse. “I
want a bossy-cow.”
“What does he mean?” asked grandma.
“Oh, I guess he’s thinking of the time he gave some watercress to a cow
that was in our brook,” explained Ted, telling how Trouble had been
stuck in the mud.
“Bossy-cow splashed milk on me,” went on Trouble. “I like milk.”
“But I don’t want you taking any more baths in it,” laughed his mother.
“You may go out and play with him,” she added to the two Curlytops. “Be
careful he doesn’t get into mischief!”
“Come on!” cried Jan. “We’ll go outside and have some fun, Trouble!”
“Trouble!” exclaimed Grandma Martin. “What a name for a dear, sweet
little baby!”
“Well, he’s a dear, sweet, little bunch of trouble--sometimes,” laughed
Daddy Martin.
“We see bossy-cow?” asked William, as he took hold of his sister’s hand
on one side, and Ted’s on the other.
“Yes, if we can find one,” promised Jan. “Come on!”
Trouble was very willing to go. He toddled along down the side path
out toward the barn. Some chickens, in their wire-fenced yard where
they were kept so they could not scratch the garden, cackled at the
children, and an old rooster crowed.
“Dat our roosterfer?” asked William, making the name a little longer
than it needed to be.
“No, that isn’t our roosterfer,” laughed Jan. “It’s one just like ours,
though. Oh, Trouble, you mustn’t throw a stick at the nice rooster!”
she cried, for her little brother had let go of her hand and had tossed
a stick over into the chicken yard, making the fowls scatter about with
many a surprised cluck.
“What are you doing, Trouble?” asked Ted.
“Make roosterfer crow see if he got cold like our roosterfer,” was the
answer. “Trouble want hear roosterfer crow.”
“Oh, never mind about the roosterfer,” beguiled Jan. “Let’s go to see
the bossy-cows.”
This was what William wanted, so away he toddled, leaving the chickens
in peace. The children went out to the barn, where some of the horses,
which the men were not using at different places on the farm, were
eating hay or grain in their stalls. Ted and Jan always liked to look
at the horses. Sometimes one would put its head over the lower half of
the closed stall door and look at the little boy and girl, letting them
rub its velvety nose.
While Jan and Ted were doing this of course they could not keep hold
of Trouble’s hands, nor did they watch him very closely. So, when they
looked for him a little later, they did not see their small brother.
“Oh, where can he have gone?” gasped Janet. “And mother told us to be
so careful in watching him!”
“He can’t be very far off,” answered Ted. “He was here a little while
ago. Come on, we’ll look!”
They went out of the barn, one of the horses calling, or whinnying,
after them. The door had been left open when they went into the barn,
and of course Trouble could have gone out that way.
But when Jan and Ted looked around the barn, near the corncrib, up past
the smoke-house and in near-by hiding places, where they, themselves,
often hid, they did not find Trouble.
“Oh, where can he be?” said Jan again and again.
“We’ll find him!” Ted declared.
But this time Trouble seemed to have hidden himself very carefully. Nor
did he answer to the calls Jan and Ted gave. They did not want to call
their father or mother, for they were not yet quite ready to give up
and admit that they, themselves, could not find their little brother.
“Let’s look down in the lane,” said Ted after a bit.
This lane was a long, grassy one between two big meadows, and was
a sort of driveway leading to a far-off part of Cherry Farm. Other
farmers besides Grandpa Martin sometimes used it, though it belonged to
him and came to an end near his barns.
So down the lane went Jan and Ted, calling for their little brother.
They walked on a little way and then stopped to listen.
“Hark!” called Ted suddenly, when his sister had finished her last cry
for the missing child.
From behind some bushes a little way ahead of them came a baby voice
saying:
“I found de bossy-cow! I found de bossy-cow! But he’s a ’ittle bit one.
Such a ’ittle bit!”
“There’s Trouble!” cried Jan joyously.
“Yes. But I wonder what he has,” said Ted.
They ran ahead, and there, behind the bush, they saw Baby William
sitting on the ground and holding to the horns of a big goat that
was standing in front of Trouble, looking at him as though in great
surprise.
“Why Trouble Martin! What _are_ you doing?” cried Jan. “Come away from
that goat this minute! He may hook you!”
“Dis a bossy-cow!” Trouble murmured, holding with one hand to the long
horns of the animal and with the other stroking the chin whiskers.
“Nice bossy-cow!”
“It’s a goat!” cried Ted, walking toward the child and wondering if the
goat would butt him if he lifted Trouble out of the way.
“Dis a bossy-cow!” insisted Trouble. “Bossy-cow got horns. Dis got
horns. Dis bossy-cow!”
“Get up off the ground,” ordered Jan. “How did you get there?”
“Nice bossy-cow push me down here,” said Trouble.
“I think the goat must have butted him a little,” said Ted. “But the
goat is a gentle one, I guess. He didn’t hurt Trouble. Get up!” he
said. “Come here, Trouble.”
“No! Can’t.”
“You can’t come! Why not?” asked Ted in surprise. “Why can’t you come
away from the goat--I mean bossy-cow, Trouble?”
“’Cause Trouble am a hen now. Trouble goin’ to sit on hen’s nest and
watch for ’ittle chickens. De bossy-cow he push me in chickie’s nest
an’ I goin’ to be hen! I dess I didn’t break _all_ de eggs!” He moved a
little to one side, still keeping hold of the goat’s horn, and showed
Ted and Jan that he was, indeed, sitting in the midst of the whites and
yellows of the broken eggs of a hen’s nest which had been made under
the bush.
“Oh my!” gasped Ted. “He _is_ right in with the eggs! Oh, what a mess
he’ll be! Oh, Trouble!”
“Such trouble!” echoed Jan.
“Dat me. I’s Trouble!” cheerfully observed Baby William. “An’ I’s dot a
bossy-cow!”