[Illustration: 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
FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS SERIES
BY MABEL C. HAWLEY
12mo. Cloth. Illustrated.
FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS AT BROOKSIDE FARM
FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS AT OAK HILL SCHOOL
FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS AND THEIR WINTER FUN
FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS ON APPLE TREE ISLAND
FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS THROUGH THE HOLIDAYS
GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY
PUBLISHERS NEW YORK
Copyright, 1922, by
GEORGE SULLY & COMPANY
_Four Little Blossoms Through the Holidays_
MADE IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
CONTENTS
CHAPTER PAGE
I TWADDLES MAKES A GIFT 7
II THE THANK-OFFERINGS 19
III FOUR GRATEFUL CHILDREN 31
IV DRIVING WITH DADDY 43
V THE FOOTBALL GAME 55
VI BOBBY HEARS BAD NEWS 67
VII THE MAGIC FOUNTAIN 79
VIII CHRISTMAS AT SCHOOL 91
IX COMPANY COMES 103
X CHRISTMAS AT HOME 115
XI MR. WHITE 127
XII RUNNING AWAY 139
XIII CHARLOTTE GORDON’S PARTY 151
XIV DOT READS A STORY 163
XV MR. BENNETT SHAKES HANDS 173
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.”