"Want your skates sharpened?" he asked cheerfully.

The committee looked hopefully at Bobby. He had promised to "ask first."

"We're going to have a fair," gulped Bobby, his cheeks red, but his blue eyes looking at Mr. Gobert squarely. "It's for Paul Jordan and his mother. And we thought maybe you'd give us something we could sell."

"For that lame Jordan and his mother?" repeated Mr. Gobert. "Do you mean to tell me they need help? Is Mrs. Jordan sick?"

"She has rheumatism in her hands," said Bobby earnestly. "And she's so old and slow lots of folks don't have her wash any more. She's chopped down all the fence to build a fire with. And she doesn't want to put Paul in a home."

"Well, well," Mr. Gobert stared at Bobby thoughtfully. "So you're going to help her out by giving a fair, are you? Where's it going to be? Can I come?"

"At our house. Three weeks from Sat.u.r.day," answered Bobby, wishing his committee would back him up with a few words and not stand by with their mouths and eyes so wide open. "We're going to have a play, too."

"I'm busy Sat.u.r.day afternoons," said Mr. Gobert regretfully, "but I'll send Mrs. Gobert up to buy something. Now I wonder what I have you would like? How about a couple of nice penknives?"

Bobby thought knives would be very good indeed, and Mr. Gobert led them over to the case where all the penknives were displayed and let the boys choose any two they wanted. On his advice they chose a pearl-handled knife for a woman and a stag-handle which would please a boy or a man.

"Stop in at Hampton's," said Mr. Gobert when they thanked him warmly, the knives neatly wrapped and safe in Bobby's reefer pocket. "He ought to have something nice for you."

Mr. Hampton kept the stationery store, and when he heard about the fair he promptly gave the committee two boxes of writing paper, a pad of bright new blotters, and a bottle each of red, white, and blue ink.

"To be patriotic," he said.

"They all want to know what it's for, then they're all right," said Bobby, as the boys hurried along to another shop. "Talking takes a lot of time, though."

The boys were really surprised to find how interested people were, and how generous. The grocer gave them six gla.s.ses of bright red jelly which, he said, would make their table look pretty as well as sell readily. The baker promised them a plate of tarts the morning of the fair. Steve Broadwell, the druggist, and a special friend of Bobby's, not only gave them three fascinating little weather-houses, with an old man and woman to pop in and out as it rained or the sun shone, and two jars of library paste, but told Bobby that he would save some bottles of cologne for Meg's table. The jeweler gave them four small compa.s.ses. Even kind Doctor Maynard, whom they met driving his car out toward the country, when he learned what they were doing, promised them a dollar as his admission to the fair "whether I get a chance to come or not."

"I'll bet we had better luck than the girls," boasted Palmer, as they started for their homes. "And we have more places to go to next week.

What kind of play is it going to be, Bobby? Can we all be in it?"

"Aunt Polly said as many as wanted to could," replied Bobby. "She calls it a stuffed animal play. I don't know what that is, but Aunt Polly is lots of fun."

The boys promised to be over "right after supper," and Bobby ran in to find his family and tell them his afternoon experiences. He had to wait a few moments, because Meg and Dot were busy telling what had happened to them.

"We've got ever so many things," bubbled Meg enthusiastically. "The drygoods store gave us yards of ribbon; and Miss Stebbins said she had six pin-cushions she didn't want." (Miss Stebbins kept a small fancy-work store in the town.) "We saw Miss Florence, and she is going to dress two dolls for us. And we've got belt buckles, and sachets, and bags, and ap.r.o.ns, and, oh, ever so many things."

"Mr. Broadwell says to tell you he is saving some cologne for you,"

reported Bobby. "Say, isn't getting ready for a fair fun? And the boys are coming over to-night to see about the play, Aunt Polly."

"I'm all ready for you," said Aunt Polly capably.

CHAPTER XI

BOBBY'S MEANEST DAY

Four boys and four girls rang the Blossom door-bell that night after supper, eager to take part in the stuffed animal play. With the four little Blossoms, that made twelve children, a most convenient number, Aunt Polly said.

"I'll show you what we're going to do," she promised them, beckoning to Twaddles and Dot to follow her. "Since the twins will have to go to bed in half an hour, we'll let them be the first demonstrators."

Aunt Polly and the twins went out of the room, and in three minutes there pranced back the cunningest little bear you ever saw. He wobbled about on his four legs, opened a red flannel mouth and yawned, shook hands with the delighted boys and girls and behaved altogether as a well-brought-up bear should.

"Let me do it!" shouted the other boys and girls. "Let me! Let me!"

The bear was unb.u.t.toned down his back by smiling Aunt Polly, and the flushed and triumphant twins stepped out.

"Didn't we do it right?" they demanded happily. "Isn't it fun? But you can't be a bear--Aunt Polly said so. There's only one of everything."

Then Aunt Polly, who had cut out and st.i.tched the white muslin case for the bear and painted his nose and lined his red flannel mouth, explained that for every two children there could be an animal. The play would be an animal play. They would act and talk as people would, only the actors would be lions and tigers and other animals.

"Choose what you would like to be to-night, and I will measure you and start work on the cases," she said. "And if you do not tell outsiders what kind of an animal you are going to be, that will double the fun."

So the other children, long after the twins had gone reluctantly up to bed, paired off and argued about their choice of an animal and changed their minds and finally decided. Then they were measured by Aunt Polly, and it was announced that three rehearsals a week would be held till the Sat.u.r.day set for the fair. Mother Blossom brought in a plate of cookies and a basket of apples, and after these were eaten it was time to go home.

With all the preparations for the play and fair, school went on as usual. The children sometimes thought that it might be interrupted for a week or two without loss to any one, but the school committee never took kindly to this idea. They were sure that nothing in the wide world could be of more importance than regular attendance at school.

"I know enough now," grumbled Bobby one morning, scowling at his oatmeal.

"We could stay at home and play with the animal bags," said Meg, who never tired of trying on the muslin cases that so quickly transformed them into different animals. "It's really snowing ever so hard, Mother."

"Not half as hard as it often has when you have plowed cheerfully through it," Mother Blossom reminded her. "Come, Bobby, finish your oatmeal. Norah has your lunches packed."

Dot and Twaddles stared at the two older children in astonishment.

They wanted to go to school with all their hearts, and the idea that any one could tire of that magical place, where chalk and blackboards and goldfish and geography globes mingled in riotous profusion, had never entered their busy minds.

"It's an awful long walk," mourned Bobby.

"I'll take you in the car," said Father Blossom quickly. "Hurry now, and get your things on. I think there's been too much staying up till nine o'clock lately, Mother."

"I think so, too," agreed Mother Blossom. "We'll go back to eight o'clock bedtime beginning with to-night. What is it, Dot?"

"Can we go, too?" urged Dot. "Sam will bring us back."

"Oh, for goodness' sake!" frowned Bobby, pulling on his rubber boots and stamping in them to make sure they were well on. "Why do you always want to tag along every place we go?"

Dot looked hurt, and Bobby was really ashamed of himself. He wasn't cross very often, but nothing seemed to go right this morning. No one said anything, but Mother Blossom sent the twins out into the kitchen on some errand, and then the car came around and Meg and Bobby and Father Blossom tramped through the snow and climbed in under the snug curtains. Bobby would have felt better if some one had scolded him.

"Guess we're going to have enough snow this winter to make up for last," remarked Sam Layton cheerfully. He was not cross, and he was blissfully unconscious that any one else had been. "Fill-Up and me is getting kind of tired of clearing off walks every single morning," he went on, giving the dog his nickname.

Philip, who sat beside Sam on the front seat, wagged his tail conversationally.

"Maybe we'll have another snow fight," suggested Meg. "That would be fun, wouldn't it, Bobby?"

"No, it wouldn't," snapped Bobby ungraciously. For the life of him, he did not seem able to feel pleasant.

Meg talked to Father Blossom and Sam after that, and in a few moments they were set down at the school, and the car rolled on to the foundry office.

Bobby had bad luck--bad luck or something else--all the morning. He blotted his copy book; he had the wrong answer to the example he was sent to work out at the board; at recess he was so cross to Palmer Davis that that devoted friend slapped him and they had a tussle that ended in both being forced to spend the remainder of the play time sitting quietly at two front desks under Miss Mason's eye. Altogether Bobby seemed to be in for a bad day.