Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School.

by Mabel C. Hawley.

CHAPTER I

THE HOUSE THAT BOBBY BUILT

"Let's make a bay window for the front," suggested Bobby, dragging up a rocking-chair and tumbling his younger brother, Twaddles, out of the way.

"How do you make a bay window?" demanded Twaddles, whom no amount of pushing out of the way could subdue for long; he simply came in again.

"This way," said Bobby.

He tipped the rocking-chair over on its side and turned the curved back so that it fenced in a s.p.a.ce between two straight chairs. Looking through the carved rounds, if you had a very good imagination, it really did seem something like a bay window.

"Now, see?" said Bobby, proud as an architect should be.

"But every house has a chimney," protested Twaddles. "Where's the chimney?"

Before Bobby could possibly invent a chimney, Meg and Dot, the two boys' sisters, came into the room, each carrying a doll.

"Wait till Norah sees you!" announced Meg severely. "My goodness, piling up the furniture like this! Mother will scold if you scratch that rocking-chair."

"What you making?" asked Dot, her dark eyes beginning to dance. "Let me help, Bobby?"

Bobby sat down gloomily on the edge of the rocking-chair.

"I was building a house," he answered. "Mother said we could 'muse ourselves quietly in the house. This is quiet, isn't it? What's the use of having furniture if a fellow can't make something with it?"

"Well, I s'pose if you put it all back before supper, it's all right,"

admitted Meg, rather dubiously. "Only you know sometimes you do scratch things, Bobby."

Bobby waived this aside. He had other, more important thoughts.

"I was just going to fix the chimney," he explained. "See, this is the door, Meg, an' over here's the bay window. But we have to have people.

People always live in houses. Don't you want to put Geraldine and what's-her-name in 'fore I put the chimney on?"

Dot, who was the doll Geraldine's mother, clutched her closely, while Meg quickly picked up her doll from the couch where she had laid her.

"There won't anything hurt 'em," protested Bobby earnestly. "Go on, put 'em in--please, Meg."

Meg seldom could resist anything Bobby asked of her, and Dot was always ready to follow her older sister's lead. So Geraldine and Mary Maud were placed inside the tower of chairs and stools and rugs that Bobby and Twaddles called their house, and the architect set himself to work to construct the chimney.

The children who were so busily employed in the pleasant living-room this rainy September afternoon were known to all their friends as "the four little Blossoms."

There was a Father Blossom and a Mother Blossom, of course, and when you were introduced to the children separately--though the four were usually to be found, as Norah, the good-natured maid, said, "right in a bunch"--you met Robert Hayward Blossom, always known as Bobby, seven years old and as devoted a brother to six-year-old Margaret Alice as you would ever find. Margaret was much better known as Meg.

Then came the twins, Dot and Twaddles. And a pair they were, into everything and remarkable for the ease with which they managed to get out of sc.r.a.pes for which they were generally responsible. The twins were four years old, dark-haired and dark-eyed, while Bobby and Meg had blue eyes and yellow hair.

The Blossoms lived in the pretty town of Oak Hill, and they knew nearly every one. Indeed the children had never been away from Oak Hill till the visit they had made to their Aunt Polly, about which you may have read in the book called "Four Little Blossoms at Brookside Farm." They had spent the summer with Aunt Polly, and had made many new friends and learned a great deal about animals. Meg, especially, loved all dumb creatures. And now that you are acquainted with the four little Blossoms, we must get back to that chimney.

"The umbrella rack will do," suggested Twaddles suddenly.

He ran out into the hall and dragged the rack in.

"That's fine," said Bobby enthusiastically. "Come on, Twaddles, help me lift it up."

Strangers always thought that Twaddles was such an odd name. Perhaps it was; and certainly no one knew how the small boy had acquired it.

"Twaddles" he was though, and he himself almost forgot that he had a "real" name, which was Arthur Gifford. His twin was never called Dorothy, either, but always "Dot." Dorothy Anna Blossom was the whole of Dot's name.

Twaddles now heaved and tugged, trying to help Bobby lift the heavy umbrella rack. He was elated that he had thought of it, and not for worlds would he have admitted that it was exceedingly heavy to lift.

"There!" said Bobby, when they had it finally in place. "How's that for a house?"

"It's perfectly----" Meg began.

She meant to say "perfectly wonderful," but just then Twaddles jumped down to the floor from the pile. In doing this he jarred the wonderful structure, and with a crash that could be heard all over the house, umbrella rack, stools, chairs and rugs slithered together in a complete wreck.

"Geraldine!" shrieked Dot. "She'll be smashed and killed!"

"For the love of mercy, what are ye doing now?" The long-suffering but not always patient Norah stood in the doorway. "Bobby, what are ye up to the minute your mother turns her back? Is Dot hurt? What's she crying for?"

Norah always asked a great many questions, and it was of no use, as the children had learned from experience, to try to answer her till she had had her say.

"What are ye trying to do?" asked Norah again. "'Tis fine and peaceful the summer has been with ye all at Brookside. And now the minute you're home again, the house must be torn down about our ears."

"We were building a house, Norah," explained Bobby. "We're going to put everything back when we're through. Oh, hush, Dot, Geraldine isn't hurt."

To prove it, Bobby crawled in under the wreckage and dragged out the smiling Geraldine apparently uninjured. But as Dot took the doll in her arms a dreadful thing happened.

Geraldine's head tumbled off!

The four little Blossoms gasped with horror, and even Norah was startled. Then, as Dot's mouth opened for a loud wail, Meg came to the relief of every one.

"Daddy can mend it, Dot," she urged earnestly. "See, it is cracked right across and there aren't any chips out. 'Member how he mended Mother's china cup and she can wash it in hot water and everything?

Can't she, Norah?"

"Sure then, she can," said Norah heartily. "Don't go crying now, Dot; the doll can be mended as fine as ever. Put up the furniture like good children, do. Your mother will be coming home any minute."

Poor little Dot tried to stop crying, and the four youngsters rather solemnly set about the task of leaving things as they had found them, which, as you know yourself, isn't half as much fun as getting them out to play with. However, everything was in its place before Mother Blossom came home, and after supper that night Father Blossom put some of his wonderful cement on Geraldine's neck, and over night her head, as Dot said, "grew on beautifully and tight."

"I wish we had a cat," said Meg the next morning, as she and Bobby went out to the garage to carry their dog's breakfast to him.

Meg had made the same wish nearly every morning for the last year.

"Well, we have a dog," Bobby pointed out reasonably. "And you know Norah can't bear cats."