"Oh, that's ever so far off," objected Twaddles. "I thought maybe she'd come to-morrow or to-day."

Mother Blossom smiled.

"Thanksgiving is only about three weeks off," she reminded him. "Aunt Polly will be here in less than two weeks. And Meg and Bobby have to begin to practice their Thanksgiving pieces soon, don't you, children?"

"Miss Mason's going to give 'em out this afternoon," replied Bobby.

"Say, Mother, do I have to learn a piece? Girls like to wear fussy clothes and get up on the platform and speak or sing, but I feel awful."

"Well, that will be for your teacher to say," returned Mother Blossom. "I don't suppose either you or Meg will have to learn very long poems. And think, dear, wouldn't you like to have a part in the exercises when Aunt Polly will be here to see you?"

Bobby hadn't thought of that. Perhaps he would like to have Aunt Polly hear him recite something.

"But nothing with gestures," he said firmly. "I'm not going to get up there and wave my hands and yell."

CHAPTER XIV

AUNT POLLY ARRIVES

When Meg and Bobby came home from school that afternoon they brought the news that each had been given a Thanksgiving recitation to learn.

Miss Mason did not feel as sure as she had at first that it was Bobby who had spoiled her book. Mr. Carter's championship of Bobby was not without results. Still, she did not wholly absolve him, and while she was fair enough not to mention the subject again, Bobby knew that she had not forgotten. He was surprised when his name was read aloud as one to have part in the exercises.

"There's six of us boys," announced Bobby to Mother Blossom. "We all come out at once and take turns saying a verse. Tim Roon and Charlie Black aren't in it. Miss Mason said that last year they promised to learn a part and they never even tried. And then they spoiled the whole thing by staying away from the exercises."

Meg was waiting her turn impatiently.

"I have the longest piece!" she began breathlessly the moment Bobby finished. "Five verses, Mother! And we're not going to have any time to study in school! Will you hear me?"

Mother Blossom said of course she would, and Meg began studying her verses that very night after supper.

"You'll have to have a new white dress," decided Mother Blossom.

"You're growing so fast, Meg, that none of your summer dresses will do. I'll have to call up Miss Florence and see, if you can stop in to be measured to-morrow."

For cheerful little Miss Florence, who flitted about from house to house making pretty dresses for little girls and their mothers and sisters, had sprained her ankle a day or two before and Doctor Maynard would not hear of her leaving the house for weeks and weeks.

"Lucky it wasn't my wrist," Miss Florence had laughed. "I can still sew, if my customers come to me."

Mother Blossom telephoned that afternoon, and Miss Florence said that she could begin Meg's new dress early the next week. She would only have to come two or three times to try it on, and then Miss Florence would send word when she or Bobby might come after it. Miss Florence had no one to run errands for her.

What with practicing "pieces," and being fitted for a new dress, and going to school and playing a little every day, the time fairly flew, and before Meg and Bobby knew it Aunt Polly had come.

"How you've grown!" she cried when she saw the four little Blossoms.

"Why, I don't believe Jud would know you if he saw you." Jud had been a great friend of the children's when they visited Aunt Polly at Brookside Farm, and they had other friends to ask after, too.

"How's Carlotta?" demanded Meg eagerly. Carlotta was the calf given to Meg and Bobby as a reward for help they had given one of Aunt Polly's neighbors.

"Carlotta is growing," said Aunt Polly, smiling. "And Linda is going to school, which leaves me all alone in the house. I declare I was glad to close it and come down to you, Margaret."

Aunt Polly was Mother Blossom's widowed older sister. The children loved her dearly, and now, each with a red apple in hand from the bag Aunt Polly had brought them, they crowded around to ask if she wouldn't like them to rehea.r.s.e.

"Rehea.r.s.e?" asked Aunt Polly, puzzled. "Rehea.r.s.e what, blessings?"

"Bobby and I have to speak a piece in school the day before Thanksgiving," explained Meg, "and the twins always have to say poetry, too, when we practice. Mother hears us every night; don't you, Mother?"

"What fun!" Aunt Polly clapped her hands, her eyes sparkling. "I don't know when I've been to any school exercises. By all means have a rehearsal, Meg. Your father, mother and I will be the audience."

The children went out of the room, and Bobby came back alone. He went to the center of the room, bowed a little stiffly and said his six-line verse rapidly.

"Of course it will sound better with six boys taking turns," he explained, slipping into a chair near Aunt Polly to enjoy the rest of the entertainment. "My, I hope I don't forget it that afternoon!"

Dot came next, walking composedly, and she gave them "Twinkle, twinkle, little star," her old stand-by; that was one verse Dot was always sure of.

When Twaddles' turn came he bowed, thought for a full minute, and then launched into the Mother Goose rhyme of "Peter, Peter, Pumpkin Eater."

"Pumpkins are for Thanksgiving," he a.s.sured Aunt Polly anxiously, in case she should think his selection strange.

"Of course they are!" she cried, drawing Twaddles into her lap and hugging him. "I suspect Jud is packing the largest he can find into a box now to send us for our pies."

Meg had been upstairs and put on one of her summer white dresses, too short in the skirt and too tight in the sleeves, for Meg, as Mother Blossom had said, was growing very fast.

"You just ought to see the dress Miss Florence is making me, Aunt Polly," Meg said, her blue eyes shining. "It has two tucks in the skirt, and puff sleeves----"

"And a pink sash," chimed in Dot.

"Well, what about your piece?" asked Father Blossom. "You don't suppose there is any danger that you'll march up on the platform Wednesday afternoon and recite a verse about pink sashes and tucks, do you, instead of Thanksgiving?"

Meg was sure she wouldn't do that, and to prove it, she recited her whole five verses very nicely, and with no mistake.

"She has gestures--Mother showed her how," said Bobby, very proud of his pretty sister. "I don't like to wave my hands, but I like to watch other people do it."

A few days before the all-important Wednesday Miss Florence telephoned--she had a telephone in her house now that she could not go out--and said that Meg's dress was finished. When Bobby and Meg came home from school at noon for lunch, Mother Blossom told them to go around by Miss Florence's house that afternoon and get the frock.

"Dear, dear, if I'm not stupid," fussed Miss Florence, folding the crisp, dainty folds of the dress a few minutes after the children had rung her bell and announced they were to take the package. "Here I've gone and saved this nice box for it, and it hasn't a lid. If I lay sheets of tissue paper over it and pin them carefully, do you think you can carry it?"

"Sure I can," said Bobby. "You don't need a cover, Miss Florence. Come on, Meg."

"Be careful and don't drop it," warned Miss Florence, hobbling on her lame ankle to the door to watch them down the steps. "Isn't it a miserable day out!"

Meg and Bobby didn't think it was a miserable day, though the wind was raw and cold, and the ground, soft from the first freeze, was slippery and muddy. But, as Bobby had once said, they were fond of "just plain weather."

"Oh, dear," wailed Meg when they were half way home, "here comes that mean, disagreeable Tim Roon. He's the hatefulest boy!"

Tim Roon, as usual, was loitering along, his hands in his pockets, his lips puckered up for the whistle that didn't come. Tim never quite did anything he started to do, whether it was to weed his father's garden or whistle a tune.

"h.e.l.lo!" he said, stopping close to Meg. "What have we in the large box?"