CHAPTER IXCOMPANY COMES
“I ’M VERY sorry this happened,” said Mr. Carter gravely.
He and Meg and Bobby stood in the hall, just outside the Assembly hall, where the children were singing the closing Christmas carol. The principal had beckoned to Bobby when the music began and Meg had followed them.
“I’m very sorry,” repeated Mr. Carter. “Do you know who sent this piece of coal to you, Bobby?”
“No, sir!” said Bobby hastily. “I don’t know at all.”
“And you evidently don’t want me to guess,” said the principal with a half-smile. “I think that will be better, after all. Just pretend to pay no attention and whoever is trying to tease you will see that he has missed his aim. Did I hand this to you from the tree, Bobby? Was there anything with it?”
“Yes, you gave it to me,” replied Bobby. “My other present was a game.”
“Was there anything with the piece of coal?” persisted Mr. Carter.
“There was a piece of paper that said ‘to help you start another fire,’” said Bobby jerkily. “I tore it up.”
“I should have liked to see the writing,” remarked Mr. Carter. “But never mind. Evidently someone removed one package marked with your name from the basket last night, after we finished working, or it may have been this morning, and substituted the coal. The best thing to do is to ignore the silly trick altogether.”
The carol ended just as he finished speaking and the assembly broke up. Mr. Carter put his arm around Bobby, wished him a Merry Christmas, and said that he must let nothing spoil his holidays. Then he shook hands with Meg and wished her “Merry Christmas,” too, and they were free to go. As they went slowly upstairs to get their wraps, for the corridors were crowded, they passed Miss Mason.
“Merry Christmas, Bobby!” she smiled and nodded. “And you, too, Meg.”
That was Miss Mason’s way of telling Bobby that she understood why he had been cross and that she knew he did not mean to be rude. Bobby’s own sunny smile answered her and he began to feel better directly. By the time he reached home he had almost forgotten the piece of coal.
“No more school for two weeks!” he shouted, prancing into the kitchen where Mother Blossom and Norah were.
“It’s snowing! It’s snowing!” shrieked the twins, tumbling up the back steps and bursting into the kitchen like two small whirlwinds. “There’s going to be snow on Christmas!”
As soon as lunch was over, the four little Blossoms went out to play in the snow and they spent the time till dinner teaching Philip to pull the sled. The dog didn’t like it very well, but the children had glorious fun and came in with such red cheeks and such appetites that Father Blossom declared he was almost tempted to go out and play in the snow himself.
“And now we’re going shopping!” announced Twaddles the next morning. “We have ever so much money, haven’t we, Meg?”
“Is Meg the banker?” asked Father Blossom.
“She carries the money,” explained Twaddles. “Dot has twenty-five cents and I have twenty, and Meg has forty and Bobby has—how much have you, Bobby?”
“Fifty cents,” said Bobby. “I saved it.”
“I could have earned ’bout fifty dollars, if Mother would let me,” sighed Dot. “But she wouldn’t.”
“Why, Dot, dear, what are you talking about?” asked Mother Blossom, puzzled. “How could a little girl like you earn money?”
“Errands,” said Dot briefly. “Folks wanted to give me pennies for errands every time; but you said we mustn’t take pennies.”
“Not for doing little kindnesses,” declared Mother Blossom firmly. “Just remember the times the neighbors have given you cookies and cloth for doll dresses, Dot, and sent you postal cards from far away cities. I know you and Twaddles are both glad to do an errand now andthen for the Peabodys and the Wards and the Hiltons.”
“Why, of course they are,” said Father Blossom. “And that reminds me, I have four shiny new quarters in my pocket that I’ve been saving for you children. Perhaps that will help you with this Christmas shopping.”
The four little Blossoms were sure it would, and when they started uptown soon after breakfast they felt very rich indeed. Meg carried the money in a beaded bag and Dot sat on the sled. They were sure they would need a sled to bring the bundles home on. It had stopped snowing but there was a thick, snowy blanket on every street and the sled pulled easily.
“How many presents do we have to buy, Meg?” asked Dot, who certainly depended on Meg for a great deal of information.
“Mother, Daddy, Norah, Sam, Twaddles, Bobby and me,” counted Meg on her fingers. “You have to buy seven presents.”
“Eight, counting me,” said Dot.
“You don’t buy a present for yourself,” Bobby reminded her.
“Oh, yes, that’s so, I don’t,” admitted Dot. “Well, then does each of us have to buy seven presents?”
“We’re forgetting Uncle Dave and Aunt Miranda,” said Meg. “It wouldn’t be nice to have them come see us Christmas and not have any presents. That makes nine.”
Dear, dear, nine presents are a good many to buy and it took the four little Blossoms several minutes to decide how much they had to spend on each gift. They sat down on somebody’s doorstep while Bobby figured it out for them. He said they must spend exactly the same amount on each present because he couldn’t be working out arithmetic examples all morning.
“Dot can spend five and one-tenth cents on each present,” announced Bobby after much hard work with a stubby pencil and a slip of paper from Meg’s bag.
“I’d rather it came out even,” objected Dot.
“It can’t,” Bobby informed her. “That’s arithmetic. Meg can spend seven and two-sixty-fifths cents.”
“You can’t buy anything for that,” poutedMeg. “I tell you what let’s do—divide up the presents; you get one for Norah and I’ll get one for Sam. And Dot can get something for Aunt Miranda, and Twaddles can get a present for Uncle David. Like that, you know.”
The four little Blossoms thought this was a sensible plan, after they had talked it over, though Bobby said he wished Meg had thought of it before he done had so much arithmetic.
“I’m going to get a present for Mother and Daddy,” he added.
Each of the children were determined to buy a present for Father and Mother Blossom, so that was understood, too. And when they reached the five-and-ten-cent store, they separated, because Christmas shopping should always be a secret. Bobby left the sled with the boy who kept a paper stand next door, and he was the first one through with his shopping. He had to wait nearly half an hour and then Meg and Dot struggled out of the crowd together, their arms full of small packages. Twaddles was the last one to come and he carriedone large bundle that was so big around he could scarcely clasp his hands about it.
“Did you spend all your money for one thing?” asked Meg curiously, while they piled their purchases on the sled.
“No, the others are inside of that,” replied Twaddles, gazing at his bundle with loving pride. “But you can’t see ’em.”
The four little Blossoms ploughed home through the snow and that afternoon they were very busy, tying up packages in tissue paper and writing names on the pretty tags and seals Mother Blossom gave them. Mother Blossom herself was busy doing up Christmas gifts to mail and she had a whole sledful for the children to take to the post-office late that afternoon. Among the parcels were several for Aunt Polly and one for Jud and another for Linda who lived with Aunt Polly at Brookside Farm.
Tuesday would be Christmas, and Monday morning Uncle Dave and Aunt Miranda came. The four little Blossoms went with Father Blossom in the car to the station to meet them. Meg and Bobby had seen them once, when Bobby wasthree years old and Meg two, but, of course, they did not remember them clearly.
“Well, well, well,” said Uncle Dave, when he saw the children almost tumbling out of the car to greet him. “So these are the four little Blossoms, eh? What goes round and round and never touches the sky or ground?”
“What does?” asked Dot who loved riddles.
“You do,” said Uncle Dave kissing her. “You haven’t had your feet on the ground two minutes since I first caught sight of you.”
Uncle Dave was a rather tall old man, with slightly stooped shoulders and eyes that twinkled whenever he looked at anyone. He wore a soft felt hat with a high crown and a narrow, curving brim. Out of the pocket of his overcoat peeped a corncob pipe. Uncle Dave was very fond of his old cob pipe, the children soon discovered.
Aunt Miranda was a tiny little old lady with snow white hair and snapping black eyes. She was so muffled up in shawls and scarfs and capes that no one realized how tiny she was till she was all “unwound,” as Bobby said. The firstthing she did when they had reached the house and she had kissed Mother Blossom, was to put on a black silk apron and take her knitting out of the pocket. And during her visit no one ever saw Aunt Miranda without her knitting. She did not believe in idle hands.
The four little Blossoms always trimmed their own Christmas tree, and right after lunch they went to work. Uncle Dave insisted on helping and he was so tall and had such long arms that he was every bit as good as a step-ladder. How he laughed when Twaddles, watching him admiringly, told him this.
“I must tell Aunt Miranda that,” he chuckled. “She always says I put things out of her reach. She is so short that what I put away on the closet shelves, she has to stand on a chair to get down.”
The tree looked beautiful when it was all trimmed. Meg and Dot had strung the ropes of popcorn and the cranberries and Bobby and Uncle Dave had put on the gold and silver ornaments which were carefully saved from year to year. Twaddles always claimed the right to sprinkle the white cotton and mica onfor the snow, and just before dinner Father Blossom put the star at the top of the tree and Sam Layton came in to fix the electric lights. Norah had baked the gingerbread men which hung from the branches, and Mother Blossom and Aunt Miranda had made the candied apples on sticks which helped to trim the tree. All the Blossom family had a hand in getting the tree ready, you see, which was one reason, perhaps, they always loved to have one.
“Now we light it after dinner, and put all the other lights out,” Bobby explained to Aunt Miranda. “And then we hang up our stockings and then we go to bed.”
And after dinner the tree was lighted, and the four little Blossoms marched around it, singing the Christmas carols they had learned. Then Mother Blossom helped them to hang up their stockings, four in a row, fastened to the mantle-piece—and very long and black and empty they looked, dangling there—and they said good-night and pattered upstairs to bed.
Just before Mother Blossom tucked them infor the night, Bobby ran over to the window to look at the weather.
“It’s snowing some more!” he cried. “Twaddles, Santa Claus won’t have a bit of trouble getting here; the roof will be covered with snow!”
“If you hear him, you call me,” directed Twaddles.
“Call me,” begged Dot sleepily from her bed. “I want to tell him something special.”