CHAPTER VTHE FOOTBALL GAME
FATHER BLOSSOM drove Mrs. Jordan and Paul home and left Miss Florence at her house. They all said it had been the happiest Thanksgiving they had known in years and the four little Blossoms were happy, too.
“I like to have company come to our house,” said Meg, as she was going to bed that night. “Don’t you, Dot?”
“Yes, I do,” replied Dot sleepily. “I’m thankful for company.”
The next day there was no school, of course, and though Bobby had planned to play with Meg and the twins, two boys came to ask him to play football before he was through breakfast.
“Fred Baldwin has a football, Mother,” said Bobby earnestly. “And we’re getting up a footballteam. Do you care if I go over to his house and play?”
“Let me be on the team?” begged Twaddles. “I can play football, Bobby. Can’t I, Dot?”
“You’re too little,” answered Bobby impatiently. “Fred is waiting to know if I can come, Mother.”
“But, dear, I don’t see where you are going to play,” protested Mother Blossom. “You can’t play on the school field, because the older boys have that for their use.”
“They’re all through playing football now,” explained Bobby. “The last game was Thanksgiving. There’s a vacant lot back of Fred’s house, Mother, and we can play there. I’m the captain.”
“All right, dear, run along and have a good time,” said Mother Blossom, giving him a kiss. “Be sure you come home at twelve o’clock. And, Twaddles, I’ll think of something nice for you to do at home. When you are as old as Bobby, you may play football, too.”
Fred Baldwin and Palmer Davis, two boys inBobby’s class at school, were waiting for him. Fred had his football under his arm.
“We’re going over to Bertrand Ashe’s,” Fred explained. “His cousin is visiting him over Thanksgiving and his brother is captain of the football team at the State University. So he ought to be a good player.”
Bobby thought a boy who was fortunate enough to have a brother captain of a University team ought to be a good player, too, and he did not wonder that Fred had decided to play in Bertrand’s yard.
“Hello,” said Bertrand, when he saw the three boys. “This is my cousin, Elmer Lambert.”
“Hello,” said Elmer, a tall thin boy with a freckled face and nice, merry blue eyes. “I see you have a football.”
Fred was proud of his football. It was a present from his grandfather, he explained. In five minutes the boys were lined up ready for a game. Of course they knew a real football team needs eleven players, but as Bertrand sensibly said there wasn’t room for eleven in theyard anyway and they could get alone with five.
But from the start the game didn’t go smoothly. Bobby kicked the ball over the fence and then, when he had climbed after it and brought it back, Fred kicked it over the fence on the other side.
“There isn’t room enough here,” complained Elmer. “Can’t we play somewhere else, Bertrand?”
“Back of the carpenter shop, across the street,” suggested Bertrand. “The shop’s built on the edge of the street and there’s an open place in back. Come on, I’ll show you.”
The snowstorm which had begun so briskly the afternoon before when the four little Blossoms were out automobiling had not amounted to much after all. It had melted during the night and though there was a sharp wind and it was cold, the ground was almost bare.
The carpenter shop “on the edge of the street,” was a one-story building on the street end of a long, narrow lot that stretched through to the next block. There was no one around when the boys went around back of the shop and it seemedto be locked up securely. Bertrand said he thought the man who owned the shop had gone away to spend Thanksgiving with his son in another town.
“Will he mind if we play here?” asked Elmer.
“He won’t care a bit,” replied Bertrand confidently. “We won’t hurt anything, and besides he won’t know about it.”
Which wasn’t a very good argument and would have made Father Blossom laugh if he had heard it. But the boys were too eager to resume their game to pay much attention to anything Bertrand said.
Bobby, as captain, had his “signals” written down on a piece of paper and he first explained them to his players and then called off the numbers as he had seen the high school captain do. And when they had tried all the signals three times, Elmer suggested that they practice punting.
“That’s very important,” he explained, “and my brother says if you can develop a good punter on your team, half your troubles are settled. I think Bobby does pretty well now.”
Bobby was very much pleased at this praise from a boy whose brother was a big football captain and he resolved, more firmly than ever, to make the football team the first year he was in high school.
“Punt now,” urged Elmer. “Stand back, fellows, and give him a chance. Go on and try, Bobby.”
Bobby took the ball from Fred, held it a moment in his hands and dropped it. Before it reached the ground he kicked and his toe sent it curving in a long line over the lot toward the carpenter shop.
“My goodness, it went in the window!” gasped Palmer Davis. “Bobby, you’ve kicked it into the carpenter shop!”
“How’ll we get it out?” asked Fred anxiously. “All the doors are locked, the back one, too. I saw the padlocks. How’ll we get my ball back?”
The five boys looked at each other anxiously. There was Fred’s new, expensive football inside the locked shop. What would the carpenter say when he found it there and would he give it back?
“Do you know the man who owns the shop, Bertrand?” asked Elmer sensibly. “Is he cross?”
“Yes, he is,” said Bertrand quickly. “He’ll be mad anyway ’cause we’ve been playing here and I don’t believe he’ll give the ball back. He doesn’t like boys much, ever since a gang used to play round his shop and steal pieces of wood and tin and solder. That’s why he had the locks put on the doors; he used to have just bolts.”
Bertrand had a memory like a great many other people. He remembered these small details after something had happened.
“Well, I didn’t break a window,” said Bobby hopefully. “The ball went through that little window that was left open; ’tisn’t as if I had broken a window in his shop.”
“That won’t make any difference,” said Bertrand gloomily. “I tell you he will be mad ’cause we played on his lot. I think we’d better go home before he comes and finds us here.”
“I won’t go without my ball,” protested Fred. “It’s brand-new and I want it. Bobby,you have to ask the man for it, ’cause you kicked it through the window.”
As they talked the boys had been walking slowly toward the carpenter shop, and now they stood directly under the open window. It was smaller than the three regular-sized windows which were closed—and presumably locked. Bobby could reach the sill of the small window with the tips of his fingers.
“I’m going in to get it,” he said quietly to Fred. “You watch, and if you see the man coming sing out.”
“Are you going in?” asked Fred, surprised. “Maybe you can’t get out. Aren’t you afraid, Bobby?”
Bobby considered. He was a very honest little boy.
“Yes, I’m afraid, kind of,” he said truthfully. “But I’d be more afraid to go and ask the man for it. Be sure you yell if you see him coming.”
He scrambled up to the window sill and the boys helped push him through the small opening. They heard him drop down to the floor and begin rummaging around.
“I don’t see where it went,” he cried. “Gee, there’s a lot of things in here.”
“Come on, I’m going in!” exclaimed Elmer. “It’s mean to make Bobby do it all. We were all playing. I’m going to help him find the ball.”
The rest of the boys followed Elmer’s lead. One by one they scrambled up to the little window and squeezed through. Once inside, they found the shop so fascinating that they had to stop and look around before they began to search for the missing ball.
“What do you suppose this is?” cried Fred, pointing to a queer tool that lay on the workbench.
“I don’t know—don’t touch anything,” said Bobby. “I wish I could see the ball. Oh, here’s a cat!”
Sure enough, a sleek gray and white cat lay curled up on a coat in one corner of the room. She opened her eyes sleepily and stared at Bobby and when he patted her she purred gently.
“Here’s the ball!” shouted Elmer Lambert.“Look, it rolled under this basket. Pitch it out of the window, Fred, and then we’ll go.”
“But I want to see how this works,” said Fred, who was examining a box that clamped to a block of steel. “Just wait a minute, can’t you? I want to see if I can work it.”
“All right, you wait and the carpenter man will come along and catch us,” Bobby told him. “Then I guess you’ll be sorry.”
The mention of the carpenter was enough for Fred. He tossed his precious football out of the window and climbed after it, hastily followed by the other boys. All breathed a sigh of relief as they landed safely on the ground.
“H. Bennett,” read Bobby, looking up at the sign which hung over the door. “Does Mr. H. Bennett own the shop, Bertrand?”
“Yes, he’s the carpenter,” replied Bertrand, “and he has men who go out and work for him. He lives up near the school.”
“Oh, yes, I know that man,” said Palmer.
Bobby thought it must be nearly twelve o’clock and when Bertrand ran into his house to look at the clock, he called back to the restthat it was quarter of twelve. So they scattered to go home for lunch and there was of course no more football game.
Luncheon was ready when Bobby reached home and oddly enough he did not speak of the morning’s experience. Mother Blossom asked him if the boys had played football, and Bobby answered yes, but he did not say anything about the game. Usually he liked to tell about his fun and the twins depended on their older brother to give them new ideas for playing.
“Sam says he’s going over to Clayton, and he’ll come home by the foundry and get Daddy and if you say so we may go with him,” cried Meg, running in from the garage where she had taken Annabel Lee and Philip their dinners. “Please, Mother, you want us to go, don’t you?”
“Oh, Mother, let us!” cried the twins.
“I suppose as it is holiday time and you may not have the opportunity again soon, you’ll have to go,” said Mother Blossom. “Be sure you wear your sweaters under your coats, and don’t bother Sam with too many questions and too much chatter.”
“Oh, goody!” cried the twins, and the children all clattered out of the room to prepare for their trip.
The four little Blossoms had their drive to Clayton and came home with Father Blossom just in time for dinner. The long ride in the cold air made them sleepy and they were glad to go to bed earlier than usual.
In the middle of the night, when it was dark and still and very cold, something woke Bobby. He sat up in bed and listened, then snuggled down under the blankets, for a chilly wind blew in at the window.
“Fire engines,” he whispered, and went to sleep again.