Four Little Blossoms on Apple Tree Island

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FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS ON APPLE TREE ISLAND

BY

MABEL C. HAWLEY

AUTHOR OF "FOUR LITTLE BLOSSOMS AT BROOKSIDE FARM," "FOUR LITTLE
BLOSSOMS AT OAK HILL SCHOOL," ETC.

ILLUSTRATED BY WALTER F. RODGERS

CONTENTS

I THE NEW CAR

II BOBBY HAS A PLAN

III HOW THE PLAN WORKED

IV TWADDLES' GRASSHOPPER

V APPLE TREE ISLAND

VI ERRANDS IN TOWN

VII BEGINNING THE JOURNEY

VIII OLD BROOKSIDE FRIENDS

IX ON THE WAY AGAIN

X ON THE ISLAND

XI A DAMP ADVENTURE

XII SUNNY SUMMER DAYS

XIII A SIGNAL FOR HELP

XIV THE RESCUE

XV BOBBY'S GREAT DISCOVERY

CHAPTER I

THE NEW CAR

Half of a small boy protruded from the oven, his stout tan shoes
waving convulsively.

"Twaddles!" Nora coming into her orderly kitchen was amazed.
"Glory be, child, are you making toast of yourself?"

The shoes gave a final wriggle and Twaddles deftly backed out of
the oven, turning to show a flushed face and a pair of dark,
dancing eyes.

"What are ye doing?" insisted Norah curiously. "The sponge cake
was baked and put away hours ago."

"Oh, I don't want any of your sponge cake," Twaddles assured her
loftily, forgetting, perhaps, the many times he had hung around
the kitchen door during Norah's baking and teased for "just one
bite." "I'm life-saving, Norah."

"You're what?" asked Norah incredulously.

Twaddles sat down comfortably on the stone hearth before the old-
fashioned coal range and began to clean caked mud from the soles
of his shoes.

"It's a robin," he explained. "A sick robin, Norah. I found him on
the grass, and he was too cold and wet to fly. Mother used to put
'em in the oven when she was a little girl and that made 'em all
well again."

"You'll scorch him," said Norah, stooping down to look. "That oven
is nearly hot enough to bake biscuit in, Twaddles. Wait, I'll wrap
your robin up in cotton and we'll put him on the shelf warmer;
that's about the temperature he needs."

Twaddles, assured of expert attention for his patient, scrambled
to his feet.

"I have to go out in front and watch for Daddy," he announced
importantly. "I want to see what color the new car's painted. Sam
said to be sure and write him."

Norah, working over the faintly peeping young robin, blushed very
red.

"You take the brush pan and broom," she directed Twaddles, "and
brush up that mud. Wasn't it only this morning your mother was
telling you not to be making extra work?"

Twaddles obediently seized the dustpan and the long-handled broom.
His intentions were doubtless of the best, but he was a stranger
to the ways of broom handles. This one, in his hands, caught the
lid of a kettle Norah had on the stove and sent it spinning across
the room to land with a noisy clatter in the sink. Twaddles
privately considered this a distinct feat, but Norah was
unappreciative.

"Glory be!" cried the long-suffering Norah. "Be off with ye, and
I'll clean up the mud. The more helpful ye try to be, Twaddles,
the more work ye make."

Twaddles departed with as much dignity as he could muster, and
running through the front hall found his mother and his brother
Bobby looking at the window boxes on the front porch. The boxes
had been put away for the winter and that morning Father Blossom
had brought them down to see about painting them.

"Can I plant things?" demanded Twaddles.

Meg, who was digging contentedly in the flower bed at the foot of
the steps, looked at him sympathetically. Meg's fair little face
was flushed and there was a streak of dirt across her small
straight nose and she was unmistakably very busy and very happy.

"Isn't it fun?" she greeted her little brother. "Mother says we
may each have a garden this year; didn't you, Mother?"

"I surely did," agreed Mother Blossom, smiling. "What is Dot
bringing?"

Around the corner of the house came Dot, Twaddles' twin sister.
Her hair-ribbon drooped perilously on the end of a straggling lock
of dark hair and her pretty dark blue frock hung in a gap below
the belt where it had pulled loose at the gathers. Dot always had
trouble about keeping her frocks neat.

"I got a hose!" she declared triumphantly. "Daddy won't have to
buy one. The Mertons threw this out on the trash basket and I
brought it home. I guess Daddy can mend it."

Bobby shouted with laughter.

"That's the old piece they used to beat rugs with," he said
positively, "Nobody could mend that."

"Come see the robin I found," suggested Twaddles. "It's getting
dry on the shelf warmer. Perhaps we can keep him to play with."

"That you can't," said Mother Blossom quickly. "It wouldn't be
right in the first place, and in the second place it is against
the law. You must put him out in the grass again, Twaddles, as
soon as he is warm and dry."

"Daddy!" Meg's quick eyes had seen a car making the corner turn.
"Here comes Daddy! What color is the car, Bobby?"

"Black--no, blue, dark blue!" cried Bobby.

As the comfortable touring car drew up at the curb and the smiling
driver waved a gloved hand at the eager group on the porch, Dot
jumped up and down with excitement.

"Take me, Daddy?" she shrieked. "Aren't you going?"

Pell-mell the children raced down the garden path and Mrs. Blossom
followed more leisurely.

"Aren't you going?" Dot kept repeating. "Aren't you going?"

"You don't care much where you go, do you, Dot?" asked her father
whimsically. "The main idea with you seems to be to keep moving.
How about it, Mother--want to take a little drive?" Mrs. Blossom
glanced toward the house.

"I'm as bad as the children," she confessed. "It must be this
Spring weather. I really ought to be upstairs mending stockings,
but how can I stay indoors on a day like this?"

"Get your hat," said Mr. Blossom crisply. "That settles it--we're
going to take a spin. Pile in, youngsters."

Mother Blossom came back with her hat and sweaters for the
children, and Norah came to the door to wave to them and see the
new car. It was a very handsome, nicely finished model, painted
dark blue, as Bobby had said. The seats were upholstered in dark
blue rep and there was plenty of room for the Blossom family and
for guests, when they had them.

"May I ride with you, Daddy?" asked Meg.

"It's my turn," insisted Twaddles. "Isn't it, Daddy?"

"That was the old car," said Bobby. "This is beginning all over.
Isn't it, Daddy? Meg and I should ride in the front seat first,
'cause we're the oldest."

"If we have to hear this every time we go driving, I'm afraid
Mother will refuse to go with us," answered Father Blossom
seriously. "Suppose we settle the question another time and to-day
let the three girls ride in the tonneau? I'll need Bobby to keep
an eye on Twaddles because I'll have to give all my attention to
the wheel."

"I know you must miss Sam," said Mother Blossom, as Meg and Dot
climbed in beside her and Bobby and Twaddles took their places in
the front seat beside Father Blossom. "He was such an excellent
driver."

"Well, in a way, he kept me from learning," said her husband,
starting the car a trifle unevenly. "Sam was so fine a driver I
was perfectly content to let him run the car and never even felt
ambitious to drive myself. If we want to go anywhere this summer,
I'll be glad I have my own driver's license. What's the matter,
Twaddles?"

"I dropped my handkerchief," announced Twaddles sadly. "Right in
the mud. See? it's back there, Daddy."

"Well, I hardly think we'll stop for that," said Father Blossom
judicially. "You've plenty of those little cotton things and I
want to go as far as the lake road before supper time."

"It wasn't a little cotton thing," reported Twaddles, whose
conscience was peculiar in that it usually bothered him too late.
"I borrowed one of your nice, white hankies, Daddy, to wrap my
sick bird in."

"Well, I must say!" sputtered Father Blossom. "I must say! Oh,
Twaddles, why do you always do something you shouldn't? Those
handkerchiefs are pure linen and hand-initialed. I'll have to
stop--you run back and see if you can find it."

He stopped the car and Twaddles obediently jumped out and ran back
to the place where he had dropped the handkerchief. When he had
had plenty of time to return, and didn't appear, Bobby stood up in
the car to look.

"He's fussing with something," he announced. "He's got a stick and
is poking something. I'd better go and get him, hadn't I, Daddy?"

"The child has probably found a garden snake or a frog," said
Mother Blossom, who knew her children thoroughly, as her next
remark proved. "If Bobby goes after Twaddles they will play with
it until dark. Let Meg go. Tell Twaddles, dear, that he is to come
immediately. And don't let him forget the handkerchief."

Meg ran all the way to where Twaddles sat on a stone blissfully
engrossed with something in the roadway.

"Mother says to come this minute," she commanded. "What you got,
Twaddles?"

"There! you've scared it," said Twaddles regretfully. "It was a
dear little snake. All right, I'm coming. I was all ready to start
when you came."

After this delay the trip went smoothly, and Father Blossom
declared that he was pleased with the new car. They reached the
broad, level lake road and drove for several miles along it until
Mother Blossom said that if they were not to keep Norah's supper
waiting, they must turn back.

"Want to get out, Meg?" Father Blossom asked his little daughter
gently.

Meg was always afraid when it was necessary to turn a car. She
usually got out when Sam Layton, the Blossom's former chauffeur,
backed their car or found a turn necessary. Now, however, she
shook her head. Meg was learning, too.

Father Blossom carefully swung the heavy car around and was ready
to send it ahead toward home when suddenly the wheel seemed to
take matters into its own hand--if a steering wheel can do such a
thing. Anyway, with a sudden lurch and a bound the car plunged
directly into a heavy screen of brushwood that bordered one side
of the road!

CHAPTER II

BOBBY HAS A PLAN

Twaddles was the first to speak. The plunge had been so unexpected
and there had been so little warning, none at all, in fact, that
if any one had been inclined to scream there was no opportunity.
They were all breathless and rather shaken up. But Twaddles, who
had thrown his arms around Bobby's neck, managed to grin.

"Well, what do you know about that!" he ejaculated in his funny,
serious little voice.

That made them all laugh, and then Father Blossom began to ask
anxiously if any one was hurt.

"No one, thank goodness," Mother Blossom assured him, opening the
tonneau door so that Meg and Dot might step out. "You haven't cut
your hand, Ralph?"

"Just a scratch," answered Father Blossom carelessly. "I bore down
pretty hard on the wheel rim. Well, I'm thankful we didn't turn
over. What do you suppose was the reason for this running jump?"

The four little Blossoms were out on the ground now, picking their
way carefully, for they were surrounded by clumps of prickly
bushes. Mother Blossom joined Father Blossom, who was anxiously
inspecting the car.

"It's wedged in so tightly I'll never be able to back it out," he
said. "Only see, Margaret, how neatly it has slipped in between
these three saplings. If I had tried that stunt I couldn't have
made it once in fifty chances."

Meg and Dot and Twaddles and Bobby crowded closer to look. Perhaps
this is a good time to tell you who the four little Blossoms were,
if you have never met them before.

You have guessed, of course, that they had other and longer names.
Meg was named for her mother, Margaret; Bobby was Robert Hayward
Blossom on the school roll; the twins (they were four years old)
were Dorothy Anna and Arthur Gifford Blossom, but no one ever
thought of calling the roly-poly dark-eyed pair anything but Dot
and Twaddles.

If you have read the first book of this series, "Four Little
Blossoms at Brookside Farm," you know that Father Blossom owned a
large foundry on the edge of the pretty town of Oak Hill and that
he and his family lived in a comfortable old-fashioned house with
Norah, who had been with them for years, and Sam Layton, the good-
natured man of all work, to help make things run smoothly. You
will remember that Brookside Farm was the name of Aunt Polly's
home, Aunt Polly being the older sister of Mother Blossom. The
Four Little Blossoms spent a delightful summer at Brookside and
came home just in time for Meg and Bobby to enter Oak Hill school.

What they did that first winter in school and how the twins tried
their best to do exactly as Meg and Bobby did, and usually
succeeded, is told in the book called "Four Little Blossoms at Oak
Hill School." They found school most exciting and it did seem as
though there was something to be done every minute of the short
winter days, but, dear me, when the heavy snowfalls began you
should have seen the children! They coasted, and they skated, and
Meg lost her beautiful turquoise locket. But she found it, so you
need not be sorry. The whole story of that locket is told in the
third book of the series, called "Four Little Blossoms and Their
Winter Fun." Meg and Bobby were lost in a snowstorm, too, and for
a time things looked very serious for them, but that adventure
also had a happy ending.

And now we find the four little Blossoms, early in April, just as
glad to see the beautiful, shining green Spring as they had been
to see the first Winter snow. Sam Layton had gone away to Canada
to work on a farm soon after the weather grew pleasant, and the
four little Blossoms missed him very much. They suspected that
Norah missed him, too, though she said nothing. The children had
all promised to write to Sam, and Norah wrote every week.

This was the reason Father Blossom was driving the new car. As he
said, Sam was such an excellent driver there had really been no
need for him to drive; but with Sam away, if Father Blossom wanted
to reach his foundry on time every morning there was nothing for
him to do but to learn to drive the car himself.

"I'll go and see if I can persuade some farmer to come and pull us
out," he said to Mother Blossom, when he had tried without results
to back the car from the mass of bushes and saplings into which it
had driven. "You stay right here with Mother, children, and I'll
be back in fifteen or twenty minutes."

Twaddles wanted to go with his father, but when it was explained
to him that his mother and the girls needed his protection and
that of Bobby, he was quite willing to wait quietly in the bushes.
That is, as quietly as Twaddles ever waited anywhere.

"Perhaps we can find flowers," Meg suggested, as Father Blossom
disappeared, whistling. "Brush some of these leaves away, Dot, and
let's see what grows underneath."

"Oh, dear!" came with a big sigh from Dot, and they turned to see
her caught by a bush whose sharp spikes went right through her
firm serge frock and bloomers and held her fast.

"I'll get you," offered Twaddles gallantly, and he tried to
scramble over the intervening bushes, fortunately all low.

But though low, they were tightly woven, for no underbrush had
been cut from this section of the woods for years. In a moment
Twaddles was pinned as tightly as Dot, a narrow, string-like coil
of vine wrapping securely round his ankles and a sharp stake
thrusting itself slantwise through the sleeve of his sweater.

"Don't wriggle," implored Mother Blossom, as she and Meg and Bobby
came cautiously to the rescue. "I do want these clothes to last
you till it is time to buy Summer ones. Hold still, Dot. There!
Now come and sit in the car and I'll tell you a story till Daddy
comes back."

Bobby had managed to free Twaddles, and the four little Blossoms
climbed into the car and really sat very still--for them--while
Mother Blossom began the story of what she did when she was a
little girl and went away to boarding school for the first time.
The children loved "true" stories, and they listened intently till
Dot spied her father coming down the crooked little path and set
up a shout.

Father Blossom had found a farmer who lived near, and had arranged
with him to bring two strong horses and a heavy rope and see if he
could pull the car from the underbrush. The farmer was a tall,
silent man who seemed not to hear the excited questions of the
four little Blossoms, and never even spoke to Mother Blossom
beyond a quick jerk at his cap when he first saw her sitting in
the car.

But, although the farmer, whose name was Ellis, was "no talker"
(he himself said so), he was a quick worker, and in less than ten
minutes he had rigged up the rope to the car, fastened it to the
collars of his horses, and in another five minutes the car was out
in the road and clear of the bushes and saplings.

"Only scratched a mite," commented the farmer, pocketing the bill
Father Blossom gave him to pay for his time and trouble. "Lucky
not to have to have the whole thing scraped and re-varnished."

The Blossoms were home in time for supper, and of course Norah had
to hear about the drive. Bobby did not have much to say, for he
was busy thinking out a little plan that, he privately decided,
could best be tried out at school. Bobby's experience had been
that Twaddles and Dot always wanted a finger in his plans and that
too many fingers are as bad as too many cooks. And any one will
tell you that too many cooks are worse than none.

"Can I take my automobile to school this morning?" Bobby asked at
the breakfast table the day after the drive in the new car.

Bobby was very proud of his automobile that worked with pedals
like a tricycle but looked exactly like a miniature automobile,
even to the red paint and the lamps and the tin license tacked on
the back axle.

"If you won't let it interfere with your school work, I suppose
you may," conceded Mother Blossom. "Is there a place where you can
keep it during school hours?"

"I can keep it down under the first floor stairs," said Bobby
eagerly. "And I won't play with it only before school and at
recess, Mother, honest."

So he was allowed to take the car, and he went early in order to
have time for play before the nine o'clock bell. Meg hung on
behind him and the twins watched them out of sight enviously.
There was nothing in the world the twins desired so ardently as to
go to school. They had been promised that they might start in the
kindergarten the next term and they were already looking forward
to that time.

"I want to play a new way," Bobby was explaining to Meg as he
pedaled furiously. "You'll see--I thought it up all myself last
night."

A crowd of boys swept forward to greet Bobby when he entered the
school yard. Most of them had seen his car before--it had been a
birthday present in February--but to several it was new and all
admired it and wished for one exactly like it.

"Can't have any fun with it here," said Tim Roon, rather
contemptuously.

Tim was apt to speak of the dark side of everything, and he had
very good luck in finding a dark side to draw attention to.

"Yes, I can," insisted Bobby. "You'll see."

He went through the school yard, down to the end where an old-
fashioned picket fence shut off the playground from a vacant lot
that later would be divided off into the school gardens, a plot
for each grade.

"What you going to do?" asked Tim Roon curiously.

The other children looked mystified, including Meg. She, too,
wondered what Bobby could be planning to do.

"You'll see." Bobby repeated his favorite phrase.

From his blouse he drew a hammer, borrowed from the tool bench in
the Blossom garage, and, awkwardly, for he was not used to the
work, inserted it under the end of a picket. There was a ripping,
grating noise, and the picket parted from the cross-piece.

"Bobby Blossom!" cried Meg. "What in the world are you going to
do?"

CHAPTER III

HOW THE PLAN WORKED

"You'll see," said Bobby with maddening persistency.

While the children watched, he ripped off four more pickets. The
cross pieces of the fence were old and rotten and when he put his
foot on the lower brace and bore down heavily, it obligingly
snapped in two.

"I'm going to ride right through that hole!" Bobby condescended to
explain at last. "Daddy drove our car right in between three
trees, and I'll bet I can steer through a narrow place, too. You
watch."

Breathless the boys and girls stood back while Bobby pushed his
automobile to a point he considered a proper distance from the
opening in the fence. He took his seat, put his foot on the
pedals, and tooted the horn.

"Here I go!" he cried, making his feet fly.

The car shot forward and, much to the surprise of every one except
Bobby, went through the hole in the pickets safely and on out into
the muddy lot.

"Pretty good steering," said Palmer Davis generously.

"Let me try," begged Meg. "I can steer, Bobby."

Meg always did everything Bobby did, and it never entered his head
to refuse her. So she took the automobile, and, holding the wheel
tightly, pedaled through the hole, though more slowly than Bobby
had done. Palmer Davis was wild to try his skill, but Meg insisted
on two rides and when she had finished the second one the warning
bell rang.

"You can have it the first thing recess," promised Bobby to the
disappointed Palmer, who felt better then and helped Bobby put the
fascinating toy under the stairs in the back hall.

As soon as the recess bell sounded, Palmer and Bobby dashed down
and out into the yard. Meg, who was a grade below them but in the
same room, stayed behind to clean her desk, a favorite occupation
with the little girls. Miss Mason, the teacher, was watering a
shelf of plants, and the windows were all open to the lovely April
sunshine. Meg hummed a little, she was so happy.

"Ow! Ow!" suddenly the most heart-breaking howl rose from the
school yard, the cry of some one in great pain or sadly
frightened.

"Some one is hurt!" cried Miss Mason, hurrying to the window that
faced the playground.

"Ow! Ow! Ow!" louder and louder the shrieks rose.

"Can't be killed and make a noise like that," said Miss Mason
practically. "Can you tell who it is, Meg?"

Meg pushed aside one of the girls who stood in her way. She gave a
glance from the window. She saw a crowd of boys surrounding the
crying one and more boys hurrying from every part of the yard. The
group parted for a moment and Meg glimpsed a bit of gleaming red
tin. It was Bobby's automobile.

"It's Palmer!" Meg guessed instantly, "He must have hit the
fence!"

She turned and ran from the room, leaving Miss Mason to reason
out, if she could, what connection Palmer's howling had with
hitting the fence.

Meg slid down the banisters, as the quickest way to reach the
door, and was just in time to see Mr. Carter, the principal, run
from his office out into the yard. Mr. Carter was really principal
of the grammar school, where he spent most of his time, leaving
the primary grades under the control of Miss Wright, the vice-
principal. But he spent a certain number of days each month in the
primary school office and the pupils soon discovered that he knew
quite as well as Miss Wright what was going on in the lower
grades.

"Oh, my!" gasped Meg as she sped after Mr. Carter. "I didn't know
he was going to be here to-day. I wonder if Palmer is hurt much?"

Whether Palmer was badly hurt or not, he was certainly making a
great noise. He continued to scream, "at the top of his lungs,"
Norah would have said.

"Ow! Ow!" wailed Palmer. "Ow-wow!"

"Here, here, boy, nothing can be as bad as that sounds," said Mr.
Carter, pushing his way in among the children and stooping down to
Palmer, who was huddled in a heap on the ground, his feet and the
tin automobile apparently inextricably mixed. "Stand up, Palmer,
and let me see where you are hurt."

Palmer struggled to his feet, and Meg could see that he had a bump
over one eye. The sleeve of his jacket was torn and his lip was
bleeding slightly.

"Why, you're not so badly off," Mr. Carter comforted him, taking
his own handkerchief and wiping off the streaks left by tears and
dirt on Palmer's round face. "No bones broken, laddie, and Miss
Wright will fix that lip with a little court-plaster. She knows
first-aid. What in the world were you doing down at this end of
the yard?"

There was a sudden silence. Meg, on the outside of the crowd,
experienced a distinctly uncomfortable feeling.

"Were you coasting, Palmer?" asked Mr. Carter, righting the
automobile as he spoke. Then he saw the fence.

"Who ripped off those pickets?" he demanded sternly.

"I--I did," admitted Bobby in a very small voice.

The clang of the gong sounded and Mr. Carter turned to the
listening children.

"Go back to your classes," he directed them. "You stay, Bobby and
Palmer. I want to speak to you."

Obediently the others filed in, not without many a backward glance
at the group by the fence.

"Now suppose you tell me about it," suggested Mr. Carter mildly.

So Bobby told about the drive of the previous afternoon and of how
his father had landed the car in the bushes; he told about his
scheme to prove that he could steer, and of how Palmer had asked
to try, too.

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