Chapter 3 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.

"But he didn't make the hole wide enough," complained the battered Palmer. "First try I hit the side. I think it's an awful silly thing to do, anyway."

"Well, I went through without hitting anything!" said a voice unexpectedly. "You're always ready to make a fuss when you spoil a good game, Palmer."

It was Meg. She had found it impossible to desert Bobby in trouble, and had come back in time to hear Palmer's grievance.

Mr. Carter tried not to smile.

"Aside from hurting Palmer, Bobby," said the principal seriously, "you've damaged the school property. What do you suppose Mr. Hornbeck would say if he saw that fence?" Mr. Hornbeck was one of the school committeemen.

This was something Bobby had not considered.

"I'll mend it," he promised hastily. "Honestly, I never thought about hurting the fence."

"I know you didn't," Mr. Carter said promptly. "Still, that really doesn't alter the fact that you've damaged property that doesn't belong to you. I think to help you remember another time, we'll say you must mend the fence this morning and make up the time after school. I'll take Palmer in and patch him up now. Meg, you should be in your classroom."

"I want to help Bobby," asserted Meg firmly. "I'll stay after school with him, too. It's just as much my fault-I knew he shouldn't pull off pickets, only I never told him."

Mr. Carter looked at the little girl oddly.

"All right, only you'll have to make up the time with Miss Mason," he said. "I think Bobby is a lucky boy to have such a loyal little sister."

Meg and Bobby managed to put the pickets back and Mr. Carter found a piece of new wood with which to patch the old cross piece. They learned that it is easier to destroy things than to mend them, and after they had stayed till half past four that night and Mother Blossom had heard the reason and forbidden them ever to take the tin automobile to school again, both children decided that a game with such a sorry ending wasn't worth planning.

The twins had spent the day grubbing in the garden. "Hunting grasshoppers," Twaddles said, as Mother Blossom buttoned him into a clean blouse for supper.

"Why, it's months too early for grasshoppers," said Meg scornfully. "They never come till it's hot in the summertime. How can you be so silly, Twaddles?"

"Huh!" was the best response Twaddles could make to this remark, but when he was ready to go downstairs he slipped into Meg's room. Her blue serge skirt and a fresh middy blouse lay over a chair and Twaddles knew she would wear them to school the next day. With a quick glance toward the door he slipped something into the pocket of the blouse, which was stitched into the turned up hem.

"Twaddles!" called Dot. "Twaddles! Hurry up. Mother says she wants to tell us something. Come on down."

Mother Blossom was smiling as though something pleased her very much.

"Come into the living-room, children," she said, as the four little Blossoms came running downstairs. "Daddy has telephoned that he won't be home to supper and we may take a few minutes to hear my news. Do you think you would like to go to Apple Tree Island?"

"Apple Tree Island?" repeated Twaddles, who never could keep still. "Is it a place, Mother?"

"A beautiful place, darling," she assured him. "It has green grass and gray rocks and crooked old apple trees and is set down in the center of the prettiest lake you ever saw."

"Who lives there, Mother?" asked Meg. "Are we going visiting?"

"Not exactly visiting," explained Mother Blossom. "You know Daddy's friend, Mr. Winthrop? He owns a bungalow on Apple Tree Island, and this summer he and his family are going to England. He has told Daddy that we may have the use of this house if we care to go up to the lake."

"Let's go!" cried Dot instantly. "Won't it be fun to live on an island like Robinson Crusoe? When are we going, Mother?"

Mother Blossom laughed.

"That is for Daddy to say," she answered. "I'm not sure that we are really going."