"Where is the lunch?" asked Bobby, who began to feel hungry himself.
"I know--I"ll get it," Meg replied, and ran up the ladder.
She felt around in the hay where she had buried the box, but she couldn"t find it. The other children came up and watched her curiously, but still she couldn"t feel anything like a box.
"What are you looking for?" said Dot curiously.
"For our lunch," Meg told her, almost ready to cry. "I put it under the hay and now I can"t find it."
Bobby and the twins hastily got down beside her and tossed the hay around. They looked where Meg said she put the box and they looked where she was sure it couldn"t be, but all that happened was that they got very warm and tired indeed and not one sign of the lunch did they uncover.
"Do you know what I think?" said Twaddles wisely. "I think some rat found it and ate it. I"ve seen rats up here in the loft, lots of times."
Meg glanced around hastily. She wasn"t at all anxious to see a rat.
"Rats couldn"t eat the box and everything in it," Bobby argued. "They would leave pieces of paper and things that we would see."
"Then where is the box?" demanded Dot.
Bobby sat down to think and Meg waited respectfully.
"We"ll have to get a pitchfork and turn over all the hay," Bobby decided. "That"s the only way to find the box: it"s lost in all this hay."
He was willing to go and get the pitchfork, but he was gone several minutes. When he came back, Jud was with him.
"Pitchforks and Twaddles won"t mix," declared Jud firmly. "We"ll have to manage some other way. Show me where you hid the box, Meg."
Meg showed him, as nearly as she could remember. Jud knelt down and felt under the hay, while the children stared at him as though they expected him to work some kind of magic.
"I think I can find it," he announced. "You all sit down and close your eyes tightly and don"t open them till I give the word."
So they sat down on the floor and Dot put her head in Meg"s lap, for it was hard for her to keep her eyes closed. She always wanted to see what was going on.
Meg counted to ninety-eight before she heard Jud cry, "All right!"
The four little Blossoms opened their eyes and there stood Jud, the lunch box in his hand. He was smiling.
"How did you find it?" asked Meg. "Was it under the hay?"
"On top," said Jud mysteriously. "You see, Meg, the box fell through the slats and landed on top of a ration of hay in one of the stalls.
All I had to do was to go downstairs and get it."
Linda had packed the box so neatly and so firmly that nothing was damaged and the children had a delightful picnic up in the loft. They played there most of the afternoon, too, and often during the rainy days that followed. Indeed they amused themselves so well and were so little trouble to Aunt Polly, that she promised them one more outdoor picnic, the first dry sunny day that came.
"Be sure you save me some sandwiches," said Peter, when he heard about it.
They promised and it was Dot who woke up the household bright and early when she saw the sun streaming in at the window.
"We can have the picnic!" she shouted joyfully. "Aunt Polly, isn"t it dry and sunny? Get up, Twaddles, we can have the picnic."
It was a sunny day, but it wasn"t so dry, for the ground was still damp from so much rain.
"But if we go wading, the water"s wet," argued Dot, and Linda, too, thought they might as well go.
"Don"t forget my sandwiches," Peter reminded them as he saw them start.
CHAPTER XVIII
THE END OF THE VACATION
The four little Blossoms wanted to go to the same place where they had gone before and Jud drove them. Then he was to take the horses and wagon back for his father to use during the day and Peter would come for the picnickers in the afternoon and get his sandwiches.
"Don"t go wading till Jud comes," said Aunt Polly, when good-natured Jud had gone back. "Help Linda spread out the rubber blanket, for we want to be comfortable while you play around."
The children spread out the blanket and on top of that Aunt Polly spread a cotton one and then she and Linda sat down to sew.
"Let"s go see if there is another shirt spread out to dry," suggested Meg, and she was much excited when they saw a bit of white fluttering from a bush.
""Tisn"t the same place," Dot argued.
"Well, it"s almost the same place," retorted Bobby. "Only it looks ragged," he added.
Meg was eager to go and examine the white thing, but she knew they would have to wait for Jud. Aunt Polly laughed when she heard about it and said that Meg would have Linda running a mending shop if she was not very careful.
"After we have lunch, if Jud is willing to take you, you may go over and see what it is," she told her little niece kindly. "You"d have every one nicely washed and mended if you could, wouldn"t you, Meg?"
Jud came back on foot and after he had rested a minute, declared he was willing to wade the brook with the children. But Aunt Polly insisted they must have lunch first and of course no one wanted to miss that. As soon as the last crumb was gone, however, the children began to tease and Jud said they might as well go. He had laughed at the idea of another shirt, but half way across the stream he seemed to change his mind.
"Guess somebody lost his shirt," observed Jud, keeping a firm grip on Dot, who seemed to be trying to dance.
"Say, wouldn"t it be funny," began Bobby, but Meg had the same idea at the same time.
"Do you suppose it could----" she said slowly.
"It"s the raft!" yelled Twaddles, breaking away from Jud, and rushing into the bushes. "It"s our raft--Oh, Jud!" Twaddles had stepped on a sharp stone.
"I wish you"d be a little more careful," said Jud calmly. "Well, it is the raft! Can you beat that?"
Tangled in broken reeds and a few p.r.i.c.kly bushes, lay their raft, Geraldine smiling as sweetly as ever and still propped up against Meg"s book. Nothing was missing, not even Twaddles" singing bird or Bobby"s airplane.
"I"m so glad!" Meg kept saying. "I"m so glad! Now let"s go home and play with them."
"It"s lucky we"ve had this long, dry spell," said Jud, picking up Geraldine and eyeing her critically. "If we"d had one good storm, good-by toys."