Dot tucked Geraldine under her arm, Twaddles stuffed his bird into his pocket, Meg took her book and Bobby his airplane, and Jud offered to tow the raft. So slowly and carefully they made their way back to where Jud had left his socks and shoes.
Aunt Polly and Linda were surprised and delighted when they saw the children coming, for they had begun to wonder what they could be doing.
"You don"t mean to tell me you found the raft!" exclaimed Aunt Polly, when she heard the news. "Why, that"s the best luck I ever heard of."
And Linda said "My goodness!" over and over, and wanted to know just where they had found it and who saw it first and how they had managed to reach it.
"You"ve played enough in the water," said Aunt Polly, when each child had told the story. "Put on your shoes and stockings and see if you can"t find me a maidenhair fern for my fern-box."
Meg found it first, and then Jud lent her his jack-knife and showed her how to take it up so that the roots would not be injured. Then he left her for a minute while he went back to get a paper cup from Linda to plant it in, and when he came back he found her backed up against a tree and looking frightened.
"What scared you?" he asked quickly. "Did you see a snake, Meg?"
"No," she whispered. "I don"t know what it was. But it stared and stared at me, Jud."
"Well, where did you see it?" demanded Jud briskly. "Let me have a whack at it with this branch. Where"d you see it, Meg?"
"In the hole in this tree," answered Meg. "I was shaking more dirt off the fern when I looked up and there it was jiggling at me."
"Where?" asked Jud again, a bit impatiently. "I don"t see any hole."
"I"m standing over it," said Meg, "so the thing can"t get away."
Meg, you see, was frightened, but not too frightened to be interested and curious about a strange animal.
"I"m sure it"s an animal, "cause it moves," she told Jud, as she stood aside to let him look in the hole.
Jud put his hand in the hole--it was an old dead tree and hollow at the top--and drew out something soft and fluffy.
"Just as I thought," he chuckled. "It"s a baby owl."
"Oh, how cunning," cried Meg, coming closer and venturing to put a finger on the bunch of feathers. "But what a funny face, Jud!"
Indeed the baby owl looked like a very young and foolish monkey as it sat in Jud"s hands and rolled its head and stared aimlessly.
"He"s pretty near blind," Jud explained. "In the daytime owls can hardly see at all. I suspect there"s a nest in this old tree. Want to hold it for me while I feel?"
Meg was certainly not afraid of a baby owl, and she took it tenderly.
Sure enough, Jud knew what he was talking about--he put his arm away into the tree trunk and brought out two more little owls.
Twaddles and Dot had come up by this time, and they were perfectly entranced with the queer little birds.
Jud carefully put the baby owls back. Then they planted the fern in the paper cup, found Bobby, who was trying to fish with a breadcrumb tied to a string, and told him about the owls, and then they heard the wagon coming for them.
"Have a good time?" asked Peter, as he helped them all in and the wagon started its noisy trip home. Peter was eating one of the sandwiches they had saved for him and looked very contented.
"Such a nice time," said the four little Blossoms.
"Was there any mail?" asked Aunt Polly.
"Just one letter," replied Peter.
But that was a very important letter, as the Blossoms found out when they were once more at home and Aunt Polly read it to them while Linda was getting supper.
"Mother"s coming!" cried Bobby, meeting Jud on his way to the barn.
"That"s fine," said Jud heartily. Then his face fell.
"But you don"t want to go home yet!" he urged. "Vacation isn"t over so soon, is it? There"s lots we planned to do we haven"t done."
"Mother"s going to stay a week," said Bobby happily. "School doesn"t open for two weeks, but we have to go home and get ready. Say, Jud, I didn"t miss Mother--not such a lot, that is--but now I miss her dreadful much."
When Mother Blossom came she found all the children in the car with Aunt Polly to meet her. And the things they did during that one week, from another picnic to having all the new friends they had made at Brookside come to supper, including Mr. Sparks--well, Linda said there was more going on than there had been all through the summer, and Linda ought to have known!
"I s"pect Aunt Polly will miss us," said Twaddles the last morning of their visit, as Mother Blossom was b.u.t.toning Dot into a clean frock and Aunt Polly was on her knees locking the trunks.
"I s"pect I shall," said Aunt Polly, tears in her kind eyes.
This was too much for Twaddles.
"You come and stay at our house," he told her earnestly. "And you can come and visit school."
For the twins still insisted they were going to school.
Aunt Polly promised that she would come to see them some time during the winter and that she wouldn"t cry any more but just remember the nice times they had had together that summer.
"And if you go to school, you"ll learn to write, and then I shall look for letters," she said seriously.
So the four little Blossoms started home for Oak Hill and found a Daddy Blossom there very glad to see them, as well as Norah and Sam and Philip, who, as Meg observed, had "grown considerable." He wasn"t lame any more, either.
And if you want to read about what Meg and Bobby did in school, and how the twins contrived to go to school, too, in spite of the fact that they were only four years old, you must read the next book about them which is called "Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School."
"Oh, but it"s been a perfectly lovely summer, hasn"t it?" said Meg, while she was helping unpack her things.
"Best ever," declared Bobby.
"And just think--we own a cow!" cried Dot.
"And maybe--when she gets big--we can milk her," added Twaddles. "Oh, I like the country--I do."
"Let"s all buy a farm when we grow up," suggested Bobby.
"Let"s!" all the others cried in chorus.
THE END