Aunt Polly was short and stout with merry blue eyes and curly dark hair that, where it showed under her pretty hat brim, was just touched with gray.

“Hello, Blessings!” she greeted the children, as they spilled out of the car to meet her. “Every one of you here? That’s fine. How do you do, Sam? I’ve two bags there on the platform, if you will get them.”

When they were all stowed away in the car, Sam put the bags in the front where he and Bobby sat, and backed the car out of the station driveway.

“Well, have you decided to come home with me?” Aunt Polly put the question to them bluntly.

The four little Blossoms glanced uncertainly at each other.

“Polly Hayward,” said Mother Blossom gayly, “you know perfectly well no one could 27 get four children ready to take a journey in three days. Why, Dot has absolutely nothing to wear!”

“Oh, I’ll lend her something,” smiled Aunt Polly.

The children laughed at the idea of Auntie lending any dress of hers to small Dot.

“We’ll fix it somehow,” declared Aunt Polly comfortably. “I simply have to have those youngsters for a visit at Brookside. We’re all getting so fat and lazy with no one to stir us up. Even the dog and cat need rousing.”

“We have a dog, Aunt Polly,” announced Meg, her eyes shining. “His name is Philip.”

Before she had a chance to describe Philip the car reached the Blossom house and stopped at the side door.

“Here I am again, Norah,” said Aunt Polly, as Norah came out to receive her.

“And ’tis glad I am to see ye, Mrs. Hayward,” responded Norah heartily. “I’ll take the bags, Sam. The guest room’s all ready, ma’am.”

The four children went as far as the guest-room 28 door with Aunt Polly, and then Mother Blossom waved them back.

“Auntie and I have a great deal to talk over,” she said. “You run away and amuse yourselves till lunch time, like good little Blossoms.”

“Wait till I give them what I’ve brought them,” hastily interposed Aunt Polly. “Bobby, you open that black bag and the four parcels on top are for you children.”

Bobby opened the bag and took out four packages neatly wrapped in paper and tied with cord.

“How’ll we know which is which?” he asked.

“That’s for you to find out,” returned his aunt, giving him a kiss.

Mother Blossom sat down on the bed and began talking in a low tone to Aunt Polly and the four children raced downstairs and out to the garage to open their presents. They liked the garage because there was plenty of space to play in, where, indeed, they had four empty rooms above the first floor for their own uses.

This morning they rushed upstairs so fast that they never thought of Philip till, as they reached 29 the top step, Meg looked back and saw the little dog painfully hobbling after them on his three good legs.

“He wants to come, too,” she said. “Here, Philip, come on up, good doggie.”

Philip managed to finish his climb and then lay down on the floor, panting, but satisfied to be where his friends were.

“I’ll give each one a package,” Bobby decided. “Then we’ll open them, one at a time, like Christmas. You first, Meg.”

Meg ripped the string off her parcel with a single motion and pulled off the paper in such a hurry that she tore it in two. Meg always hurried to solve mysteries.

“Why, it’s a game!” she cried, when she had opened the box. “All in pieces. Look!”

Bobby took a look and shrieked with delight.

“It’s an airplane,” he announced instantly. “That’s mine, ’cause Aunt Polly knows I like experiments. What you got, Dot?”

Dot hastily unwrapped her package and discovered a doll’s trunk.

“With clothes in it for Geraldine,” she reported, 30 after turning the tiny key and taking a peep inside. “That’s mine all right. What’s Twaddles got?”

Twaddles unwrapped his parcel slowly and importantly. He was sure it was for him, and he rather enjoyed making the others wait.

“Nothing but a book,” he said disgustedly. “What kind of a book is it, Bobby?”

“That’s for Meg,” Bobby informed him. “‘Black Beauty.’ Aunt Polly knows Meg likes to read and is always fussing with animals. I must have your present, Twaddles.”

The four Blossoms were more interested in Twaddles’ gift than in their own because it was the only one they had not seen. Bobby carefully untied the string and wound it up in a neat ring; then he slowly took off the paper and folded that; finally he opened the flat box.

Twaddles promptly tried to stand on his head, a habit he had when he was pleased. He never did succeed in standing on his head, but he usually turned a very good somersault. He did now.

“Give it to me,” he shouted, bobbing right side up again. “See, Dot, it’s a water pistol!”

“Well, I don’t think that’s a good thing to give you,” pronounced Meg decisively. “You’ll be hitting Dot in the eye.”

“Won’t, neither,” retorted Twaddles, feeling unjustly accused. “Aunt Polly asked me what I wanted most last time she was here and I told her; and she said if I’d promise not to shoot at people, she’d get me one. So there!”

Bobby, the peace-maker, proposed that they all go in and show their presents to Norah, and he helped Meg carry Philip downstairs because she was sure the trip would hurt his leg. Bobby was never in too much of a hurry to do what Meg wanted him to do.

In the afternoon, after lunch, all the Blossoms went for a long ride in the car, stopping at the foundry office on the way home to pick up Father Blossom. Still nothing was said about the children going home with Aunt Polly.

“Do you suppose Mother will let us?” asked Dot, as Meg was helping her undress that night. “Maybe she’s afraid I will use up my clean 32 dresses too fast, and Aunt Polly won’t have any to put on me. But you could lend me yours, Meg.”

“No, I don’t believe that’s the reason,” said Meg slowly. “I tell you what I think––I think Mother and Daddy have to plan a lot before they know whether we can go. But you ought to be more careful with your dresses, Dot.”

The next morning Mother Blossom announced that if the children would come out on the porch she had something to tell them. There was a general stampede from the breakfast table––Father Blossom had had an early breakfast and had gone before the others were down––and Aunt Polly in the swing and Mother Blossom in a huge rocking-chair were nearly smothered in a shower of kisses.

“Are we going to Brookside?”

“Are we going home with Aunt Polly?”

“Can I learn to milk a cow?”

“Do you have chickens, Aunt Polly?” Four little voices chorused at once.

“Dear, dear,” chuckled Aunt Polly. “So you’ve been thinking about Brookside all this 33 time, have you? And what makes you think your mother wants to talk about the farm with you?”

Four pairs of eyes fixed their anxious gaze upon Mother Blossom.

“Well, dearies,” said Mother Blossom in answer, “Daddy and Aunt Polly and I have talked this over, and we’ve come to a decision. It is impossible for me to get you ready to go home with Aunt Polly to-morrow.”

“Oh, Mother!” mourned Twaddles.

“Would you want to go and leave Mother?” that dear lady asked in surprise.

“Not––not exactly,” stammered the little boy. “But I want to go somewhere awfully.”

“Couldn’t you go, too, Muddie?” suggested Meg.

“Listen, and I’ll tell you what we’ve planned,” said Mother Blossom. “Aunt Polly has to go back to-morrow. We’ve tried to persuade her to stay, but it seems the summer is a very bad time to be away from a farm. But a week from to-morrow, if you are all very good and help me as much as you can, I will take you to Brookside 34 to visit Aunt Polly for a month, or as long as she can stand four active youngsters in her quiet house.”

“Hurrah!” shouted the four little Blossoms.

“Won’t that be great! Let’s get the trunk down right away, Mother.”

“Well, I wouldn’t, not till Daddy comes home,” said Aunt Polly, fanning herself and smiling. “A week is plenty of time, and I hear that Dot has to have some new frocks made.”

“Is Daddy coming?” Bobby asked suddenly.

“I wanted him to, for I think he needs a rest,” said Aunt Polly soberly. “But the most we could get him to promise was that he might come up with your mother when it is time for you to go home.”

“Mother’s going––she said so,” Meg reminded her aunt.

“Only to take you to Brookside, Daughter,” explained Mother Blossom. “Then I am coming home again to stay with Daddy. You see, I couldn’t leave him alone in this house for a whole month. Think how lonesome he would be.”

Twaddles thought this over for a moment.

“Well, I guess it will be a change for him, ’thout any children,” he remarked, with a sunny smile.

Aunt Polly scooped him into her lap and gave him a big hug.

“Now where in the world did you get that idea?” she said.

“I found it,” confided Twaddles cheerfully.

Dot had already disappeared. She thought it time to begin her packing. Presently they heard her in the house tumbling books out of the bookcase on to the polished floor.

“Glory be, whatever are ye doing?” came Norah’s cry. “Haven’t I enough to be doing, without ye upsetting a room as fast as I put it in order?”