The Bobbsey Twins MEGAPACK ®. Laura Lee Hope
fall, and most of the peas were scattered on the ground.
“Ha! ha!” laughed Bert. “I’m first. My basket is full.”
“I’m next!” called Tom, picking his basket up in his arms.
“Well, I’ll be last I guess,” laughed Tom, trying hard to pick up the scattered peas.
“There’s mine!” called Harry, and now all the boys carried their baskets to the big bag at the end of the field and dumped them in.
“It won’t take long to fill the bag,” said Harry, “and it will be so good for Peter to have them ready, for to-morrow is market day.”
So the boys worked on right along until lunch time, each having picked four big baskets full. August Stout came along and helped some too, but he could not stay long, as he had to cut some clothes poles for his mother.
“Well, I declare!” said Mrs. Burns, looking at the three full bags the boys had picked. “Isn’t that splendid! But I can’t pay until Peter comes from market.”
“We just did it for fun,” answered Harry. “We don’t want any pay.”
“Indeed you must have forty cents apiece, ten cents a basket,” she insisted. “See what a good load you have picked!”
“No, really, Mrs. Burns; mother wouldn’t like us to take the money,” Harry declared. “We are glad to have helped you, and it was only fun.”
Poor Mrs. Burns was so grateful she had to wipe her eyes with her gingham apron.
“Well,” she said finally, “There are some people in this world who talk about charity, but a good boy is a gift from heaven,” and she said this just like a prayer of blessing on the boys who had helped her.
“The crop would have been spoiled to-morrow,” remarked Tom, as he and his companions started up the road. “I’m awfully glad you thought of helping her, Harry.”
It seemed all that day everything went right for the boys; they did not have even a single mishap in their games or wanderings. Perhaps it was because they felt so happy over having done a good turn for a poor neighbor.
“Say, fellows,” Tom said later, while they sat on the pond bank trying to see something interesting in the cool, clear water, “what do you say if we make up a circus!”
“Fine,” the others answered, “but what will be the show?”
“Animals of course,” continued Tom; “we’ve got plenty around here, haven’t we?”
“Well, some,” Harry admitted. “There’s Sable, for instance.”
At this the boys all laughed at Tom, remembering the runaway.
“Well, I could be a cowboy, and ride him just the same,” spoke up Tom. “I rode him around the track yesterday, and he went all right. He was only scared with that sulphur match when he ran away.”
“A circus would be fine,” Bert put in. “We could have Frisky as the Sacred Calf.”
“And Snoopy as the Wild Cat,” said Harry.
“And two trained goats,” August added.
“And a real human bear, ‘Teddy’?” suggested Jack.
“Then a cage of pigeons,” went on Harry.
“Let’s get them all in training,” said Tom, jumping up suddenly, anxious to begin the sport.
“I tell you!” Harry planned. “We can each train our own animals and then we can bring them together in a well-organized circus.”
“When will we have it?” August asked impatiently.
“About next week,” Harry thought, and this was decided upon.
During the interval the boys were so busy training that they had little time for other sports, but the girls found out-door life quite as interesting as their brothers did, and now made many discoveries in and about the pretty woodlands.
“Oh, we saw the prettiest little rabbits today,” Nan told her mother, after a trip in the woods. “Flossie and Freddie were sitting on an old stump when two rabbits ran right across the road in front of them. Freddie ran after them as far as he could go in the brushwood, but of course no one can go as fast as a rabbit.”
“And the squirrels,” Flossie told them. “I think the squirrels are the prettiest things that live in the woods. They have tails just like mamma’s feather boa and they walk sitting up so cute.”
“Oh, I think the rabbits are the nicest,” lisped Freddie, “’cause they are Bunnies, and Bunnies bring Easter eggs.”
“And we have made the loveliest fern garden up back of the swing,” said Flossie. “We got a whole basket of ferns in the woods and transplanted them.”
“In the center we have some lovely Jack-in the-pulpits,” Nan added. “Some are light green striped, and the largest are purple with gold stripes. The Jacks stand up straight, just like real live boys preaching in a pulpit.”
“Don’t you think, mamma,” asked Flossie, “that daisies and violets make a lovely garden? I have a round place in the middle of our wild flower bed just full of light blue violets and white daisies.”
“All flowers are beautiful,” their mamma told them, “but I do think with Flossie that daisies and violets are very sweet.”
“And, mamma, we got a big piece of the loveliest green moss! It is just like real velvet,” said Flossie. “We found a place all covered with it down by the pond, under the dark cedar trees. Nan said it wouldn’t grow in our garden, but I brought some home to try. I put it in a cool dark place, and I’m going to put lots of water on it every day.”
“Moss must be very cool and damp to grow,” Mrs. Bobbsey replied. “I remember how disappointed I used to be when I was a little girl and tried to make it grow around my geraniums. It would always dry up and turn brown in a few days.”
“Oh,” called Freddie from his garden under the cherry tree, “come quick! Look at the funny bugs!”
Nan and Flossie hurried to where their little brother had dug a hole in the earth.
“They’re mice!” exclaimed Nan. “Oh, aren’t they cute! Let’s catch them. Call Bert or Harry.”
While Flossie ran to tell Bert, Nan watched the tiny mice so that they would not get away.
“It’s a nest of field mice,” Harry told them.
“We’ll put them in a cage and have them in our circus.”
“But they’re my mice,” cried Freddie, “and I won’t let anybody have them!”
“We’re only going to help you take care of them in a little box. Oh, there’s the mother—catch her, Harry,” called Bert.
The mother mouse was not so easy to catch, however, and the boys had quite a chase after her. At last she ran into a tin box the boys had sunk in the ground when playing golf. Here Harry caught the frightened little creature.
“I’ve got an odd kind of a trap,” Harry said. “It’s just like a cage. We can put them in this until we build a larger one. We can make one out of a box with a wire door.”
The mice were the smallest, cutest things, not larger than Freddie’s thumb. They hardly looked like mice at all, but like some strange little bugs. They were put in the cage trap, mother and all, and then Bert got them a bit of cheese from the kitchen.
“What! Feed mice!” exclaimed Dinah “Sakes alive, chile! you go bringing dem mice in de house to eat all our cake and pie. You just better drown dem in de brook before dey bring a whole lot more mices around here.”
“We’ll keep them away from the house,” Bert