There were about a dozen children who were to take part in the little play. They were to dress up with clothes which they could bring from home. Freddie had a blue suit, so he looked exactly like Boy Blue.
One Friday afternoon the little play was given in the school room. The teacher had strung a wire across in front of her platform, and had hung a red curtain on this. Flossie, Freddie and the other players were behind the curtain, while the remaining children sat at their desks to watch the play.
“Are you all ready now?” asked Miss Earle of the children behind the curtain. “All ready! I’m going to pull the curtain back in a minute. Remember you are to walk out first, Freddie, and you are to make a bow and then look to the left, then to the right and say: ‘Oh, I wonder where she can be?’ Then along comes Flossie, as Little Miss Muffet, and she asks you whom you are looking for.”
“Yes, and then I say I’m looking for Mary, who had a little lamb, for I lent her my horn, and she went away with it to help Bo-Peep find her sheep; and now I can’t blow my horn to get the cows out of the corn,” Freddie said.
“That’s it!” exclaimed the teacher in a whisper, for they had all talked in low voices behind the curtain, so the other children would not hear them. “You remember very well, Freddie. Now we will begin.”
The curtain was pulled back, and Freddie walked out from one side where some boxes had been piled up to look like a house.
“Oh, I wonder where she can be,” said Freddie, looking to the left and to the right. “Where can she be?”
“Whom are you looking for?” asked Flossie, coming out from the other side of the platform.
“For Mary, who had a little lamb,” went on Freddie. “I lent her my horn and—”
But just then there was a crash, and down tumbled the pile of boxes that was the make-believe house, and with them tumbled Johnnie Wilson, who was dressed up like Little Jack Horner.
“Oh, I’ve hurt my thumb! I’ve hurt my thumb!” he cried. “Now I can’t pull the plum out of the pie!”
CHAPTER VIII
Snoop in Trouble
Some of the children laughed. Some screamed. Others looked as if they wanted to cry. Of course the play came to an end almost before it had started.
“Oh Johnnie, why did you do that?” cried Miss Earle, hurrying out in her Mother Goose dress, and picking up the little fellow. “How did it happen?”
Johnnie had started to cry, but, finding that he was not hurt much except on his thumb, he stopped his tears, and said:
“I climbed up on the pile of boxes so I could see better, and they fell over with me.”
“They weren’t put there to be climbed on,” the teacher said with a smile. “I’m glad it is no worse. You came on the stage before it was your turn, Johnnie. Now we’ll try it over again.”
By this time the other children had become quieter, having seen that nothing much had happened. The janitor was sent for and he put the boxes up again, this time nailing them together so they would not fall over.
“But you must not climb on top of them again,” said Miss Earle.
“No’m, I won’t,” promised Johnnie.
“Now start over again, Freddie,” the teacher told the little blue-eyed chap, and once more he walked out and pretended to look for Mary. Then Flossie walked out, and this time the play went off very well. Mother Goose came on when it was her turn and she helped Boy Blue and Miss Muffet look for Mary and the lost horn. It was finally found in Jack Horner’s pie, which was a big one made of a shoe box. And Johnnie, as Jack Horner, pulled out the horn instead of a plum. His sore thumb did not bother him much.
“Well, did you like the play?” the teacher asked the other children, who had only looked on.
“It was fine!” they all said. “We’d like to see it again.”
“Well, perhaps you may,” returned Miss Earle. “Would you like to act it before the whole school?” she asked of Flossie, Freddie and the other little actors and actresses.
“Yes, teacher!” they said in a chorus.
“Then you shall.”
A week later the play was given on the large stage in the big room where there was a real curtain and real scenery. The little Mother Goose play went off very well, too, for the children knew their parts better. And Johnnie Wilson did not fall down off a pile of boxes.
The only thing which happened, that ought not to, was when Flossie sang a little song Miss Earle wrote for her.
When she had finished, Flossie, seeing Nan out in the audience, stepped to the edge of the stage and asked:
“Did I sing that all right, Nan?” for Nan had been helping her little sister learn the piece.
Every one laughed when Flossie asked that, for, of course, she should not have spoken, but only bowed. But it was all right, and really it made fun, which, after all, was what the play was for.
“We’ll have to get up a play ourselves, Nan,” said Bert to his sister when school was out, and the Mother Goose play had ended. “I like to act.”
“So do I,” said Nan.
“I’d like a play about soldiers and pirates,” went on Bert.
“I know something about pirates,” cried Tommy Todd. “My father used to tell me about them.”
“Say, you’d do fine for a pirate!” cried Bert “You know a lot about ships and things; don’t you?”
“Well, a little,” said Tommy. “I remember some of the things my father told me when he was with us. And my grandmother knows a lot. Her husband was a sailor and she has sailed on a ship.”
“Then we’ll ask her how to be pirates when we get ready for our play,” Bert decided.
“How is your grandma?” Nan inquired.
“Well, she’s a little better,” said Tommy, “but not very well. She has to work too hard, I guess. I wish I were bigger so I wouldn’t have to go to school. Then I could work.”
“Do you still run errands for Mr. Fitch?” asked Bert.
“I do when he has any. And I did some for your father. He says I have earned the quarter he gave me, and I’m glad, for I don’t want to owe any money. I’m hoping your father will have more errands for me to do after school. I’m going to stop in and ask him on Saturday. I like Saturdays for then I can work all day.”
“Don’t you like to play?” asked Nan.
“Oh, yes, of course. But I like to earn money for my grandmother too, so she won’t have to work so hard.”
Bert and Nan felt sorry for Tommy, and Bert made up his mind he would ask his father to give the fresh air boy some work to do so he could earn money.
It was now October, and the weather was beautiful. The Bobbsey twins had much fun at home and going to and from school. The leaves on the trees were beginning to turn all sorts of pretty colors, and this showed that colder weather was coming.
“We’ll have lots of fun this Winter,” said Bert one day, as he and his brother and sisters went home from school together, kicking their way through the fallen leaves. “We’ll go coasting, make snow men and snow forts and go skating.”
“I’m going to have skates this year. Mother said so,” cried Freddie.
“You’re too little to skate,” declared Bert.
“Oh, I’ll show him how, and hold him up,” offered Nan. “Skating is fun.”
“It isn’t any fun to fall in the ice water though,” Flossie said.
“Well, we won’t go skating until the ice is good and thick,” said Bert, “then we won’t break through and fall in.”
When the children reached the house they found Mrs. Bobbsey and Dinah busy taking the furniture out of the parlor, and piling it in the sitting room and dining room.
“What’s the matter?” asked Bert in surprise. “Are we going to move?”
“No. But your father has sent up a man to varnish the parlor floor, and we have to get the chairs and things out of his way,” said Mrs. Bobbsey.
“An’ yo’ chilluns done got t’ keep outen dat parlah when de varnish-paint is dryin’,” said Dinah, shak
ing her finger at the twins. “Ef yo’ done walks on de varnished floors when dey’s not dry, yo’ all will stick fast an’ yo’ can’t get loose.”
“That’s right,” laughed the children’s mother. “You will have to keep out of the parlor while the floors are drying.”
The Bobbsey twins watched the painter put the varnish on the floor. The varnish was like a clear, amber paint and made the floor almost as shiny as glass, so it looked like new.
“There!” exclaimed the painter when he had finished. “Now don’t walk on the floor until morning. Then the varnish will be dry and hard, and you won’t stick fast. Don’t any of you go in.”
“We won’t,” promised the twins. Then they had to study their lessons for school the next day, and, for a time, they forgot about the newly varnished floor.
It was after supper that Flossie asked if Nan could not pop a little corn to eat.
“Yes,” answered Mother Bobbsey. “A little popped corn will not be harmful, I think. I’ll get the popper.”
Nan shelled some of the white kernels of corn into the wire popper, and shook it over the stove. Pretty soon: Pop! Pop! Poppity-pop-pop! was heard, and the small kernels burst into big ones, as white as snow.
Nan was just pouring the popped corn out into a dish when there sounded through the house a loud:
“Meaou!”
“What’s that?” asked Flossie.
“It sounded like Snoop,” said Bert.
“It is Snoop!” declared Freddie.
“Meaou!” was cried again, and in such an odd way that the children knew their cat was in some kind of trouble.
“Snoop! Where are you?” called Nan.
“Meaou! Meaou!” came the answer.
“She’s down cellar and wants to come up,” Bert said.
But when the cellar door was opened no cat popped up, as Snoop always did if she happened to be shut down there. Then they heard her crying voice again.
“Oh, I know where she is!” exclaimed Mother Bobbsey.
“Where?” asked the children.
“In the parlor—on the newly varnished floor! That’s what makes her voice sound so funny—it’s the empty room.”
“Well, if Snoop is in the parlor she’s stuck fast! That’s what’s the matter!” cried Bert.
“Oh! oh!” exclaimed Freddie. “Our cat caught fast!”
“Poor Snoop!” wailed Flossie.
“We must help her!” Nan said.
The whole family hurried to the parlor. There, in the light from the hall, they saw the cat. Snoop was indeed in trouble. She stood near the parlor door, all four feet held fast in the sticky varnish, which, when half dry, is stickier than the stickiest kind of fly-paper.
Snoop, in wandering about the house as she pleased, which she always did, had come to the parlor. The door had been left open so the varnish would dry more quickly, and Snoop had gone in, not knowing anything about the sticky floor.
The big black cat had taken a few steps and then, her paws having become covered with the sticky varnish, she had become stuck fast, just far enough inside the room so she could not be reached from the door.
“Oh, will she have to stay stuck there forever?” asked Freddie.
“Pull her loose, Mother!” begged Flossie.
“If you step on the floor to get her, you’ll stick fast too,” warned Bert.
“Wait a minute, children,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “I must think what is best to do. I wish your father were home.”
Snoop, seeing her friends near, must have known she would now be taken care of, for she stopped meaouing.
CHAPTER IX
Nan Bakes A Cake
“Come on, Snoop! Come on out!” called Flossie to the pet, black cat.
Snoop tried to raise first one paw, and then the other to come to her little mistress, but the sticky varnish held her fast.
“You’ll have to pull her loose, Mother,” said Bert. “It’s the only way.”
“I guess she’s stuck so fast that if you pulled her up you’d pull her paws off and leave them sticking to the floor,” observed Nan.
“Oh, don’t do that!” begged Freddie. “We don’t want a cat without any paws.”
“Don’t worry, dear,” his mother said. “I’ll not pull Snoop’s paws off. But I wonder how I’m going to get her loose. I don’t want to step in there and make tracks with my shoes all over the newly varnished floor.
“Snoop has made some marks as it is,” went on Mrs. Bobbsey, “but perhaps the painter can go over them with his brush in the morning so they won’t show. We ought to have shut Snoop up, I suppose. Let me see now, how can I get her loose?”
“Telephone to papa,” suggested Bert. “He’ll know of a way.”
“I believe I will do that,” Mrs. Bobbsey said.
Mr. Bobbsey had gone down to the office that evening to look over some books and papers about his lumber business, and he had not yet come back. In a few minutes Mrs. Bobbsey was talking to him over the telephone.
“What’s that?” cried Mr. Bobbsey. “Snoop stuck fast on the varnished floor? I’ll be home at once. It won’t hurt her, but of course we must get her loose. Don’t worry, and tell the twins not to worry. I’ll make it all right.”
And this is how Mr. Bobbsey did it. When he got home he found a can of turpentine which had been left by the painter. Turpentine will soften varnish or paint and make it thin, just as water will make paste soft. Mr. Bobbsey laid a board on the floor from the door-sill over close to where poor Snoop was held fast. Then he poured a little turpentine around each of the four feet of the cat, where her paws were held fast in the varnish.
In a little while the varnish had softened, and Mr. Bobbsey could lift Snoop up and hand her to his wife. Then he took up the board, and washed from Snoop’s paws what remained of the varnish. She was all right now, and purred happily as Flossie and Freddie took turns holding her.
“But the floor is spoiled—or that part is where you poured the turpentine,” said Mrs. Bobbsey.
“The painter will varnish that part over when he comes in the morning,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “Then we must keep Snoop out of the way until it dries.”
And this was done. The floor was gone over again with the varnish brush, and the marks of Snoop’s paws did not show. Nor did the cat again go into the parlor until the floor was hard and dry.
“Mother,” asked Nan one day, about a week after Snoop had been stuck fast in the varnish, “may I have a little party?”
“A party, Nan?”
“Yes, just a few boys and girls from my class in school. The parlor looks so nice now, with the new floor, that I’d like to give a party. May I?”
“Well, yes, I guess so,” answered Mrs. Bobbsey. “How many would you invite?”
“About a dozen. We could have sandwiches, ice cream and cake. I could bake a cake myself.”
“Well, you might try. I have showed you how to make a simple cake, that is not too rich for little stomachs. You might bake a sponge cake, and put icing on top. Yes, I think you may have a party, Nan.”
“Oh, thank you, Mother. Now I’ll write the invitations.”
“I’ll help you,” offered Flossie.
“I’m afraid, dear, you can’t write quite well enough,” said Nan with a smile. “But you may seal the envelopes for me, and put on the postage stamps.”
“Oh, I like to do that!” cried Flossie. “The sticky stuff on the stamps tastes so nice on your tongue.”
“It is better to wet the envelope flaps and the sticky side of the stamps with a damp cloth or a sponge than with your tongue,” said Mother Bobbsey. “I’ll show you the way.”
So when Nan had written out the invitations on some cards, she and Flossie put them in envelopes. Then Mrs. Bobbsey gave them each a little sponge, which they dampened in water, and with that they moistened the sticky places, both of the stamps and the envelopes. And so the invitations were made ready to mail.
“Have you invited any boys to the party?”
asked Bert.
“Yes, some,” answered Nan. “But only a few.”
“Then I’ll come,” he said. “I don’t like a party with just nothing but girls.”
“And I’ll help Nan bake her cake,” offered Flossie.
“So will I,” added Freddie. “I like to clean out the cake dishes, and eat the sweet dough and the icing.”
“Oh, I want to do some of that, too!” cried Flossie.
“I can see what kind of a time you’re going to have making your cake!” laughed Bert, “with those two youngsters hanging around.”
“Oh, I’ll take care of them,” said Nan, smiling.
“Goin’ t’ bake a cake, is yo’?” asked Dinah, when Nan came out in the kitchen the next Saturday, which was the date of the party. “Don’t yo’ all t’ink yo’d bettah let me make it fo’ yo’?”
“No, thank you, Dinah, I want to make it myself,” said Nan. “I want to show the girls and boys that I know how to make a cake almost, if not quite, as well as you and mother make them.”
“Well, honey, ef yo’ makes a cake as good as yo’ ma, den yo’ will suttinly be a fine cook,” returned Dinah. “Fo’ yo’ ma is suah a prime cake-maker!”
“Oh, I don’t suppose the cake will be as good as mother’s,” said Nan, “but still I’ll never learn if I don’t try.”
So Nan began her cake. Flossie and Freddie were playing out in the yard, but when they saw Nan in the kitchen, in they came, running.
“I’m going to help!” cried Freddie.
“So’m I,” added his sister.
“Well, there’s not much you can do,” said Nan, “except to hand me the things I need. First I’m going to get everything together on the table, and then I won’t have to fuss around, and get in Dinah’s way.”
“Oh, yo’ won’t be in mah way, honey-lamb!” said the loving old colored woman. “Jest make yo’se’f right t’ home.”
Nan got from the pantry the eggs, the flour, the sugar, and the other things that were needed to make a sponge cake. Then when she had the brown bowl ready in which the cake batter would be mixed she sat down on a high stool at the table, with Flossie on one side and Freddie on the other.
The Bobbsey Twins Megapack Page 86