Chapter 9

A NEW KIND OF JAM

As the man said, there was no danger that Twaddles would be drowned. Cold and wet and miserable, he certainly was, but the stranger rescued him easily, stretching out a long, thin arm across the ice and lifting the boy bodily out of the water, over the thin ice, and on to thick, firm foothold.

"There, there, you're just as good as ever," he assured the shivering Twaddles. "You want to run home as fast as you can go and get into dry shoes and stockings, and then you won't ever know you fell into the pond. Scoot, now!"

But Twaddles delayed.

"Is it--is it--four o'clock?" he asked, his teeth chattering. "Mother said we could stay out till four o'clock."

"It's five minutes after four," announced the stranger, consulting his watch. "You'll have to run every step of the way to make up for lost time. Run!"

Dot, of course, would run with Twaddles, and Meg and Bobby promised to return the sled to Marion. They had to walk all the way around the pond to get it for her.

"I fell in," said Twaddles beamingly, when he and Dot reached home.

Mother and Aunt Polly rubbed him dry and had him in dry stockings and sandals in a hurry, and then Aunt Polly and Dot decided to walk uptown and match some wool for the sweater auntie was finishing. Twaddles wanted to go, but Mother Blossom decided he had done enough for that day and had better stay at home with her.

"What are you doing, Mother?" asked Twaddles, watching her curiously, after his sister and aunt had gone down the walk. "Could I do that?"

"Now, Twaddles, you've seen me fill my fountain pen hundreds of times," answered Mother Blossom patiently. "You always ask me that, and you know I can't have you spilling ink all over my desk. Run away and find something pleasant to do till I finish this letter, and then we'll toast marshmallows over the fire."

Twaddles set out to amuse himself. He wished he had Philip to play with, but the dog was out in the garage and Twaddles had been forbidden to make the journey through the snow in his sandals. To be sure there was Annabel Lee, but the cat was in a sleepy mood and refused to wake up sufficiently to be amusing.

"Oh, dear," sighed Twaddles. "There's nothing to do. I wonder where Norah is?"

He scuttled down to the kitchen, which was in beautiful order, but no Norah was in sight She was up in her room changing her dress, but Twaddles did not know that.

"I'm hungry!" he decided, opening the pantry door. "Skating always gives you such an appetite."

He had heard some one say this.

As in most pantries, the favorite place for the Blossom cake box was on the highest shelf. Why this was so, puzzled Twaddles, as it has puzzled many other small boys and girls.

"I should think Norah might leave it down low," he grumbled, dragging a chair into the pantry with some difficulty and proceeding to climb into it.

By stretching, he managed to get his fingers on the cake box lid and pull it down. He opened it.

The box was perfectly empty.

"Why, the idea!" sputtered the outraged Twaddles, who felt distinctly cheated. "I wonder if Mother knows we haven't any cake. I'd better go and tell her."

But he didn't--not right away. For there were other boxes on the various shelves, and Twaddles felt it was his duty to peep into these to see what he could find. He was disappointed in most of them because they held such uninteresting things as rice and barley and coffee, nothing that a starving person could eat with any pleasure.

Then at last he thought he had found something he could eat. It was in a smooth, round glass jar with a screw lid and was a clear jelly-like substance that looked as though it might be marmalade or honey or some kind of jam.

He opened the jar without trouble and sniffed at the contents. It smelled very good indeed. Twaddles plunged in an investigating finger.

The jam stuck to his finger. Still, Twaddles could not get enough off to taste, and he had liberally covered all the other fingers on that hand before he pulled away from the jar.

"That certainly is funny jam," he puzzled, trying to scrape his fingers clean with the other hand.

"Twaddles!" called Mother Blossom. "Oh, Twaddles, where are you? Aren't you going to help me toast marshmallows?"

Twaddles backed out of the pantry, into Norah who had come downstairs, freshly gowned, to start her supper.

"Glory be!" she ejaculated. "Twaddles, what have you been up to now? If you've been messing in my pantry, I'll tell your mother. What's that all over your hands?"

"Jam," said Twaddles meekly.

Norah eyed him with suspicion.

"There's no jam there," she said. "Come over here to the light where I can see ye."

Norah took Twaddles' wrists in her hands gingerly, for he was a very sticky child, and turned his hands over to examine them.

"Jam, is it!" she snorted indignantly. "You just go and show yourself to your mother. See what she says about the jam. I declare, you can't keep a thing from the young ones in this house!"

Twaddles was glad to escape from the kitchen before Norah should discover the many things out of place in her pantry, and he went into the living-room, carefully holding out his gummy hands before him, to find his mother.

"Now, Mother," he began hesitatingly, "I was real hungry, so I thought I'd eat a little piece of cake. I knew you wouldn't mind."

"I didn't know we had any cake in the house," said Mother Blossom, in surprise.

"We haven't," explained Twaddles hastily. "So then I thought bread and jam would be nice. But I never saw such funny jam; I can't get it off."

Then, as Norah had exclaimed, Mother Blossom cried: "What in the world have you been into, Twaddles?"

She looked at his sticky fingers and then burst out laughing.

"My dear child," she said seriously, "I'm afraid you've found Daddy's pot of glue!"

And that is just what Twaddles had been into, and a fine time he and Mother had getting the sticky stuff off his fingers. It took them so long, using hot water and sand soap, that Mother Blossom declared they could not toast marshmallows that afternoon, and then Twaddles was sorry he had not waited.

"Such a lot of fuss about a little glue," he complained to himself, for Father Blossom scolded when he came home and found half of his glue wasted and he said that Twaddles should have no dessert for his supper; and Norah was very cross because she had to give her pantry an extra scrubbing, Twaddles having managed to track the floor with glue. "I have bad luck all the time," sighed poor Twaddles, blaming every one but the one small boy who was responsible for the bad luck.

"Daddy," said Bobby that evening, "I'd like to earn some money."

"Yes, Son?" answered Father Blossom encouragingly. "What do you want money for?"

"I heard Miss Mason saying to Miss Wright to-day at noon that Mrs. Jordan and her son are having an awful hard winter," explained Bobby. "Folks want to send Paul to a home, but Mrs. Jordan won't let 'em. She wants to go out doing day's work. But she's too old. Miss Mason says old people are so heady."

Father Blossom smiled.

"I think almost any mother, old or young, would fight to keep her son from being placed in a home," he said gently. "Do you want to earn money for the Jordans, Bobby?"

"Yes, sir," replied Bobby sturdily. "If you'd lend me the snow shovel, Daddy, Palmer Davis and I figured out we could earn a lot shoveling walks."

"Oh, no, Daddy," interposed Mother Blossom from the piano where she was helping Meg with her music lesson and yet listening to the conversation between Bobby and his father. "He's too little for that heavy work, isn't he?"

"I can, too," argued Bobby heatedly. "Can't I have the shovel, Daddy? Mother's always afraid I'm going to hurt myself. I'm not a girl."

"Well, Mother happens to be right," said Father Blossom firmly. "You and Palmer are altogether too little to try shoveling snow from walks; it's packed now and is work for a grown boy or man. If you had a shovel of your own, I shouldn't consent to any such scheme for earning money."

"There are other ways, Bobby," Mother Blossom assured him brightly. "I'm sure the other children will want to help when they hear about the Jordans. Why don't you, and some of the boys and girls in your class, give a little fair? We'll all help, won't we, Daddy?"

"But I don't know how to give a fair," objected Bobby.