"MabelCHawley-FourLittleBlossomsOnAppleTreeIsland" - читать интересную книгу автора (Hawley Mabel C)

into Palmer Davis's inkwell. Miss Mason thought Meg did it on purpose."
"What hopped?" asked Mother Blossom, mystified. "And Meg, why are you frowning
so at poor Twaddles?"
"He knows, all right," declared Meg wrathfully. "He put that jumping grasshopper
Aunt Polly sent him in my middy blouse pocket. And it mortified me very much,
Mother."
"I don't doubt it, Daughter," said Mother Blossom sympathetically. "Twaddles, I
think that was rather a mean trick."
"Paid her up for calling me silly," muttered Twaddles, his face scarlet.
"It was funny, though," insisted Bobby smiling.
Meg tried not to laugh and then she gave in.
"Yes, it was," she admitted, dimpling. "The ink splashed all over, Mother, and
when Miss Mason made Palmer take it out it gave another jump and landed way over
on the window seat."
"Miss Mason has it now," said Bobby. "She wouldn't give it back."
"But it's mine," wailed Twaddles. "I want it to play with. Make Meg get it,
won't you, Mother?"
"I won't!" announced Meg stubbornly.
"Don't speak that way, Meg," said Mother Blossom gently. "Twaddles, it seems to
me that since the grasshopper got Meg into such trouble, and you put it in her
pocket, that you're the one to get it back. If you want it badly enough to ask
Miss Mason for it, well and good; otherwise I fear you have lost your
grasshopper."
Poor Twaddles knew there was no way out of it. Either he must lose his beautiful
green grasshopper, or else go and ask Miss Mason to give it to him. Mother
Blossom never allowed the children to coax; when she said a thing she always
meant it.
"Will you go ask, Dot?" Twaddles said to his little sister, after Meg and Bobby
had gone back to school.
"I'll go with you," offered Dot "But I won't go all by myself without any one
with me."
So it happened that Miss Mason was much surprised to receive a visit that
afternoon a few minutes after she had dismissed her class. She had met Twaddles
and Dot before, when they had paid their first visit to the school, and she
remembered them at once.
"I'm very glad to see you," she assured them. "Won't you come in and sit down?
Meg and Bobby have been telling me about Apple Tree Island."
"Yes, I guess we're going," murmured Twaddles, his eyes fixed in fascination on
his mechanical grasshopper reposing on the top of the teacher's desk.
"Will Norah and Annabel Lee and Philip go with you?" asked Miss Mason, who knew
all about the Blossom family and their pets.
"I don't know about Norah and Annabel Lee," returned Dot politely, "but Sam
Layton took Philip to Canada with him; he was really like Sam's own dog 'cause
he mostly fed him. Of course," she added, "that makes Twaddles very lonesome."
"Yes?" said Miss Mason, as though she did not quite understand.
"You see," explained Dot bravely, "now he hasn't any dog or any grasshopper!"
Miss Mason stared at the little girl for a moment. Then she leaned back in her
chair and laughed.
"Is that your grasshopper, Twaddles?" she asked merrily. "What was it doing,
then, in Meg's pocket?"