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Page 30
"I think it would be nice if we could play by ourselves," said Meg
gently, in answer to Bobby's question.
Meg and Bobby sometimes felt that they would like to play a game
without the aid of Dot and Twaddles. Not that they did not love
the small sister and brother dearly, but Meg and Bobby usually
liked to do the very same thing in the very same way, and Dot and
Twaddles were apt to want to do it six different ways and all at
once! That, as you may understand, occasionally led to disputes.
"Take your lunch and play at Mr. Harley's house?" said Mother
Blossom, laying down her pencil and smiling at the two earnest
faces. "I don't know why not. I'll put some sandwiches up for you
as soon as I finish this list."
"And may just Meg and I go, Mother?" added Bobby coaxingly.
"Oh, Bobby, you know the twins will be disappointed," Mother
Blossom replied. "They do love to poke around that shack and I'm
afraid they will feel hurt if they think you do not want them."
She tapped her pencil absently on the desk for a moment.
"I tell you, children," she cried, putting an arm around each.
"Suppose you and Meg, Bobby, go on to the shack and play by
yourselves this morning; then, at noon, I'll send the twins with
lunch for all of you and you stay an hour or two longer and play
with them. How will that be?"
Meg and Bobby thought this was a splendid plan, and, only stopping
to kiss Mother Blossom and to take an old rusty shovel which was
Bobby's chief treasure, they ran off. Dot and Twaddles were down
at the wharf waiting to see Captain Jenks and his motor-boat, a
daily habit which was encouraged by the captain, who usually
brought them some little treat.
"We'll go around the other side of the island, and they won't see
us," said Meg, the general. "It isn't much longer, really."
The other side of the island was rockier, though, and the bushes
were thicker. Still, Meg and Bobby managed to scramble though, and
half an hour's steady tramping brought them to the Harley shack.
"It keeps falling apart," mourned Meg; and indeed the place looked
worse every time they visited it.
"Apples!" shouted Bobby, running forward to look under the gnarled
trees. "Apples, Meg! Big ones!"
"They're not ripe," said Meg promptly. "'Sides, they're not ours--
they belong to Mr. Harley. Daddy says everything here belongs to
him."
"I guess they are green," admitted Bobby, who had tried in vain to
soften one in his fingers. "But apples belong to anybody, Meg."
"They do not!" contradicted Meg. "Why, Bobby Blossom! how can you
talk like that? Don't you remember when you and Twaddles were in
the fruit store with Daddy last Spring and Twaddles took a
strawberry from one of the boxes because he saw another boy do it?
You know Daddy made him put it back before he could eat it. If
strawberries don't belong to anybody, I guess apples don't."
Meg's honest blue eyes looked beseechingly at her brother.
"All right," surrendered Bobby. "I wasn't going to eat 'em,
anyway."
"I hope not," said Meg severely. "What'll we play?"
"Hunting for treasure," responded Bobby. "That's why I brought the
shovel. You want to pound first?"
Meg and Bobby had invented this game. They pretended that hundreds
of years ago fierce pirates had buried chests of gold and jewels
on this end of the island and that the Harley shack had been the
castle home of these wicked sea rovers. The pirates had died
without leaving directions to tell where they had buried the
treasure, and gradually the castle had crumbled away.
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