“Here comes Mother!” shouted Twaddles, as a familiar figure came up the path.  “Oh, Mother, Bobby’s stuck!”

Mother Blossom was used to “most anything.”  She said so often.  The four little Blossoms had heard her.  So now, though Aunt Polly gasped to see the front door wide open and the hall light streaming out over the snow, three children dancing about in the cold with no wraps on and a fourth nearly buried in a tall bush, Mother Blossom merely put down the two or three bundles she carried, leaned her weight against the bush and directed Norah how to bend down other branches.  Then, holding on to his mother’s arm, Bobby crawled out.

“Run in, every one of you, before you take cold,” commanded Mother Blossom quickly.  “What have you been doing?  Dot looks as though she had been through a mill.”

Sweeping them before her, Mother Blossom soon had them marshaled into the house.  Aunt Polly closed the door and Norah flew to her neglected kitchen.  It was dark outside by this time, and the steadily falling snow had spread a thick carpet on the ground.

“Did you bring us something?” asked Dot expectantly, her hair-ribbon over one eye and both pockets torn from her apron.

“Did you bring us something?” inquired Twaddles, shaking Mother Blossom’s packages to try to find out what was in them.

“Did you bring us something?” said Meg and Bobby together, each holding out a hand for overshoes.

Mother Blossom gave hers to Bobby, and Aunt Polly handed hers to Meg, to be put away in the hall closet under the stairs.  Just as Meg closed the door of the closet the doorbell rang.

“There’s the boy now,” announced Mother Blossom.  “He’s bringing you the something nice I promised.”

The boy from Gobert’s, the hardware store uptown, probably had never received a more enthusiastic welcome in his life than that he experienced at the Blossom house.  Four children flung open the door for him and fell upon him crying:  “Where is it?  Who’s it for?  Let me see it!”

He was a tall, thin boy, with a wide, cheerful grin, and four children pouncing upon him at once could not shake his self-possession.

“Got two sleds,” he said impressively.  “Mrs. Blossom said to send ’em right up.  Where do you want them?”

“Put them down there on the rug,” directed Mother Blossom, smiling.  “Don’t you want to come in and get warm, Ted?”

“No thanks,” replied Ted, putting on his cap, again.  “Want to hustle right home to supper.  Looks like a big storm.”

He stamped down the steps into the snow, and Meg closed the hall door.

“Two sleds!” Twaddles was round-eyed with admiration.  “Now I won’t have to wait all afternoon for my turn.”

“Unwrap them,” said Mother Blossom.  “They’re just alike, one for the girls, and one for you and Bobby.  Aunt Polly bought one as her gift.”

Aunt Polly had gone upstairs to take off her hat, but the shouts of excitement brought her back quickly.