“Going to Europe?” said the conductor, as he watched them climb into his car.  “Let them off at Lane’s Corners,” he repeated, as Mr. Baker told him how far the boys were going.  “All right, sir.  Lane’s Corners it is.  All aboard.”

He pulled the bell and the car started.  The seven little boys found seats together at one end of the car, and the conductor made them laugh all the way to Lane’s Corners.  There were only two other people in the car, an elderly man and a man who read his newspapers and did not look up.  The conductor pretended half the time that the trolley was a boat and that the boys were sailors.  And then he would pretend that he was the conductor on a train and that the motorman was the engineer.  It was not a long ride to Lane’s Corners and the merry conductor made it seem only a few minutes.

“Who wanted to get off at Lane’s Corners?” he called, when he had stopped the car at the big white sign post.  “Why, goodness, all my passengers are leaving me!  Here, lad, catch this,” he shouted to Bob, picking up Sunny Boy and pretending to toss him to Bob, who was waiting for them.

“It’s a good thing you wore boots and rubbers,” said Bob, as the trolley car went on, leaving the boys, who waved to the conductor as long as they could see him on the platform.  “The mud is up to the hub of the wagon wheels.”

CHAPTER XV

ANOTHER RESCUE

A horse and wagon stood at one side of the road, and Bob led the boys over and told them to “hop in.”

“Isn’t this the horse and wagon that was lost in the blizzard?” asked Sunny Boy, scrambling up to a seat beside Bob.  Indeed all the boys tried to get near Bob, and when he turned the horse’s head toward the farmhouse, there were boys on every side of him.

“Same horse, same wagon,” said Bob.  “Only difference is the weather.  Feel how warm that sun is?”

“Where we going?” asked Carleton Marsh.

“Down to the house, first, to pick up Father,” replied Bob.  “He is going to tinker up and whitewash some of the fences this morning.  And Ma said she wanted to say ‘hello’ to you all.  I thought you’d like to play down along the brook, and I can drive you there, because Father wants to work on the pasture fence.”

Mrs. Parkney came out, followed by the Parkney children, when she heard Bob driving up to the farmhouse door.  The road was so soft and muddy that she couldn’t hear the horse’s feet or the wagon wheels, but she could hear eight boys talking and laughing.  That made a noise that could be heard some distance away.

“Now mind,” said Mrs. Parkney, when she had spoken to the boys and her husband had come out with his tools and two buckets of whitewash and climbed into the wagon with them.  “Mind!  If you eat your lunch up before noon, or get hungry any time, you come up to the house and I’ll fix you something good.  And stop in anyway before you go home and have some milk to drink.  Mud, Sunny Boy?  Why, bless your heart, dear, a little mud is nothing.  I wouldn’t know spring had come to stay if I didn’t see some mud tracked in.”