“If we have to hear this every time we go driving, I’m afraid Mother will refuse to go with us,” answered Father Blossom seriously.  “Suppose we settle the question another time and to-day let the three girls ride in the tonneau?  I’ll need Bobby to keep an eye on Twaddles because I’ll have to give all my attention to the wheel.”

“I know you must miss Sam,” said Mother Blossom, as Meg and Dot climbed in beside her and Bobby and Twaddles took their places in the front seat beside Father Blossom.  “He was such an excellent driver.”

“Well, in a way, he kept me from learning,” said her husband, starting the car a trifle unevenly.  “Sam was so fine a driver I was perfectly content to let him run the car and never even felt ambitious to drive myself.  If we want to go anywhere this summer, I’ll be glad I have my own driver’s license.  What’s the matter, Twaddles?”

“I dropped my handkerchief,” announced Twaddles sadly.  “Right in the mud.  See? it’s back there, Daddy.”

“Well, I hardly think we’ll stop for that,” said Father Blossom judicially.  “You’ve plenty of those little cotton things and I want to go as far as the lake road before supper time.”

“It wasn’t a little cotton thing,” reported Twaddles, whose conscience was peculiar in that it usually bothered him too late.  “I borrowed one of your nice, white hankies, Daddy, to wrap my sick bird in.”

“Well, I must say!” sputtered Father Blossom.  “I must say!  Oh, Twaddles, why do you always do something you shouldn’t?  Those handkerchiefs are pure linen and hand-initialed.  I’ll have to stop—­you run back and see if you can find it.”

He stopped the car and Twaddles obediently jumped out and ran back to the place where he had dropped the handkerchief.  When he had had plenty of time to return, and didn’t appear, Bobby stood up in the car to look.

“He’s fussing with something,” he announced.  “He’s got a stick and is poking something.  I’d better go and get him, hadn’t I, Daddy?”

“The child has probably found a garden snake or a frog,” said Mother Blossom, who knew her children thoroughly, as her next remark proved.  “If Bobby goes after Twaddles they will play with it until dark.  Let Meg go.  Tell Twaddles, dear, that he is to come immediately.  And don’t let him forget the handkerchief.”

Meg ran all the way to where Twaddles sat on a stone blissfully engrossed with something in the roadway.

“Mother says to come this minute,” she commanded.  “What you got, Twaddles?”

“There! you’ve scared it,” said Twaddles regretfully.  “It was a dear little snake.  All right, I’m coming.  I was all ready to start when you came.”

After this delay the trip went smoothly, and Father Blossom declared that he was pleased with the new car.  They reached the broad, level lake road and drove for several miles along it until Mother Blossom said that if they were not to keep Norah’s supper waiting, they must turn back.