What they did that first winter in school and how the twins tried their best to do exactly as Meg and Bobby did, and usually succeeded, is told in the book called “Four Little Blossoms at Oak Hill School.”  They found school most exciting and it did seem as though there was something to be done every minute of the short winter days, but, dear me, when the heavy snowfalls began you should have seen the children!  They coasted, and they skated, and Meg lost her beautiful turquoise locket.  But she found it, so you need not be sorry.  The whole story of that locket is told in the third book of the series, called “Four Little Blossoms and Their Winter Fun.”  Meg and Bobby were lost in a snowstorm, too, and for a time things looked very serious for them, but that adventure also had a happy ending.

And now we find the four little Blossoms, early in April, just as glad to see the beautiful, shining green Spring as they had been to see the first Winter snow.  Sam Layton had gone away to Canada to work on a farm soon after the weather grew pleasant, and the four little Blossoms missed him very much.  They suspected that Norah missed him, too, though she said nothing.  The children had all promised to write to Sam, and Norah wrote every week.

This was the reason Father Blossom was driving the new car.  As he said, Sam was such an excellent driver there had really been no need for him to drive; but with Sam away, if Father Blossom wanted to reach his foundry on time every morning there was nothing for him to do but to learn to drive the car himself.

“I’ll go and see if I can persuade some farmer to come and pull us out,” he said to Mother Blossom, when he had tried without results to back the car from the mass of bushes and saplings into which it had driven.  “You stay right here with Mother, children, and I’ll be back in fifteen or twenty minutes.”

Twaddles wanted to go with his father, but when it was explained to him that his mother and the girls needed his protection and that of Bobby, he was quite willing to wait quietly in the bushes.  That is, as quietly as Twaddles ever waited anywhere.

“Perhaps we can find flowers,” Meg suggested, as Father Blossom disappeared, whistling.  “Brush some of these leaves away, Dot, and let’s see what grows underneath.”

“Oh, dear!” came with a big sigh from Dot, and they turned to see her caught by a bush whose sharp spikes went right through her firm serge frock and bloomers and held her fast.

“I’ll get you,” offered Twaddles gallantly, and he tried to scramble over the intervening bushes, fortunately all low.

But though low, they were tightly woven, for no underbrush had been cut from this section of the woods for years.  In a moment Twaddles was pinned as tightly as Dot, a narrow, string-like coil of vine wrapping securely round his ankles and a sharp stake thrusting itself slantwise through the sleeve of his sweater.