“I want to play a new way,” Bobby was explaining to Meg as he pedaled furiously.  “You’ll see—­I thought it up all myself last night.”

A crowd of boys swept forward to greet Bobby when he entered the school yard.  Most of them had seen his car before—­it had been a birthday present in February—­but to several it was new and all admired it and wished for one exactly like it.

“Can’t have any fun with it here,” said Tim Roon, rather contemptuously.

Tim was apt to speak of the dark side of everything, and he had very good luck in finding a dark side to draw attention to.

“Yes, I can,” insisted Bobby.  “You’ll see.”

He went through the school yard, down to the end where an old-fashioned picket fence shut off the playground from a vacant lot that later would be divided off into the school gardens, a plot for each grade.

“What you going to do?” asked Tim Roon curiously.

The other children looked mystified, including Meg.  She, too, wondered what Bobby could be planning to do.

“You’ll see.”  Bobby repeated his favorite phrase.

From his blouse he drew a hammer, borrowed from the tool bench in the Blossom garage, and, awkwardly, for he was not used to the work, inserted it under the end of a picket.  There was a ripping, grating noise, and the picket parted from the cross-piece.

“Bobby Blossom!” cried Meg.  “What in the world are you going to do?”

CHAPTER III

HOW THE PLAN WORKED

“You’ll see,” said Bobby with maddening persistency.

While the children watched, he ripped off four more pickets.  The cross pieces of the fence were old and rotten and when he put his foot on the lower brace and bore down heavily, it obligingly snapped in two.

“I’m going to ride right through that hole!” Bobby condescended to explain at last.  “Daddy drove our car right in between three trees, and I’ll bet I can steer through a narrow place, too.  You watch.”

Breathless the boys and girls stood back while Bobby pushed his automobile to a point he considered a proper distance from the opening in the fence.  He took his seat, put his foot on the pedals, and tooted the horn.

“Here I go!” he cried, making his feet fly.

The car shot forward and, much to the surprise of every one except Bobby, went through the hole in the pickets safely and on out into the muddy lot.

“Pretty good steering,” said Palmer Davis generously.

“Let me try,” begged Meg.  “I can steer, Bobby.”

Meg always did everything Bobby did, and it never entered his head to refuse her.  So she took the automobile, and, holding the wheel tightly, pedaled through the hole, though more slowly than Bobby had done.  Palmer Davis was wild to try his skill, but Meg insisted on two rides and when she had finished the second one the warning bell rang.