Letty and the Twins Part 5

It was grandfather's turn to drop into a chair. The chair was not very near so that he almost dropped on to the floor. But the twins were too miserable to laugh.

"They weren't very big," moaned Christopher.

"That made them all the greener," replied his grandfather grimly.

"I only ate six, grandfather," put in Jane consolingly. "I felt as if I'd had enough after three, but I couldn't stop there, you know."

In spite of his anxiety grandfather laughed. Then he got up to go in search of grandmother. She appeared in the doorway just then, looking very comfortable and cool in a fresh white dress.

"Mrs. Hartwell-Jones's head is better, children, and she would like to see you up in her--" she began and stopped short.

"What is the matter with the children?" she cried, looking at them in great alarm.

"Jane ate six green apples and Kit lost count after the eighth. Is there anybody handy to send for the doctor?"

Grandmother looked dismayed, but faced the situation bravely.

"A drink of hot peppermint water will fix them, I think," she said. "And if that doesn't castor oil will. Dr. Greene has been called to Westside to take charge of a typhoid fever case and won't be back to-night."

After the children had been put to bed with warm, soothing drinks, and had had hot milk toast for supper, sitting up in bed with their wrappers on to eat it, Christopher suddenly bethought himself of grandfather's good news.

"He never told us what it was!" he wailed to Jane.

"I wonder how he guessed about the apples so soon?" speculated Jane in reply. "I've played in the orchard 'most every day. I guess it was because you were playing with me."

"Mean-y! Trying to put the blame on me! It was because you looked so queer and yellow, like biscuit dough."

"I didn't look any yellower than you. And I didn't double up and howl, so there," retorted Jane, indignantly.

Christopher was silenced for a moment by this home-thrust. Then he called triumphantly:

"I had a right to look yellower than you, 'cause I ate more apples. And I think I know what the good news is. The circus is comin' day after to-morrow. I heard grandfather tell Mrs. Hartwell-Jones so."

"Oh, Kit, how fine! Wouldn't you just love to go?"

"We are going. Grandfather said we might when I first asked him."

"Yes, I know, but perhaps he'll change his mind now and not let us go, to punish us for being naughty about the apples."

"But he promised! He'll have to keep his word."

"He didn't really promise. He just said he'd see."

"Well, that means the same. He meant yes."

"Then I wonder what he will do to punish us?"

"Nothing. He'll forgive us. Grandfathers are different from fathers about that."

"But we've been naughty and deserve to be punished."

"Well, isn't it punishment enough, I'd like to know, to be put to bed in broad daylight?" demanded Christopher, tossing impatiently.

Just then Huldah came up for the milk toast bowls. She stood in the doorway between the children's rooms and shook her head slowly as she looked from one bed to the other.

"I'm disapp'inted in you," she said coldly.

"Oh, come now, Huldah, don't rub it in," pleaded Christopher.

"And we are as sorry as we can be," added Jane.

"Well, you'll lose some good apple pies by it," remarked Huldah severely, picking up her tray. "Your grandfather was planning to have a picnic on circus day, an' I was makin' out to bake some apple pies for it-pies with lots of cinnamon-but apples'll be scarce now, and we'll have to be savin' of 'em."

"Oh, Huldah, we didn't eat as many as that!" cried Jane, her pain coming back at the very idea.

"You must have eat 'most half a bushel between you."

"My! Well, can't you begin to be saving of them a little later in the summer, when there's other things to make pie out of?" wheedled Christopher.

But Huldah shook her head and went away to her kitchen.

Jane lay thinking, soberly. She still felt weak and shaken after the sharp pain she had suffered, and found her bed very comfortable.

Therefore she could not regard being put to bed so early as a punishment. Neither did she think it right that naughty children should go without punishment of some kind. It was not natural. It had never happened in any of her story-books, nor had it occurred in her own small experience, notwithstanding Christopher's ideas about forgiving grandfathers. It stood to reason then that she and Christopher, having been naughty, must be punished. The most obvious punishment would be to keep them home from the circus. Grandfather had not actually promised to take them-nothing so solemn as "honest Injun" or "Cross my heart." So perhaps he would not think he was breaking his word by keeping them at home.

Perhaps, if she and Christopher did something to show how sorry they were, deprived themselves of something, grandfather would think that was punishment enough. Soon the idea came to her.

"Kit," she called, sitting up in bed, "are you asleep?"

"No, what you want?"

"Why, I think we ought-it seems to me-Huldah said we ate 'most half a bushel of apples, Kit. That's an awful lot."

"It's not so many when you think of all there are left on the trees.

It's rubbish about Huldah's having to save 'em. I know better 'n that.

She just said that to make us uncomfortable, the mean thing."

"Well, it was a lot, anyhow, and I think we ought to give 'em back."

"Give 'em back! How could we? What do you mean?"

Christopher tumbled out of bed, his curiosity roused and coming in, huddled himself up on the foot of Jane's cot.

"Why, don't you think that your 'lowance an' mine together 'd buy half a bushel of apples?" asked Jane eagerly, quite carried away by her heroic resolve.

"But I want my 'lowance to buy lemonade and peanuts with at the circus."

"But maybe we can't go to the circus."

"Yes, we can. Grandfather promised."