Twaddles unscrewed the top of his candy jar and offered Father Blossom a green-colored stick.

“We took Marion a present,” he explained serenely.  “But I guess her mother thought it wasn’t fair for her to get ’em all.  Everybody fished for something, Daddy.”

CHAPTER VIII

DOWN ON THE POND

“A penny for your thoughts, Daughter,” said Father Blossom presently.

Meg’s lip quivered.

“I want my locket!” she sobbed, hiding her face against her father’s shoulder.  “All the girls have lockets and mine was nicer than any of them.”

“Yes, it was,” agreed Dot judicially, from her seat on the rug before the fire.  “It had such a cunning snap.”

“I don’t care about the snap,” retorted Meg, sitting up and drying her eyes on Father’s nice big white handkerchief.  “The forget-me-nots were so lovely and besides it was great Aunt Dorothy’s.”

Father Blossom now proposed a plan.

“I’ll advertise for your locket, Meg,” he said.  “We’ll offer a reward, and perhaps some one will find it.  At any rate, it will encourage them to look for it.  Right after supper we’ll get pencil and paper and write out an advertisement for the Oak Hill Herald.”

Father Blossom did not really believe that offering a reward for the lost locket would bring it back.  He thought likely that it was buried under the deep snow beyond the sight of every one.  But he knew that Meg would feel better if she thought that everything possible was being done to recover the pretty trinket.

After supper that night they wrote an advertisement, describing the locket, telling where it was lost, and offering ten dollars reward to the person who should bring it back.  This advertisement was printed for three weeks in the Oak Hill paper, but though a number of people who read it did go out and scuffle about a bit in the snow on Wayne Place hill, partly in the hope of earning the reward, partly with a good-natured wish to help Meg, no one found the locket.  The Blossom family were forced to conclude that it was gone forever.

The Monday afternoon following the party Meg and Bobby came rushing home from school with great news.

“Mother!  Mother!” they shouted, flinging down lunch boxes and books in the hall and tearing upstairs like small cyclones.  “Oh, Mother!”

Mother Blossom, sewing in Aunt Polly’s room, looked up at them and laughed.

“Is there a fire?” she asked calmly.

Bobby was almost out of breath, but he still had a bit left to tell the news.

“They’ve swept off Blake’s pond!” he gasped.  “Everybody’s going skating.  The ice is great, Mother.  Just like glass.”

“Where are our skates?  Can we go?” chimed in Meg.  “It isn’t a bit cold, Mother.”

“Just cold enough to skate, I suppose,” smiled Mother Blossom.  “Well, of course you can’t miss the first skating of the season.  But I don’t believe they want such little folks on the pond, dear.  Some of the big boys will be likely to skate right over you.”