“I won’t!” announced Meg stubbornly.

“Don’t speak that way, Meg,” said Mother Blossom gently.  “Twaddles, it seems to me that since the grasshopper got Meg into such trouble, and you put it in her pocket, that you’re the one to get it back.  If you want it badly enough to ask Miss Mason for it, well and good; otherwise I fear you have lost your grasshopper.”

Poor Twaddles knew there was no way out of it.  Either he must lose his beautiful green grasshopper, or else go and ask Miss Mason to give it to him.  Mother Blossom never allowed the children to coax; when she said a thing she always meant it.

“Will you go ask, Dot?” Twaddles said to his little sister, after Meg and Bobby had gone back to school.

“I’ll go with you,” offered Dot “But I won’t go all by myself without any one with me.”

So it happened that Miss Mason was much surprised to receive a visit that afternoon a few minutes after she had dismissed her class.  She had met Twaddles and Dot before, when they had paid their first visit to the school, and she remembered them at once.

“I’m very glad to see you,” she assured them.  “Won’t you come in and sit down?  Meg and Bobby have been telling me about Apple Tree Island.”

“Yes, I guess we’re going,” murmured Twaddles, his eyes fixed in fascination on his mechanical grasshopper reposing on the top of the teacher’s desk.

“Will Norah and Annabel Lee and Philip go with you?” asked Miss Mason, who knew all about the Blossom family and their pets.

“I don’t know about Norah and Annabel Lee,” returned Dot politely, “but Sam Layton took Philip to Canada with him; he was really like Sam’s own dog ’cause he mostly fed him.  Of course,” she added, “that makes Twaddles very lonesome.”

“Yes?” said Miss Mason, as though she did not quite understand.

“You see,” explained Dot bravely, “now he hasn’t any dog or any grasshopper!”

Miss Mason stared at the little girl for a moment.  Then she leaned back in her chair and laughed.

“Is that your grasshopper, Twaddles?” she asked merrily.  “What was it doing, then, in Meg’s pocket?”

Miss Mason had at first refused to use any nicknames in her class and she had insisted on calling Bobby and Meg by their true names, “Robert” and “Margaret.”  As for Twaddles and Dot, the teacher had declared that never, never, could she consent to calling children by such “queer” names.  But, after a while, she had grown used to the queer names and, like every one else in Oak Hill, forgot that the four little Blossoms had any others.

Dot sensibly thought that Twaddle should make his own explanation, and that small boy did, rather shamefacedly.  Miss Mason gave him his grasshopper and advised him not to play tricks on his sister again.

“I won’t,” promised Twaddles earnestly, “at least, not pocket ones.”

Down in the hall, on their way out, Twaddles and Dot met Mr. Carter, who also remembered them from their earlier visit.  He shook hands with them and very naturally asked them what brought them to school.