live here?" asked Twaddles, almost climbing over the
rail in his eagerness to see everything.

"Sure! There's a town back about half a mile," explained the deck-hand
who was carrying on a crate of live chickens. "This is just where
farmers drive in with their stuff."

"Let me see the chickens," cried Dot, climbing up beside her brother.

Her elbow knocked his hat, and because he hadn't the elastic under his
chin, it went sailing over on to the wharf. One of the men rolling a
barrel toward the steamer did not see the hat and calmly rolled his
barrel over it.

"Now you've done it!" scolded Meg, in her big-sister anxiety. "That's
a fine-looking hat to go to see Aunt Polly in. Hey, please, will you
bring it back here with you?"

The man with the barrel heard and turned. He picked up the shapeless
broken straw that had been Twaddles' best new hat, and brought it to
them, grinning. Several people who had been watching laughed.

"It does look funny, doesn't it?" said Meg. "You'd better go and show
it to Mother, Twaddles."

Twaddles went back to Mother Blossom and dangled his hat before her
sadly.

"Oh, Twaddles!" she sighed. "Is that your hat? And we're miles from a
store. Here, let me straighten out the brim. What happened to it?
Where did you go?"

Twaddles said truthfully enough that he hadn't been anywhere, and
explained what had happened to the hat. The boat was out in the lake
again by this time and steaming on toward Little Havre.

"Where are the others?" asked Mother Blossom. "Tell them we get off in
fifteen or twenty minutes, and I want them all to come and stay near
me."

Presently the boat scraped alongside a wide wharf and a number of
people began to bustle off.

"Where are we going now?" asked Twaddles, his round eyes dancing with
excitement. Twaddles certainly loved traveling.

"Don't you 'member?" said Meg importantly. "We have to go to Four
Crossways, and Aunt Polly will meet us. There's a bus that says 'Four
Crossways,' Mother."

Mother Blossom had to see about the trunks and the kiddie-car, which,
it seemed, were all to go in a queer contrivance attached to the
motor bus, a "trailer," the driver called it.

"Isn't that nice?" beamed Bobby, when he heard of this arrangement.
"Our trunks will get there the same time we do."

The children watched this trailer being loaded, and then all climbed
into the bus and began the journey to Four Crossways. There were so
many people on their way there