"Is it entirely crazy they are at last?" while Meg and Bobby shouted with laughter and turned Dot and Twaddles round and round to get a good look at them. "What have you been doing?" Mother Blossom repeated. "Why, we're ready for the sleigh ride," explained Twaddles. "Paper is awfully warm, Mother. Sam said so." "It keeps the wind out," Dot added. "You look like bundles of waste paper," Bobby chuckled. "You'd better not go out on the street that way, or when the trash cart comes, the man will pick you up and throw you on top." "I do think you have more paper than you need," said Aunt Polly gently. And though Twaddles and Dot did not want to admit it, they had already begun to feel that way themselves. They could not sit down with any comfort and when Bobby ran out in the hall and brought in Dot's coat, she found she couldn't get it on at all. "You'll be warm enough without the paper, dears," Mother Blossom said positively. "Plenty warm and much more comfortable. Let Bobby and Meg help you get unwrapped and then hurry and eat lunch before it is cold." So Bobby and Meg untied the knots in the String and the papers slipped to the floor. The twins breathed a sigh of relief and became interested in the creamed potatoes. "But don't forget to take the papers down to the cellar and put them back on the pile, neatly," cautioned Mother Blossom. Bobby and Meg helped Dot and Twaddles take back the papers and then it was time to put on their coats and sweaters. Twaddles was just stamping his feet into his rubbers--he always shook the house, Norah declared, when he put on his rubbers--when the sound of jingling sleighbells was heard outside. "There's Sam! There's the sleigh!" shrieked the four little Blossoms, scattering kisses between Mother Blossom and Aunt Polly and rushing for the door. "Good grief, is the house on fire?" Sam demanded as they came running out of the house. "Where's Philip? I thought you wanted him to go." CHAPTER XVI OVER THE CROSS ROAD Philip could be heard barking madly in the garage and Meg volunteered to go and let him out. The others were too much absorbed in the horse and sleigh to offer to release the dog. "What's the name of the horse?" asked Dot. "I forgot to inquire," Sam answered. "So you may call him anything you like. He lives at the livery stable and you might name him after his master, Walter Rock. Call him Walt for short, you know." Philip, dancing and barking, came running over the snowy lawn and Meg raced after him. "The horse's name is Walt," Dot informed her importantly. "I think he looks kind, don't you, Meg?" "Of course he is a kind horse," said Meg. "He's a pretty color, too." Walt was a spotted horse, brown and white, not a polka-dot horse, of course, but with what Meg called a "pattern" of oddly shaped slashes of white on his brown coat. "He must be a foulard horse," Meg commented as the children climbed into the soft clean straw which filled the box of the sleigh.