The  Bobbsey  Twins
                             and  Baby  May

                                   BY
                            LAURA  LEE  HOPE
               AUTHOR  OF  “THE  BOBBSEY  TWINS  SERIES,”

                               NEW  YORK
                           GROSSET  &  DUNLAP
                               PUBLISHERS

               Made  in  the  United  States  of  America




                          COPYRIGHT, 1924, BY
                            GROSSET & DUNLAP
                    _The Bobbsey Twins and Baby May_




                                CONTENTS

                  I. A RAILROAD SMASH
                 II. MYSTERIOUS BELLS
                III. BABY MAY
                 IV. WHAT THE POLICE FOUND
                  V. NAN WHISPERS IN SCHOOL
                 VI. THE RUNAWAY
                VII. THE SNAP-CRACKER
               VIII. THE OLD WOMAN AGAIN
                 IX. IN PURSUIT
                  X. LOST IN THE WOODS
                 XI. ADVENTURES OF THE NIGHT
                XII. RESCUED
               XIII. THE LAST DAY
                XIV. A BIG SPLASH
                 XV. FREDDIE SEES SOMETHING
                XVI. A LOST BABY
               XVII. THE GREEN UMBRELLA
              XVIII. KIDNAPPED
                XIX. ON THE TRAIL
                 XX. AN EXCITING CHASE
                XXI. IN THE DUCK POND
               XXII. CAUGHT AT LAST




                     The Bobbsey Twins and Baby May




                               CHAPTER I
                            A RAILROAD SMASH


“Just look at it rain!” exclaimed Nan Bobbsey to her brother Bert, as
they were getting their coats, hats and umbrellas from the schoolroom
closet.

“Crickity grasshoppers, I should say so!” cried Bert, crowding to the
one window in the coatroom, already filled with boys and girls eager to
escape from school. “It’s bouncing up from the sidewalk something
awful!”

“Well, I know one thing,” announced Charlie Mason, pushing his face
against the windowglass until his nose looked flat. “The rain isn’t
going to bounce on my umbrella.”

“Why not?” asked Bert. “Aren’t you going to put your umbrella up in all
this storm?”

“Nope!” answered Charlie, with a laugh and a shake of his head.

“Why not?” asked Nan curiously.

“’Cause I didn’t bring an umbrella, that’s why!” chuckled the boy.

“You’ll get soaked!” said Danny Rugg. “I haven’t got a very big
umbrella, Charlie, but you can walk under it with me.”

“Thanks,” murmured Charlie.

“Danny’s getting real good, isn’t he, Bert?” asked Nan, as these two
dark-haired Bobbsey twins made their way out of the coatroom and toward
the main hall, which was filled with boys and girls eager to get home.

“Yes, Danny’s pretty good now,” agreed Bert. “And I’m glad of it. He
always used to be fighting and quarreling. Say, Nan, it’s raining like
cats and dogs!”

“Worse than that!” sighed Nan. “I hope Flossie and Freddie won’t get
soaked.”

“Didn’t they bring umbrellas?” Bert wanted to know. “If they didn’t—”

“Oh, yes, they brought their little ones. I saw mother call them back
and make them take them,” replied Nan Bobbsey. “But even a big umbrella
isn’t much good in this storm. The wind blows terribly! I’m going to
wait in the lower hall for Flossie and Freddie.”

“All right; I’ll wait with you,” offered Bert good-naturedly.

As the older Bobbsey twins stood there, watching the other boys and
girls pass out, the rain now and then blew in through the open door.

A gust of wind would send the door swinging back after some child had
tried to close it, and the water would streak across the floor, leaving
little puddles.

“It’s a regular flood!” laughed Bert, as he and his sister waited for
the smaller twins, who studied in another room, which had not yet been
dismissed.

“There’ll be a lot of puddles on the way home,” remarked Nan.

“Say, do you know what I’m going to do?” asked Bert, as he saw Danny
Rugg and Charlie Mason going out arm in arm, the better to fit under one
small umbrella.

“What are you going to do?”

“I’m going to take off my shoes and stockings, and I’ll wade home!”
declared Bert.

“Oh, you are not!” cried Nan.

“Yes, I am!”

“I’ll tell mother if you do!”

“Pooh! Won’t she see me anyhow, if I wade home? I tell you it’s better
to take off your shoes and stockings than to step in a lot of puddles
and get soaked.”

“Well, I’m not going to do that!” said Nan. “It’s too cold!”

“I’m going to. I don’t care for the cold,” decided Bert, and then and
there he sat down and took off his shoes and stockings, putting his
stockings in his shoes and hanging his shoes around his neck by the
laces.

“Now I’m all ready for a washout!” he cried.

“Here come Flossie and Freddie,” reported Nan. “Hurry, children,” she
begged them. “We want to get home before the storm grows any worse.”

“Oh, I’m going to take off my shoes and stockings!” cried Freddie, as he
saw what Bert had done.

“So’m I!” added Flossie, who always wanted to do what Freddie did.

“No! No!” cried Nan. “You mustn’t! There, see what you’ve started!” she
added to Bert. “I knew they’d want to do this when they saw you!”

“Well, I can’t help that,” chuckled Bert. “Let ’em if they want to, I
say!”

“No! No!” insisted Nan, as she saw the younger twins sitting down and
beginning to tug at their shoe laces. “You mustn’t! Mother wouldn’t like
you to go barefoot in this cold rain—it isn’t summer yet. Keep your
shoes on!”

“But Bert has his off, and I want to wade in the puddles!” wailed
Flossie.

“So do I!” echoed Freddie. “I want my shoes off!”

“I’ll be the ferryman and carry you over the puddles,” offered Bert, and
this solved the problem, much to Nan’s delight.

Flossie and Freddie kept on their shoes and stockings, and followed
their older brother and sister out into the storm. They were almost the
last to leave the school, on account of the little dispute.

Down pelted the rain so hard that, as Nan had said, the umbrellas were
of little use. The wind blew the wet drops under them. But the children
rather enjoyed it, and Flossie and Freddie squealed with delight when
Bert carried them across puddles at the gutters, the barefooted boy
wading boldly through the muddy water.

“Are you soaked, children?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey, when they reached home.
“And Bert—barefooted!”

“It’s a good thing I am,” said Bert, “else my shoes would be spoiled. I
had to carry Flossie and Freddie over a lot of puddles. Their feet
aren’t so awful wet.”

“You poor dears! I ought to have had you take your rubbers as well as
your umbrellas,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “I thought we had had enough of
April showers.”

“Maybe this is the last one, seeing to-day’s the last of April,”
remarked Nan, walking toward the kitchen to put her dripping umbrella in
the sink.

“Your feet are soaking wet—I can hear them,” said Mrs. Bobbsey.

“Yes, they are a little wet,” admitted Nan, looking down at them. “I
jumped over most of the puddles, and Bert lifted me across one big one,
but I guess I got a little wet, anyhow.”

“A _little_ wet! I should say you _did_!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. “Now
all of you put on dry things!”

When this had been done, and the Bobbsey twins, safe and dry, looked out
of the window, at the pelting rain, they were very glad to be sheltered
and in their comfortable home.

“Oh, look at the funny old lady!” exclaimed Freddie, who was kneeling on
a chair near a front window. “She looks like Mother Goose!”

“But she hasn’t got a goose!” added Flossie.

“She has a green umbrella,” returned Freddie. “It’s a big one, too.
Mother, why don’t you get me a big green umbrella like hers?” he asked.

“I’m afraid the wind would blow you away with it,” laughed Mrs. Bobbsey,
as, with Bert and Nan, she looked out at the person Flossie and Freddie
were speaking of. “Poor old lady!” murmured Mrs. Bobbsey.

The old woman making her way up the street amid the storm, carrying on
one arm a large, square market basket covered with a black cloth, as if
to keep whatever was inside dry from the pelting rain, did, indeed, seem
a strange figure.

As she walked along, holding her large, green umbrella over her head,
she glanced now, and then from beneath it at the houses she passed. She
caught sight of the four Bobbsey twins at the window of their home, and
halted a minute, gazing intently at them.

“Oh, do you s’pose she’s coming here?” gasped Nan.

“No, I think not,” replied Mrs. Bobbsey. Then the old woman walked
slowly on, still peering curiously at the house.

“Isn’t she odd?” murmured Nan to Bert. “I wonder what she has in that
basket, and what she is looking for.”

“Maybe she sells things,” suggested Bert. “Well, I know what I’m going
to do if mother won’t let me go out and play boat.” He had asked to be
allowed to do this, but Mrs. Bobbsey had said no.

“What you going to do?” asked Freddie.

“I’m going to make an elevated railroad,” declared Bert.

“Oh, can you?” cried Freddie. “And may I help?”

“May I ride on it?” questioned Flossie.

Nan remained at the window, looking at the queer old woman as she
vanished down the street in the mist from the rain. Though Nan did not
know it, this same old woman was soon to play a strange part in the
lives of the Bobbsey twins.

“How you going to make an elevated railroad?” asked Freddie.

“I’ll show you,” answered Bert. “No, Flossie, you can’t ride on it,” he
added, as his smaller sister again made her request. “It’s only the toy
railroad put up on some chairs.”

“Oh, that’ll be fun!” cried Freddie. “I’ll help!”

He began dragging chairs away from the dining-room table, while Bert got
from the closet, where it was kept, a toy train of cars that ran by
electricity on a sectional track. Instead of putting the track together
on the floor, as he usually did, Bert had decided to raise it in the
air, supporting it on chairs and boards, thus making an elevated
railroad.

“Be careful now, children,” warned Mrs. Bobbsey, when she saw what they
were doing. “Don’t get hurt.”

“No’m, we won’t!” they chorused.

Bert had taken Dinah’s two ironing boards, the large one and the small
one, and with some other boards and boxes from the cellar and by the use
of chairs, had made a place to put together his tracks.

“You can see ’em a lot better when they’re up high this way,” said
Freddie, as the track was nearly completed.

“I wish I could ride on it. I like to ride on elevated railroads,”
sighed Flossie. “I rided on one when I was in New York once,” she added.

“Well, you can’t ride on this!” replied Bert. “You’d break it all up if
you did. Hand me that curved track, Freddie, and then I guess it’s all
done.”

The last section of track was put in place, Bert connected the battery,
set the engine and cars on the rail, turned the switch, and the elevated
railroad was in operation.

“Whee, this is fun!” shouted Freddie.

“It’s awfully cute!” said Nan.

“Could I give my little celluloid doll a ride?” asked Flossie. “She’s so
light a fly could carry her on its back, Bert.”

“Yes, give the doll a ride,” Bert said, and with smiles of delight
Flossie set her on top of one of the toy cars.

The Bobbsey twins made up a game to play with the elevated railroad:
They pretended they were sending loads of different things one to the
other. Bits of paper were oranges and burned matches did very well for
bunches of bananas.

“My, it’s raining harder than ever!” exclaimed Bert, as he went to the
window to look out.

“Do you see the old lady with the green umbrella?” asked Nan.

“No,” her brother answered. “She’s gone. Hi, Freddie, what you doing?”
he asked, as he saw the little fellow crawling under the large ironing
board laid across the seats of two chairs.

“I’m playing I’m under the railroad bridge,” said Freddie.

“Oh, I’m coming under, too!” cried Flossie, and she crawled to where
Freddie sat under the ironing board.

“Be careful!” warned Bert. “Don’t jiggle that board or you’ll upset the
whole railroad! You’d better come out from under there.”

He reached to get hold of Freddie’s arm to drag him forth. Just then a
loud clap of thunder sounded.

“Oh!” screamed Flossie, and she made a dash, tumbling over.

Bang! down came the ironing board, elevated railroad, toy engine, cars
and everything, on the heads of the smaller Bobbsey twins. At that
moment another terrific clap of thunder fairly shook the house, and Nan
cried out in terror and Bert, too, uttered an exclamation of fear.




                               CHAPTER II
                            MYSTERIOUS BELLS


“Children! What has happened?” cried Mrs. Bobbsey, running in from the
kitchen where she was helping Dinah get supper. She gave one glance at
the collapsed elevated toy railway, saw Flossie and Freddie buried under
an overturned chair, the ironing board, the engine and cars and gasped:
“Oh, are you hurt?”

Another loud clap of thunder drowned, for a moment, the answering voices
of the children. Then from the toy railroad wreck came the faltering cry
of Flossie as she said:

“Oh, I got a terrible bang on the head! Oh, dear!”

“You aren’t hurt much—you’re just frightened!” said Nan, soothingly, as
she helped her small sister get out from beneath the ironing board.

“And I got banged on the knee!” exclaimed Freddie.

“Crickity grasshoppers!” exclaimed Bert, as he viewed the tangled mass
of what, a moment before, had been a fine-running toy railroad system.
“Everything’s gone to smash!”

“Oh, it’s a wreck! Let’s play it’s a railroad wreck!” shouted Freddie.
“That’s what it is—and I’ll be a passenger that was hurt, and Flossie
can be another passenger, and you must send for the amberlance, an’ Nan
can be a trained nurse an’—an’—” He had to stop for breath, he was
talking so fast.

“We don’t need to _pretend_ it was a wreck—it sure _is_ one!” declared
Bert ruefully. “I hope my electric engine isn’t smashed!” he added.
“Crawl out of there, Freddie, until I take a look!”

“Will I get a shock from the ’lectric battery?” faltered Flossie, as Nan
picked her up.

“Yes, Bert, be careful about the electricity, especially in a lightning
storm,” admonished his mother.

“There’s no danger,” the older Bobbsey boy insisted. “The wires are
broken, I guess. Who pulled that ironing board down, anyhow?”

“Freddie did,” said Flossie.

“I did not! You jiggled me and my head hit it. Anyhow, the thunder
knocked it down,” insisted Freddie.

“Well, come out of the mess and clear the wreck away,” suggested Mrs.
Bobbsey. “It’s almost time for supper. Daddy will soon be here and—”

A vivid flash of lightning that seemed to fill the room with its glare,
followed by a terrific clap of thunder, stopped her from talking.

“Oh, what a terrible storm!” murmured Mrs. Bobbsey.

Into the room came waddling fat old Dinah, the colored cook.

“Am any ob mah honey lambs hurt?” she inquired anxiously.

“No one is hurt,” replied Mrs. Bobbsey. “But, oh, such a mess!” She
looked at the conglomeration of chairs, ironing boards, boxes and the
toy railroad, now scattered over the floor.

“We’ll clean it up,” said Bert cheerfully. And while he and Nan are
doing this and while Mrs. Bobbsey is comforting Flossie and Freddie, who
were alarmed over the storm, I shall take just a moment to tell my new
readers a little something about this family.

In the first book of this series, “The Bobbsey Twins,” you learn that
Mr. and Mrs. Richard Bobbsey lived with their two sets of twins in the
eastern city of Lakeport on Lake Metoka, where Mr. Bobbsey owned a large
lumberyard. Bert and Nan, who had dark hair and eyes, were several years
older than Flossie and Freddie, whose hair was light and whose eyes were
blue.

Bert and Nan and Flossie and Freddie were fond of fun and good times,
and they had plenty of them in the country, at school, at the seashore
and on trips. There are various books telling of the adventures of the
Bobbsey twins in different places, at grandpa’s farm, on the deep blue
sea, and out West. Just before this story opens the Bobbsey twins had
been camping and had had some wonderful adventures.

“Well, Bert, was anything broken?” asked his mother, when the “mess,” as
she called it, of the elevated railroad had been cleared away.

“No, nothing much, Mother,” he answered. “One of the cars lost a wheel,
but that’s always coming off. I guess Sam can fix it.” Sam was Dinah’s
husband, a jolly, stout, colored man-of-all-work about the Bobbsey
place.

“I think you’d better wash now and get ready for supper,” his mother
told him.

“If I could put on my bathing suit and stand out in the rain I wouldn’t
have to wash—the shower would wash me,” Bert said, laughing.

“Oh, could we do that? Could we put on our bathing suits?” begged
Freddie.

“Please!” begged Flossie, who was all over her crying spell caused by
having been hit on the head when the ironing board fell.

“No, indeed!” laughed Mrs. Bobbsey. “This isn’t summer yet. The rain is
a cold one. I hope your father doesn’t get drenched. But what made your
elevated railroad fall, Bert?”

“Oh, I guess Flossie or Freddie moved one of the chairs when they
crawled under the ironing board to make believe they were under a
bridge,” the boy answered.

“I didn’t!” asserted Freddie. “It was the thunder!”

“Well, maybe it was,” admitted Bert. “It rumbled terribly loud, anyhow.”

“Hark!” exclaimed Nan suddenly.

“Oh! is it going to thunder again?” cried Flossie, getting ready to bury
her head in Nan’s lap.

“No. But I think I heard daddy come in,” said the older Bobbsey girl.

“Yes, there he is!” cried Bert, and a moment later Mr. Bobbsey, his face
sparkling with rain drops that had blown beneath his umbrella, entered
the room.

“All safe and sound?” he asked cheerfully.

“Yes,” his wife answered. “But if you had been here a little while
ago—”

“Why, what happened?”

“Oh, my elevated railroad was wrecked!” laughed Bert, and by turns the
children told of the happening.

“Daddy,” began Nan a little later, as they sat at the supper table, the
storm having quieted somewhat. “Daddy—”

“Yes, Nan?” he answered. “What is it?”

“Did you see a funny old lady with a green umbrella out in the storm?”

“What’s this—a riddle?” and Mr. Bobbsey smiled.

“Oh, no! We all saw her!” cried Freddie.

“An’ she had a big basket!” added Flossie.

Mr. Bobbsey looked at his wife, to ask what it was all about, and she
told briefly about the strange woman passing the house in the storm,
carrying the big basket, which seemed to be heavy.

“No, I didn’t see her,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “It’s hard to see anything in
this storm,” he added. “Is my rubber coat here at the house?” he asked
his wife.

“Why?” she wanted to know, looking quickly at him. “You aren’t going out
again to-night, are you?”

“I’m afraid I’ll have to,” he replied. “The river is rising with so much
rain, and I have men moving back some of the lumber so it won’t be
washed away. But I’ll not be gone longer than I can help.”

The Bobbsey twins were disappointed that their father could not remain
indoors with them and tell stories this stormy night. But, as he
explained, it was needful that he look after his lumber, many great
piles of which were on the very brink of the river that flowed into Lake
Metoka.

“I started men moving back some of the piles before I left to come home
to supper,” he said. “I want to go back and find out how much more is
left.”

“Could I come with you?” Bert begged.

“No, I’m afraid not, little man,” his father answered. “You couldn’t do
anything in the darkness, and you’d only be in the way.”

“Could I go down to-morrow?”

“Maybe. I’ll see about it,” promised Mr. Bobbsey. He put on his big
rubber coat and went out into the storm after supper.

The thunder and lightning seemed to have passed over, but it was still
raining hard. Mrs. Bobbsey let the younger twins stay up a bit later
than usual, but at last their nodding heads showed her it was time they
went to bed. Bert and Nan soon followed and Mrs. Bobbsey sat down to
read until her husband should return.

The wind howled mournfully through the trees, dashing the rain against
the windows, and, more than once, Mrs. Bobbsey looked up and shivered a
little as she thought of her husband out in the storm, trying to save
his lumber from being washed away.

“That poor old woman, too,” mused Mrs. Bobbsey, as she thought of the
one with the green umbrella. “She looked friendless and forlorn. I hope
she finds shelter for the night.”

She kept on with her reading. Presently there was a rumble of thunder,
not so loud, however, but that Mrs. Bobbsey heard the ringing of the
front doorbell at the same time.

“I wonder who that is at this time of night, and out in all this storm,”
she said to herself, as she arose and walked through the front hall.
Before she reached the door she heard the patter of bare feet in the
upper hall.

“Mother, did you hear the bell ring?” asked Freddie.

“I heard it! I haven’t been asleep yet,” called Flossie. “Is that daddy
come home? I want to kiss him!”

“No, it can’t be your father—he has a key,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Go back
to bed this instant, children! You’ll catch cold in your nighties! Go
back to bed!”

Flossie and Freddie did so, though they did not want to. Mrs. Bobbsey
went to the front door. There was an electric lamp outside, which she
could light by pushing a button within the hall. This she did and
glanced out before opening the door.

But, to her surprise, she saw no one standing on the steps. The rain was
running down the glass in little streams, but no one could be seen.

“That’s strange,” mused Mrs. Bobbsey. “I’m sure I heard the bell
ring—and so did the children. Perhaps it was some one who made a
mistake and got the wrong house, and after they saw the number they
walked away. My, how it rains!”

She went back to her reading. Again came the distant rumble of thunder,
following a flash of lightning. And, again, the doorbell tinkled.

“That must be some one!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, and, she said
afterward, she had a “queer feeling” as she again arose and went to the
door.

Before she had a chance to switch on the light and look out she once
more heard the patter of bare feet in the upper hall.

“Flossie—Freddie—you mustn’t get out of bed again!” she called up the
stairs.

“This isn’t Flossie or Freddie—it’s me,” said Bert, in a low voice. “I
mean it’s I,” he added, as he recollected that his teacher had corrected
him for saying that in class. “Who’s ringing the bell, Mother?” he
asked.

“That’s just what I’m going to find out,” answered Mrs. Bobbsey. But
when, once more, she looked out on the rain-swept porch she saw no one.

“This is certainly queer!” she exclaimed. “Did you hear the bell, Bert?”

“Yes, Mother, I sure did. I thought it was dad.”

“But there is no one here,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Not a soul!”

“Oh, well, maybe the lightning rang the bell,” said Bert.

“Does lightning ever do such things?” Mrs. Bobbsey wanted to know.

“Yes,” answered Bert. “We had a lesson on electricity in class the other
day—not much, just a little one—and teacher said it did funny things.
I guess it could ring a doorbell without anybody being near.”

“Well, perhaps it could,” admitted Mrs. Bobbsey. “Certainly no one is
here. Better get back to bed, Bert.”

“I will, Mother!”

Just then a noise was heard at the back door.




                              CHAPTER III
                                BABY MAY


Bert Bobbsey did not go back to bed right away. Instead, he remained in
the upper hall, listening.

“Did you hear that, Mother?” he asked, in a low voice.

“You mean that noise at the back door?”

“Yes. I wonder—”

Nan came tiptoeing out of her room.

“What is it?” she whispered. “What is the bell ringing for, and—”

“Hush!” cautioned Bert.

Then their fears came to a sudden end, for the voice of Mr. Bobbsey was
heard in the kitchen asking:

“Where are you, Mary? I forgot my front-door key, and came in the back
way.”

“I didn’t know the back door was open,” remarked Mrs. Bobbsey, while
Bert, no longer worried, said to Nan:

“It’s all right. It’s dad. I’m going back to bed.”

“Oh,” said Nan. “All right!”

The two older Bobbsey twins went to their rooms. Flossie and Freddie had
gone back to their beds and were now slumbering peacefully, lulled by
the patter of rain drops.

“How did you get in the back door if it was locked?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey
of her husband, as he took off his dripping rubber coat.

“I always leave an extra back-door key out over the side window ledge,”
he answered, “so if I forget my latch key I can get in. That’s what I
did to-night. But what were you doing in the front hall?” he asked.

“The front doorbell rang,” his wife replied. “Was it you ringing it?”
she went on quickly.

“I ring the front doorbell? No,” Mr. Bobbsey answered. “I thought you
might be asleep and I didn’t want to disturb you. So when I felt in my
pocket and found I hadn’t my key—on account of changing my wet trousers
for dry ones before supper—I just went to the back door and let myself
in.”

“It’s very strange,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, listening to make sure that none
of the twins was stirring upstairs.

“What is strange?”

“The way the front doorbell rang. Twice! And each time I looked out I
saw no one. If you didn’t ring it, who did?”

“Perhaps you heard something rattling because of the heavy thunder,”
suggested Mr. Bobbsey. “The knives and forks in the pantry, maybe.”

“No, it was the bell,” his wife insisted. “The children heard it
upstairs and came out in their nighties.”

“Um!” mused Mr. Bobbsey. “I’ll take a look out myself. It couldn’t be
any boys playing pranks on a night like this, could it?”

“Hardly, I should think,” his wife said. “But the bell certainly rang.”

Mr. Bobbsey looked through the glass of the door—he did not open it
because the rain would have blown in—but he came out of the hall, as
his wife had done, without having seen any one.

“No one there,” he said.

“Could the lightning have made the bell ring? You know it’s an electric
bell,” suggested Mrs. Bobbsey. “Bert said it might do it.”

“Perhaps,” admitted her husband. “I’ll take a look at the bell in the
morning. It may be that it is so sensitive that the least jar of thunder
will make it ring.”

“Did you save the lumber?” his wife asked.

“All but a few planks that got away from us. The river and lake are very
high. We’ve had a lot of rain this spring. Now I think I’ll eat
something and go to bed. Looks as if the rain would keep up into May.”

“That’s right,” agreed the twins’ mother. “To-morrow is the first of
May, isn’t it?”

Her husband nodded as he sat down to a lunch she made ready for him.

It was still raining when Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey went to bed. But it
stopped some time during the night, and when the Bobbsey twins awakened
in the morning the sun was shining bright and warm.

“Hurray!” cried Bert, as he looked from his window. “It’s cleared off!”

“And there’s a big lake in the back lot!” shouted Freddie. “I can see it
from my window.”

“We’ll sail boats there after school,” decided Bert, as he began to
dress.

“Maybe we can make a raft and ride on it,” proposed Freddie.

“May I have a ride?” begged Flossie. “You wouldn’t let me ride on the
elevated railroad. Will you let me ride on the raft?”

“It isn’t made yet!” laughed Bert. “We’ll see about it after school.”

“It’s going to be a lovely day after the rain,” said Nan, as she went
downstairs.

“Come, children, get your breakfast and be ready for school,” called
Mrs. Bobbsey. “I guess you won’t need to take umbrellas to-day,” she
added, with a laugh. “I never saw the sun so bright.”

“This will soon dry up the puddles,” observed Mr. Bobbsey.

“I hope it doesn’t dry ’em all up,” ventured Bert. “We want to have some
fun in the back lots.” Near the Bobbsey home were vacant lots that
sometimes filled with rain water and became miniature lakes.

As Nan sat down to breakfast she suddenly looked up and exclaimed:

“Hark!”

“What’s the matter?” mumbled Bert, his mouth half full of bread. “Do you
think it’s thundering again?”

“No! But I thought I heard a cat crying,” answered Nan. “Listen!”

They all kept quiet.

Then, faintly, came a little wailing cry.

“Oh, it’s a kittie!” exclaimed Flossie. “It’s a kittie on the back
steps! I’m going to get it!”

She began to get down from her chair.

“That cry came from the front door,” said Bert.

“I think so,” agreed his father.

“It does sound like a cat,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Perhaps some one’s pet
wandered away in the storm last night. But I don’t believe it rang the
doorbell,” she added, with a faint smile.

“No, that was the lightning,” insisted Bert.

Nan had hurried to the front of the house. They heard her open the door,
and the next moment she uttered a startled cry—almost a cry of alarm.

“What is it?” called Mrs. Bobbsey. “What is it, Nan?”

“Oh, Mother, come quick!” exclaimed Nan. “There’s a basket here! A
basket—and it has—it has a baby in it! Oh, a little baby!”

The other Bobbsey twins hurried to the front door, followed by their
father and mother. They saw Nan bending over a large, square, market
basket that rested in the shelter of the doorway, off to one side.

Nan had folded back the heavy cloth cover of the basket. And there,
nestled in a warm blanket and looking up at the Bobbseys, was a dear,
sweet, cute, little baby, about a year old. It had blue eyes, golden
curls, and as it kicked its tiny feet and moved its tiny hands it smiled
up at the faces bending over it.

“Oh, my goodness! A baby! A darling baby!” gasped Mrs. Bobbsey.

“Whose is it?” asked Mr. Bobbsey. “Some one must have lost it!”

“They don’t _lose_ babies!” declared his wife. “It was _left_ here!”

“Left here! On purpose, do you mean?” cried her husband.

Mrs. Bobbsey nodded her head solemnly. Nan had stooped over and was
lifting the tiny creature from its nest in the basket.

“Oh, Mother! may we keep it?” begged Flossie.

“Is it a boy or a girl?” demanded Freddie. “If it’s a boy, keep it!”

“Bring it in, Nan,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “The poor little dear! It must be
almost perished with the cold—and hungry, too! Tell Dinah to warm some
milk. Oh, what a darling child!”

She leaned over and kissed the soft, roselike cheek as the baby nestled
in the warm blankets on Nan’s arm.

“Hum! A _baby_! I thought it was going to be a _cat_!” murmured Bert, as
he picked up the basket. “Say!” he cried suddenly. “Look here! I know
this basket!”

“You do?” exclaimed his father, with much interest.

“Yes. Look, Nan! It’s the basket the queer old lady with the green
umbrella was carrying in the storm yesterday afternoon.”

“So it is,” agreed Nan. “Oh, Mother! what does it mean?”

“I don’t know,” was the answer, “except that it seems to mean some one
has abandoned this baby. Oh, it’s so sweet—a regular doll! Dinah, hurry
with that warm milk!”

“Yes’m! Ah’s a hurryin, as fast as Ah kin! Oh, fo’ de landest sakes! A
honey lamb baby! Oh, mah goodness! who done left it yeah?”

“That’s what we don’t know, Dinah. Nan found it on the steps.”

“I thought it was a kitten,” said Nan, as she gave the baby to her
mother.

“Has it got a name?” asked Freddie.

“Of course not—at least, it probably has, but we don’t know it,” said
his mother. “Oh, you sweet baby!” and she cuddled it to her breast.

“This must be looked into,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “Take good care of that
basket and everything in it. It’s an abandoned baby, all right. And are
you sure this basket was the one the strange old lady had?”

“Sure,” declared Bert.

“And she had a green umbrella and a faded shawl,” added Nan.

“Hum! The police ought to be able to trace her through that
description,” said Mr. Bobbsey.

“Are you going to have the baby arrested?” demanded Flossie. “I think
that’s mean!” and she looked sharply at her father.

“Oh, no; of course not, my dear!” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Daddy means the
police must try to find to whom the baby belongs. I can’t imagine how
any mother could desert it, though. Oh, you little darling!” she
murmured, as the baby smiled up at her. “It’s a dear little girl,” she
added.

“Then I know a good name for her,” said Bert.

“What?” asked Nan.

“Baby May,” replied her brother. “Yesterday was the last of April.
To-day is the first of May, so May will be a good name.”

“Yes,” returned Mrs. Bobbsey, “I should say it would. And Baby May you
shall be called until we find out your real name. Now, Dinah, is that
milk warm?”

“Yes’m, Ah’s comin’ wif it! Mah good stars, to t’ink ob a baby like dat
ringin’ de bell in de middle ob de night! Mah lan’!”

“This baby didn’t ring the bell,” said Bert.

“Who did den?” demanded the fat, black cook. “Who did den, Ah axes yo’,
Bert Bobbsey! Who did?”




                               CHAPTER IV
                         WHAT THE POLICE FOUND


Dinah’s question brought back to the minds of all the Bobbseys,
including the smaller pair of twins, the things that had happened in the
storm during the night.

“That’s right!” exclaimed Bert, snapping his fingers, “this baby
couldn’t have rung our bell, and yet the bell certainly did ring!”

“I heard it!” said Flossie.

“So did I,” added Freddie.

“And we first thought that it was daddy,” remarked Nan.

“I think I begin to see what happened,” Mr. Bobbsey said. “Bert, you
were wrong in thinking the lightning rang the bell.”

“I guess I was,” Bert admitted. “It was the old lady with the green
umbrella and the faded shawl who carried the basket with this baby in
it.”

“Oh, Mother!” gasped Nan. “Do you think she had the baby in the basket
all the while—in the rain—while she was going past our house in the
afternoon? Do you think so?”

“I do,” answered Mrs. Bobbsey.

“And the queer old woman rang our bell,” went on Mr. Bobbsey. “She must
have seen you children at the window when she passed earlier in the
afternoon. She had made up her mind to abandon the baby—that is, leave
it on some doorstep—and when she saw children here she must have said
to herself that there was a kind mother here.”

“And there is!” cried Bert, looking lovingly at his mother. “The best in
the world!”

“Thank you, dear,” murmured Mrs. Bobbsey softly, as she cuddled Baby May
and fed her warm milk.

“So,” went on Mr. Bobbsey, “when the queer old woman with the green
umbrella saw there were children here, she waited until it was dark
enough for her to leave the baby in the basket and then she hurried
away. That’s what she did. She put the baby on the steps, rang the bell,
and ran away.”

“That’s the reason I didn’t see any one when I looked through the glass
door,” remarked Mrs. Bobbsey. “The old lady was gone.”

“Didn’t you see the baby in the basket, either?” asked Flossie, putting
her littlest finger softly on the roselike cheek of Baby May.

“No, dear, I didn’t see the basket,” Mrs. Bobbsey answered. “It was off
to one side, sheltered from the rain.”

“The old lady took good care of the baby, I’ll say that, even if she did
desert her,” resumed Mr. Bobbsey. “After she had rung the bell the first
time, she watched, and when she saw that you didn’t open the door, she
rang it a second time. Then she must have gone away, feeling sure you
would come and take the baby in.”

“But we didn’t!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. “The poor little dear was out
in the rain all night!”

“But she was warmly wrapped up,” Mr. Bobbsey said. “And she must have
been well fed, for she didn’t cry.”

“If she did, we didn’t hear her,” his wife remarked.

“But I’m glad we found Baby May; aren’t you, Mother?” asked Nan.

Mrs. Bobbsey looked at her husband and the two exchanged strange
glances, though they could not help smiling. Mrs. Bobbsey was already
bringing up two sets of twins, and perhaps she did not care to start in
with a strange, new baby.

But no woman could help loving sweet Baby May, and the manner in which
Mrs. Bobbsey leaned over and kissed the soft cheek showed how tender was
her heart.

“Is that all the breakfast she’s going to have?” asked Freddie, as he
saw the infant turn away from the milk. “I want a lot more than that!
I’m hungry! I got to go to school!”

“So have I!” echoed Flossie.

“My gracious, that’s so! I almost forgot I had to go to the office!”
exclaimed Mr. Bobbsey. “And all the work I’ve got to do on account of
the flood! Come, children, hurry with your breakfasts—but don’t eat too
fast—and then skip off to school. Your mother will know what to do with
the baby.”

“You’re going to keep her, aren’t you, Mother? You’re going to keep Baby
May, surely!” exclaimed Nan, as she went back to the table.

“We’ll see about it,” Mrs. Bobbsey answered. “Of course we couldn’t keep
the baby away from her real father and mother.”

“No, of course not,” slowly agreed Nan. “But that old woman wasn’t her
mother, or she wouldn’t have left her on our doorstep, would she?”

“I don’t believe so,” said Mr. Bobbsey.

“She was a kidnapper! That’s what she was!” declared Bert.

“Maybe she was a gypsy,” suggested Freddie.

“No, I hardly think that,” said Daddy Bobbsey. “From what you told me of
her, I wouldn’t say she was a gypsy, and kidnappers don’t usually leave
the children they take. I don’t know just what to think.”

“We’ll have to notify the police, of course,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, in a
whisper, for Baby May was now asleep and had been put to bed in a cradle
that Dinah brought down from the attic—the cradle Flossie and Freddie
had once cuddled in.

“The police! Are you going to have her arrested?” cried Freddie.

“Hush! Not so loud! You’ll waken her!” warned his mother, holding up a
finger.

“What you going to tell the police for, Daddy?” asked Flossie, in a
whisper.

“Because it is the right thing to do,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “This baby may
have been stolen by this strange old woman. In that case Baby May’s
father and mother will be wild with grief until they get her back. I
must find out from the police if there is any alarm over a kidnapped
child. I’ll do it before I go to the office.”

“Please do it before we go to school,” begged Nan. “I want to tell the
girls all about Baby May.”

Mr. Bobbsey looked at the clock. There was still twenty minutes before
the children need start for school, and he could do considerable
telephoning in that time. So he called up police headquarters and made a
report of the baby being found on his steps.

“Have you any alarm of a child having been kidnapped anywhere around
here?” asked Mr. Bobbsey.

“No,” answered the officer at police headquarters. “But if we hear of
any we’ll let you know.”

“Have any of your men seen about the town this strange old woman with a
green umbrella and a faded shawl?” asked Mr. Bobbsey, and the twins and
Mrs. Bobbsey waited anxiously for the reply. As they could not hear what
was said by the police officer, Mr. Bobbsey told them.

“He says none of his men reported seeing the old lady,” Mr. Bobbsey
retailed. “But he’ll inquire of the officers at the railroad station.
They’ll call me up in a few minutes.”

Mr. Bobbsey put the telephone receiver back on the hook and waited. Soon
the bell rang, and when the father of the Bobbsey twins had listened a
while he turned to his family and said:

“The old lady came in on the train early yesterday morning. The officer
at the station remembers seeing her.”

“Did she have the basket with the baby in it?” asked Nan.

“She had the covered basket, but the policeman didn’t see what was in
it,” answered Mr. Bobbsey.

“Do they know anything more about her?” Mrs. Bobbsey wanted to know.

“Not much except that she acted rather strangely,” was the reply. “She
did not seem to know where she wanted to go, and when the officer asked
her if he could help her she just shook her head and wandered off.”

“Did she tell her name?” Bert inquired.

“The policeman at the railroad station says she mumbled a name something
like ‘Washington’; but he isn’t quite sure about that,” Mr. Bobbsey
reported.

“Then we could call the baby May Washington,” mused Nan.

“Yes, we could,” her mother said. “Is that all the police found out?”
she inquired of her husband.

“That is all,” he said. “They are going to try, however, to find the
strange old lady and ask her why she deserted the baby. But we’ll have
to wait.”

“And you children will have to go to school!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey,
glancing at the clock.

“But you’ll keep Baby May Washington until we come home, won’t you,
Mother?” pleaded Nan.

“Please do!” begged Flossie.

“I’ll see,” murmured Mrs. Bobbsey, as the twins hurried on to school,
and Freddie said to Bert:

“I’d like her better if she was a boy baby.”




                               CHAPTER V
                         NAN WHISPERS IN SCHOOL


“Well, Richard, what do you think of the latest member of the family?”
asked Mrs. Bobbsey.

“She’s a dear, sweet little thing, but—”

Mr. Bobbsey did not finish what he started to say. He and his wife were
bending over and looking at the sleeping baby—May Washington, as she
had been hastily named. The Bobbsey twins had gone to school and the
house was quiet—just the place for a sleeping baby.

“I can’t understand how any mother would leave such a little, helpless
baby like this out in a storm all night,” went on Mr. Bobbsey, as he
prepared to go down to his lumberyard.

“Perhaps it wasn’t the mother,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Certainly that woman
seemed too old to be the mother of a little baby like this.”

“I don’t believe she was the mother,” declared Mr. Bobbsey, looking for
his hat.

“Do you think she was the kidnapper?”

“I don’t know what to think. I’ll have another talk with the police
to-day. You can’t do very much over the telephone, but I wanted to
satisfy the children a little. Yes, I’ll inquire further.”

“And what will we do with her—with Baby May, I mean—if the police
can’t find out to whom she belongs?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.

“Well—” Mr. Bobbsey turned his hat around several times and looked
inside it as if, there, he might find an answer to the puzzling riddle.

“Well?” asked his wife, with a smile, as she waited.

“Um! Well, if we can’t find out where she belongs, I suppose the police
will have to take her, and—”

“The police!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, and then she clapped her hand over
her mouth, for she had, in her excitement, spoken so loudly that she was
afraid of waking the infant. “Why, Richard Bobbsey!” she went on in a
whisper, “you wouldn’t turn a helpless little baby like May over to a
lot of men police, would you?”

“Well, of course I didn’t mean exactly that,” he murmured. “But we can’t
keep her—she belongs to some one else—and the police will know what to
do with her. You always give abandoned babies to the police.”

“Oh, do you?” asked his wife, with a smile. “Well, this is the first
time I ever saw or had an abandoned baby, so I don’t know. And what do
the police do with the babies?” she asked. “Lock them in an iron cell?”

“Of course not!” exclaimed Mr. Bobbsey. “They send them to a nursing
home, a foundling asylum, an orphanage—or somewhere. I don’t know
exactly myself; but the police know what to do.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” agreed his wife, with a smile. “But it seems hard
to turn a sweet little baby like this over to a lot of men, even if they
are kind, to have them take her to an orphan asylum.”

“Oh, they have police women, or matrons, or something like that to look
after kidnapped babies,” said Mr. Bobbsey.

“Richard Bobbsey,” his wife whispered, as she followed him to the front
door, “I don’t believe there’s a single police woman, or matron, in
Lakeport!”

“Well, they’ll have to get one then. Anyhow, we can’t keep the baby. She
will have to go to some asylum.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” and Mrs. Bobbsey sighed. “It seems strange that she
should be left with us, when there are good neighbors on either side of
us.”

“Neighbors without children—yes,” laughed Mr. Bobbsey. “That old woman
with the green umbrella knew what she was about when she left her basket
here. She saw our twins at the window and she knew we were the kind to
look after a baby. But, as you say, we can’t keep her, of course.”

“No, I suppose not,” and Mrs. Bobbsey went back to look at the sleeping
baby while her husband hurried on to his lumber office. “Poor, lonely
little dear!” she murmured, bending over Baby May. “I wonder who your
mother is!”

Big, fat, jolly, black Dinah tiptoed in.

“Am de honey lamb sleepin’?” she whispered. “Does she want any mo’ hot
milk?”

“Not yet, Dinah,” Mrs. Bobbsey said. “But you might have some ready for
her when she awakens. And bake a potato for her, Dinah. She’s too old to
live entirely on milk. She must be about a year old, I should say.”

“Ain’t she sweet!” whispered Dinah, touching gently with her fat black
finger the rosepetal cheek of sleeping May. “Ah jes’ lubs dat honey
lamb!”

“I should think any one would love her,” returned Mrs. Bobbsey, fondly.

“Yo’ t’inks she am about a yeah old? She suttenly am very small.”

“I should say about a year, Dinah. But, of course, I am not at all sure.
Babies are sometimes deceiving when it comes to age. Some grow much
faster than others.”

“Don’t see how nobody could go off an leab dat chile alone on de
doahstep,” muttered the colored cook, as she waddled back to the
kitchen.

Mr. Bobbsey reached his office, and finding that the storm had not done
as much damage to his lumberyard as he had feared, went to the police to
learn more, if he could, about the abandoned baby. He talked first with
the officer at the railroad station.

“What train did the old lady with the basket come in on?” the father of
the Bobbsey twins asked.

“That I couldn’t say,” answered Jim Tully, the policeman at the station.
“Two trains got in at the same time, and I don’t know which one she got
off from. I could ask the conductors, though.”

“I wish you would,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “I’d like to get this baby back to
her father and mother. They must be wild about losing her.”

“I should say so!” agreed Mr. Tully. “I’ve got six of my own, and I know
my wife and I’d be crazy if one of ’em was missing over night. I’ll see
what I can find out for you.”

“And if you can’t find out anything,” went on Mr. Bobbsey, “what are we
to do with this baby?”

“Hum!” mused Mr. Tully. “That I don’t know. I’ll have to ask the chief.
You don’t want to keep it, I s’pose?” he asked.

“Why—er—I don’t know. We hardly thought of that,” said Mr. Bobbsey.

“No, of course not. Being a strange baby, your wife wouldn’t want to be
bothered. Well, I’ll see what I can find out for you. But I took
particular notice of the old lady. I saw the basket was big and pretty
heavy for her, and I offered to help her carry it to the waiting room
after she got off the train. But she wouldn’t let me—she drew away.”

“She was afraid you’d find out there was a baby in the basket, I
suppose,” suggested Mr. Bobbsey.

“I reckon so,” agreed the officer. “I’ll see the chief and ask what
you’d better do with the child if we can’t locate the old lady. You say
she passed your house?”

“Yes, twice, my wife said. I’ll go down and see the chief myself. I’ve
got to do something about the baby.”

Mr. Bobbsey had his talk with the chief of the Lakeport police.
Meanwhile, because of Mr. Bobbsey’s earlier telephone message, inquiries
had been made of other officers, and a search started for the strange
old woman, but she could not be found.

“You see, Mr. Bobbsey,” said Chief Gallagher at the town hall, “we
haven’t any matron or police woman here, and if you turn the baby over
to us I’ll have to send to Hilldale for a woman to look after her. They
have a matron at Hilldale.”

“Well, we can keep the baby for a day or so,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “My wife
seems rather fond of her. I guess I’d better put an advertisement in the
papers—what do you think?”

“I would,” agreed the chief. “That’s right—advertise for the baby’s
father and mother. And I’ll be on the lookout for any news. If the child
was stolen away from some other city we’ll hear about it. There’ll be a
piece in the papers. You just wait a few days.”

The Bobbsey twins, talking of the big storm and the new baby, reached
school. Before entering the yard where the other children were at play,
Bert said:

“Now, Flossie and Freddie, don’t say anything about the baby.”

“Why not?” Flossie asked. “I was going to tell Mary Holmes. She’s got a
baby at her house an’ she’s always saying we haven’t any. Now I can tell
her we _have_!”

“No, don’t say anything about it,” warned Bert. “Mother and daddy might
not like it. Wait until we find out who the baby belongs to. Now mind,
Flossie and Freddie, don’t tell any of your friends about the baby.”

“Oh, all right,” agreed Flossie, for her mother had told her she must do
as Bert said while at school.

“I don’t care about a girl baby,” murmured Freddie. “If she was a boy,
so I could have a brother littler’n what I am, I’d like it all right.”

“Well, don’t say anything,” warned Bert. He turned to say the same thing
to Nan, but she had walked on ahead to talk with some of her girl chums,
and Bert did not bother to follow. “I guess Nan won’t say anything,
anyhow,” he thought.

But he little knew Nan Bobbsey. She was just bursting with the news and
longing to whisper it to her best chum, Nellie Parks, who sat with her.

But the Bobbsey twins had been delayed a little that morning, because of
finding the baby, and the last bell rang as they reached the school
yard. So Nan had to hurry into her classroom without a chance to tell
Nellie the news.

The morning exercises were held. The children sang a hymn and then took
part in the beautiful ceremony of saluting the flag. Then the different
classes, including the one Flossie and Freddie were in, marched from the
assembly room and the day’s lessons began.

It was a beautiful day, warm and sunny, after the cold April rain—a
perfect May day, so Nan thought, as she looked from the schoolroom
window.

And this—thinking of a May day—made her remember the little baby at
home.

Hardly aware of what she was doing, Nan turned to Nellie and whispered:

“Oh, I’ve got the greatest news for you! You’ll never guess what we have
at our house!”

“A new piano!” guessed Nellie, in a whisper.

“No! It’s a _baby_!” and Nan whispered so shrilly that the teacher heard
her and looked up in surprise.

“Nan Bobbsey! were you whispering?” asked Miss Riker.

“Ye—yes—yes’m—I—I was!” faltered Nan, realizing, too late, what she
had done.

“What were you saying?” Miss Riker asked, not unkindly. “Was it about
the lesson, Nan?”

“No’m. It was about—about the new baby at our house!”

“Oh, a new baby! That’s lovely!” and Miss Riker smiled. “But you
shouldn’t whisper about it in school, Nan. When did the baby come?”

“Last night—in the rain. It was left on our doorstep in a basket—and I
heard it cry. I thought it was a kitten—and it was a baby!”

There was a gasp of surprise from all the pupils in the room.

“Nan Bobbsey!” exclaimed Miss Riker, rather sternly, “are you making up
a fairy story?”

“Oh, no!” exclaimed Nan. “It’s all true!” And she was allowed to tell
the class what had happened. It was so unusual that Miss Riker forgot
all about lessons, for which the boys and girls were very glad. And so
the story of the abandoned baby was known all over the school at recess.




                               CHAPTER VI
                              THE RUNAWAY


“Say, this is a fine thing!” exclaimed Bert Bobbsey, walking up to his
sister Nan when recess was almost over.

“What’s a fine thing?” Nan wanted to know.

“Why, everybody knows about the baby at our house! I told Flossie and
Freddie not to tell, and you let it out right in class!”

“Well, I couldn’t help it!”

“You could so!”

“I couldn’t! I whispered about it to Nellie and teacher heard me whisper
and she asked me and I had to tell. I didn’t know I shouldn’t!”

“Gosh! That’s just like a girl—telling everything! What do you know
about that!” and Bert turned to Danny Rugg.

“Sure! That’s right! Girls can’t keep a secret!” declared Danny.

“We can so—if we want to!” exclaimed Nan. “Anyhow, it would have to be
known about the baby when father told the police.”

“Oh—all right—there’s no use worrying about it now,” and Bert walked
off, shaking his head and talking with Danny Rugg about girls that
couldn’t keep a secret.

After all no harm was done, since Mr. Bobbsey wanted the story known, as
that might help find Baby May’s parents. And besides, as Nan had said,
the report would soon get around town on account of the police alarm.

Once the story was known in the school, the Bobbsey twins, even Flossie
and Freddie, had to answer many questions as to how Baby May Washington
was found on the doorstep.

Nan was quite the heroine of the day, for had not she found the tiny
infant crying in the basket?

“Say, Bert, I’ll tell you what we can do after school,” proposed Charlie
Mason that afternoon.

“What?”

“We can scout around and see if we can find that old lady with the green
umbrella. We could make her take the baby back.”

“Maybe she wouldn’t have the green umbrella now, ’cause it isn’t
raining,” said Freddie, who overheard this talk.

“Well, we can look for her, anyhow,” went on Charlie. “Will you, Bert?”

“Maybe.”

“And maybe there’s a reward out for whoever takes this baby back where
it lives,” suggested Danny Rugg. “Maybe we could get a hundred dollars
that way!”

“Most of it would go to Bert, ’cause the baby was found at his house,”
declared Charlie.

“Well, if we fellows found the old lady, that would count and we’d have
part of the reward,” declared Tom Carter.

“I don’t believe you can find her,” said Bert. “I guess she ran away
after she left the baby and rang our bell.”

This seemed to be the case, for search as the police did, no trace was
found of the strange woman. She had vanished after arriving in Lakeport
and leaving the baby on the Bobbseys’ doorstep.

Telephone calls to distant places and a diligent reading of the
newspapers, failed to show any babies missing or kidnapped. Mr. Bobbsey
advertised in the papers of neighboring towns, but when several days had
passed and no claim was made for Baby May Washington, Mr. Bobbsey and
his wife talked the matter over again.

“There is no trace of who this child is or to whom she belongs,” said
the twins’ father. “I suppose I had better arrange to have the police
take her to an orphanage.”

“Well—” began Mrs. Bobbsey slowly, but she was interrupted by a chorus
of cries from the children.

“Oh, don’t send the baby away!”

“Let us keep her!”

“I’ll wheel her in my carriage that I don’t use any more,” offered
Flossie.

“I like her a little—even if she isn’t a boy!” faltered Freddie.

“Please, Mother, let us keep her! Mayn’t we, Daddy?” begged Nan.

“She’s a cute little thing,” murmured Bert. “Hey, Mother! Look! Nan’s
taking her out of the cradle!” And Nan was doing just this.

“Pooh! don’t you think I know how to hold a baby?” asked Nan.

“You might if you had a net under you, like the man in the circus, so
she wouldn’t hit the floor if you dropped her,” chuckled Bert.

“Pooh! you think you’re smart, don’t you?” sneered Nan. This was as near
as she and Bert ever came to having a fuss.

“Now, children,” chided Mrs. Bobbsey gently, “be polite, please!”

“But what are we going to do with the baby?” asked Mr. Bobbsey. “Nearly
a week has gone past now, and we haven’t learned any more than we knew
the first day. What do you say, Mother?” he asked his wife.

“Of course the baby isn’t ours, and we don’t know where she belongs,”
Mrs. Bobbsey said.

“But I have grown to love the little thing, and the children are very
fond of her. Suppose we keep Baby May a while longer. Something may turn
up then. I couldn’t bear to send her to an orphanage.”

“All right,” agreed Mr. Bobbsey, with a smile. “Then we’ll keep the
baby.”

“And we’ll call her Bobbsey, ’cause she’s going to be one of us,” added
Nan.

“Only she isn’t a twin!” added Freddie.

“No, and it’s just as well she isn’t!” laughed his mother. “I don’t know
that I’d want to keep _two_ little babies, unless they were my own. But
I can manage this one very well.”

“We’ll take care of her,” offered Nan, who was quite proud, as she
rocked the baby in her arms.

“Could I wheel her in the carriage some time?” asked Flossie.

“I’ll see,” promised Mrs. Bobbsey.

“She can take my roller skates when she wants them,” offered Freddie,
and then he wondered why they all laughed. His mother explained:

“Baby May Washington Bobbsey isn’t able to walk yet, dear, to say
nothing of roller skating. But it was kind of you to offer, Freddie.”

“Um!” he murmured. “She’d be better if she was a boy,” and he ran out to
play.

So the abandoned baby was kept at the Bobbsey house.

“Oh, I think it’s terribly romantic to have a strange baby at your
house, Nan,” said Julia Clark, when she and some other girls were
talking about the matter one day at recess. “Just think, she may turn
out to be an heiress to a million dollars!”

“And she might turn out to be a gypsy,” suggested Grace Lavine.

“She isn’t dark enough for a gypsy,” said Nan. “And I don’t believe
she’ll ever have a million dollars. Daddy says if she belonged to a
wealthy family the papers would be filled with the story about her, and
detectives would be searching all over for her.”

“Who do you s’pose she is?” asked Nellie.

“Nobody knows,” Nan answered, and that was about all that could be said.

There surely was a mystery about Baby May.

As for the little girl herself, she was wonderfully sweet and
good-natured. She cried hardly at all, but sat on a blanket on the floor
and cooed and gurgled, kicked her rosy feet, fluttered her tiny hands,
now and then smiling at the Bobbsey twins who bent over her or played
with her.

“When will she be big enough to walk?” asked Freddie.

“Oh, in a few weeks she may begin to toddle,” his mother answered. “I
don’t know just how old she is, but she isn’t much over a year. She is
growing fast, though.”

“She’s suttinly de fastest growin’ chile whutever I seed!” declared
Dinah. “She jes’ seem to swell all up when she take her milk. She suah
am de mostest darlin’ baby! Oh, ain’t she cute!” she murmured, bending
over the infant.

And “cute” was just the word that described Baby May—Baby May
Washington Bobbsey, to give her the name which had been bestowed on her,
for the twins now regarded her as one of themselves.

They took care of her after school hours—that is, Flossie and Nan did,
for Bert was getting too old to look after babies, he thought. As for
Freddie—well, he hardly could be trusted to do this, as he was such a
“splutter-budget,” as Dinah called him. She meant he was always hurrying
away to have fun, and he might have left Baby May alone to do this.

So to Nan and Flossie fell the happy task of taking care of the baby
after school hours. Mrs. Bobbsey would wrap the little one warmly in
blankets and put her in Flossie’s old carriage. Then Nan or Flossie
would wheel her up and down in front of the house, stopping, now and
then, to let the other children have a look at Baby May.

As for the little one, she would gaze about, smile and twinkle her blue
eyes and say:

“Goo!”

Or perhaps she might, on occasions, say:

“Da!”

And when she said either of these things, whatever they may be called,
Flossie or Nan would run into the house or call Mrs. Bobbsey and say,
most excitedly:

“Oh, she talked! She talked!”

Once when Bert heard this “talk” he laughed at his sisters for thinking
it meant anything.

“It’s just jabbering,” he said.

“It isn’t!” insisted Nan. “A lot you know! She said ‘no’ as plain as
anything this morning when I offered her some milk, and I’m teaching her
to say Nan, and she says ‘Na’ just as nice!”

“Pooh!” chuckled Bert, as he went out to play ball.

One day, when Mrs. Bobbsey had dressed Baby May and put her out in the
baby carriage on the sunny side of the house, Flossie came home from
school ahead of Nan.

“Mother, I’m going to wheel Baby May out on the sidewalk!” called
Flossie.

Mrs. Bobbsey was busy upstairs with Dinah, and did not hear what Flossie
said. If she had heard she might have told Flossie to be very careful.

So, without her mother knowing it, though meaning no wrong, Flossie
wheeled Baby May out in the street. The baby was asleep, and Flossie was
careful to make no noise as she rolled the carriage to and fro. Then
along came Freddie. He had stopped to play with some of his boy chums,
which was the reason Flossie had reached home ahead of him.

“I’m going to get my roller skates,” Freddie said. “Flossie!” he called,
“I can’t get the front gate open. Come and help me!”

“Hush! Don’t make so much noise! You’ll wake Baby May!” whispered
Flossie, for Freddie had shouted his request.

“Well, I can’t get the gate open!” he repeated.

“I’ll help you, but keep quiet!” commanded Flossie. “Don’t wake the
baby!”

The front gate stuck sometimes, but Flossie knew that she and Freddie
together could push it open. So, leaving the baby carriage with May in
it on the sidewalk, the little girl went to help her brother.

Now, as it happened, the sidewalk ran a little downhill just at this
point. And Flossie, not knowing it, did not put the brake on the
baby-carriage wheels. So, as soon as she walked away, the carriage, with
Baby May in it, started to roll toward the street at the point where
there was a slanting place to allow Mr. Bobbsey’s automobile to come up
over the curbstone.

Down into the street rolled the carriage with the sleeping baby in it,
going faster and faster. And up the street, running very fast, came a
team of horses hitched to an empty coal wagon. The rumble of the big
wagon made Flossie and Freddie, pushing in order to open the gate, look
around.

“Oh, look!” shouted Freddie. “It’s a runaway! There’s nobody in the
wagon!”

This was true, and the horses were running faster and faster as they
came on up the street toward the Bobbsey house.

“A runaway! A runaway!” cried Freddie, jumping up and down in his
excitement.

It was then that Flossie thought of Baby May. She gave one look toward
the carriage, and saw it rolling across the street, almost in the path
of the dashing horses and the rumbling coal wagon.

“Oh! Oh, dear!” gasped Flossie.




                              CHAPTER VII
                            THE SNAP-CRACKER


Freddie Bobbsey dashed away from the front gate, no longer trying to
open it. He almost knocked Flossie down, so great was his hurry.

“Oh, what you going to do?” cried the little girl.

“I have to get that carriage and Baby May!” cried Freddie. “If I don’t,
the horses will run over her!”

“Oh! Oh!” half sobbed Flossie, for she could think of nothing else to
do.

The carriage with the baby in it kept on slowly rolling toward the
middle of the street. And up the street, running faster and faster, came
the excited horses hitched to the empty coal wagon.

“Freddie! Freddie! Don’t go out there!” shrilly cried Flossie, as she
saw her little brother about to spring into the street.

“But I have to get the baby!” he insisted.

“All right! Then I’ll come with you!” decided Flossie, who had now
stopped crying.

She made a dash to join her brother. There was still time to get Baby
May and the carriage out of danger if the children hurried. But if they
should stumble and fall—

As it happened, Bert Bobbsey came whistling around the corner just at
that moment. Bert was thinking of going fishing, and he always whistled
at such times. When Flossie and Freddie caught sight of their brother,
they stopped running, feeling sure he could and would save Baby May.

Bert’s whistle died away when he caught sight of the dashing, runaway
horses and saw them swaying the empty wagon from side to side. Several
men and boys were racing after the runaways, shouting, as if that would
stop them. Other men and boys dashed out in front, waving their hats and
arms, which only frightened the horses the more.

Then Bert saw the baby carriage, now almost in the middle of the street
and directly in the path of the runaways.

“Crickity grasshoppers!” shouted Bert. “It’s Baby May! I’ve got to save
her!”

Wisely, he did not try to stop the runaways. This was more than a boy of
Bert’s age could have done. Instead, he gave his whole attention to
getting the carriage out of the way. This was easy enough to do if, as
Bert said afterward, you had “nerve” enough. It meant dashing across the
street, pushing the carriage ahead of him, right across the path of the
runaways.

But Bert did just that! He ran as fast as he could—faster than he had
ever run when playing ball—and reached the carriage just in time. He
could hear Baby May cooing and gurgling to herself amid the blankets.
She never knew what danger she was in. She liked the easy, rolling
motion of the baby carriage.

“Look out there, little boy!” cried a man, who was racing after the
runaways.

“I must get our baby!” shouted Bert.

The next moment he had hold of the handle of the carriage. Never
slacking his fast run, he pushed it out of danger, to the other side of
the street. There was not much time to spare, either, for before Bert
reached the opposite gutter the runaway team dashed past his heels. But
he was safe and so was Baby May.

“Hey, boy, that was a brave thing to do!” cried one of the several men
who were trying to stop the runaways.

“Um!” was all Bert could answer, for he was out of breath.

Then, as the coal wagon team dashed on up the street, Bert wheeled the
carriage back to where Flossie and Freddie waited.

“Who had Baby May out?” Bert wanted to know.

“I did,” answered Flossie. “Mother said I could, and—”

“Well, what do you want to take her out in the street for when runaways
come along?” asked Bert, who seemed a bit angry.

“I didn’t take the baby carriage out in the street!” whimpered Flossie,
half crying. “It—now—it rolled there when I was trying to help Freddie
open the gate.”

“And I was going out to get her,” added Freddie.

“Well, you two want to be careful,” said Bert, more kindly, as he
noticed how frightened the younger twins were. “Come on now, we’ll go
back to the house.”

“I want to see if they caught the runaways,” insisted Freddie.

Bert looked up the street and saw a man leading the team back. The
horses were quiet enough now. They had become tired, had slowed down,
and had easily been stopped.

“They’re all right—no damage done,” said Bert. “But you two have got to
be more careful with Baby May. She might have been run over.”

“I’ll be more careful after this,” promised Flossie.

“So will I,” added Freddie, though it really was not his fault.

Mrs. Bobbsey was told what had happened—or rather, what had so nearly
happened—and she decided that Flossie was too young to take Baby May
out unless some older person was at hand to watch for danger.

Baby May cooed and smiled when she was lifted out of the baby carriage
to be fed, and she made funny faces at Freddie and clutched at his nose
with her soft little hand, causing Freddie to squirm, partly in delight
and partly because she tickled him.

The days passed with no word as to who Baby May was. All that Mr.
Bobbsey and the police did to find the parents of the little baby went
for nothing.

“I guess, Mother,” said Mr. Bobbsey to his wife, “we’ll have to keep
this baby a long time.”

“I don’t care how long we keep her,” was the answer. “I’ve grown to love
her!”

Bert and Nan, as well as Flossie and Freddie, also loved Baby May, and
they hoped nothing would ever take her from them. Though of course they
agreed with their father that if the child’s mother and father could be
found, they must have Baby May.

“Shall we take her with us when we go on our vacation, after school
stops?” asked Bert of his mother, one morning.

“Perhaps,” she answered. “But you’d better hurry now, or you may be late
for school.”

But, to tell the truth, Bert did not hurry very much. The days were
getting more like summer all the while—warm and filled with
sunshine—and perhaps this is the reason why Bert lingered on the way to
school. But so did other boys and girls.

And perhaps this is the reason why Bert, in class that day, did not pay
much attention to what was going on. It was the time for geography
study, and the boys and girls had on their desks in front of them the
large books, for they were learning to pick out places on the map of
Africa.

Now the big geographies were large enough to hide behind, and perhaps
you have done what many children have done at times—that is, you have
read or written notes in the shadow of the covers of the big books held
up in front of you.

Bert did not care about writing any notes, and he had none written by
any other boy to read. But he had in his pocket a piece of tough, brown
paper, and, almost before he knew it, Bert was folding this paper into
what he called a “snap-cracker.”

As you boys and girls must know how to make them I will not take the
time to tell you how it is done. But by folding his paper in a certain
way, Bert at length had it in the shape of a triangle, with an inner
fold that, when he brought the hand holding the paper down quickly and
stopped it suddenly, would snap out with a pop like that of a bursting
paper bag.

Bert made this snap-cracker and then he looked across the aisle. Danny
Rugg sat there, and Danny was a mischievous fellow.

“I dare you to crack that!” whispered Danny to Bert.

“I will after school!” Bert whispered back. It was safe to whisper
behind the big geographies.

“No, I mean crack it now!” went on Danny. “I double-dare you!”

Bert did not like to take a dare. Much less did he like to be
“double-dared.” He peered over the top of his big book. The teacher was
busy at some papers on her desk.

Slowly Bert raised the paper snapper as high as he dared. Then, swinging
his arm put into the aisle, where there was plenty of room, he brought
his hand down smartly, checking it half way.

Bang! went the snap-cracker, with a noise like a pistol shot.

“Oh!” gasped a number of the pupils.

Some of them laughed out loud.

The teacher looked up quickly from her desk.

“Who did that?” she asked quietly.

There was no answer for a moment.

“I want the boy or girl who did that to come up here to my desk,” went
on the teacher.

The room was very still and quiet.




                              CHAPTER VIII
                          THE OLD WOMAN AGAIN


Several boys and girls seated near Bert had seen him snap the paper
cracker. Of course they would never “tell on him,” but they gave him
sidelong glances to see if he would accept the “invitation” of the
teacher.

“I am waiting,” went on Miss Riker, in a quiet voice. “I want the boy—I
don’t think it was one of the girls—I want that boy to come up to my
desk.”

The room again became very still and quiet.

And then, slowly, like the little man he was, Bert arose in his seat. He
was rather pale, for he realized that he had done a wrong thing. But he
was not going to sneak out of it.

“I snapped the cracker, Miss Riker,” he said slowly.

“Oh, Bert! I’m so sorry!” was the teacher’s answer. “Come up here and
sit in the front seat. The others go on studying.”

That was Miss Riker’s way. She never punished a pupil at once when rules
were broken. She wanted to think over it quietly and have the pupil
think of it, so she always asked the boy or girl who had been
disobedient to come to the front seat.

Bert knew what this meant. He would be kept in after school, perhaps
made to write “disorderly” five hundred times or do some other “punish
lesson.” And he was trying so hard for a perfect mark this last month of
school! Too bad!

Well, it was his own fault—he knew that.

Slowly he made his way to the front seat, the eyes of every other boy
and girl in the room looking at him. Miss Riker did not look at him.
That would come later.

“Five minutes more of study and then I’ll hear the geography class,”
Miss Riker announced, and this set the laggard ones feverishly to
studying, some murmuring over and over again the location of the Cape of
Good Hope, which was the easiest thing to remember about Africa.

Bert was not allowed to recite with the others. He was kept in the front
seat and began to feel very uncomfortable. He wished Miss Riker would
tell him how she was going to punish him, and have it over with.

But when the time came to dismiss the pupils for the day, the teacher
said:

“You may all go now except Bert Bobbsey.”

This was to be expected.

Slowly Nan, with a sad look on her face for her brother’s plight,
marched out of the room with the others. Miss Riker busied herself with
some papers at her desk. Bert sat in the front seat. Then the teacher,
looking up, saw Danny Rugg in his seat. He had remained after the
others.

“Why, Danny!” exclaimed Miss Riker in surprise, “I didn’t tell you to
stay in. You didn’t snap a paper cracker, did you?”

“No’m,” murmured Danny rather bashfully. “But I—I doubled-dared Bert to
snap his, and that’s why he did it. I—now—I wanted to tell you.”

“Oh!” was all Miss Riker said, but there was a strange look on her face.

“Yes’m,” murmured Danny, though, really, he did not know why he said it.

Again the room became very quiet, only the clock ticked loudly—oh, so
loudly!

Then, with a smile, Miss Riker said:

“Well, Bert, I think you needn’t stay in any longer. I was going to give
you a punish lesson, but as long as Danny has been brave enough to
remain and confess his part of it—though really you shouldn’t do a
thing just because you are dared to do it—I think, after all, that I
will let you both go home. You won’t crack any more snappers—or snap
any more crackers—in school hours, will you, Bert?”

“No’m! Never any more!” he said very earnestly.

“And you won’t dare him again, Danny?”

“No’m! I never will—in school!”

“Then you both may go.”

“Thank you,” mumbled the boys, as they found their caps and departed.
Miss Riker smiled. She knew this had been the best “punish lesson” she
could have set.

“Say, wasn’t she nice!” exclaimed Danny, when he and Bert were outside.

“Crickity grasshoppers, she sure was!” declared Bert. “I didn’t exactly
mean to snap that cracker, anyhow.”

“I didn’t think you’d do it, even after I doubled-dared you,” remarked
Danny.

“I was just going to make believe, but when my arm got going I couldn’t
seem to stop it,” explained Bert. “Say, did it crack loud?”

“Loud? It was like a gun!” And both boys laughed.

Of course Bert had to tell his mother, for she asked why he was late
coming from school. She warned him to be more careful and to pay better
attention to his lessons, but she did not scold. She thought Miss Riker
knew how to manage her pupils.

The next day was Friday, and when the hour for geography study came in
Miss Riker’s room she rather surprised the pupils by saying:

“You need not take out your geographies this time.” Then, as she saw
surprised looks cast at Bert she added: “It isn’t because of what
happened yesterday. Bert isn’t going to crack any more snappers. But I’m
going to teach you geography in a new way. We are all going out to Pine
Hill and from there we can look down on Lake Metoka. We shall see little
bays, capes, peninsulas, islands, and many other formations that you
have been studying about in the geography class. Now we are really going
to see them as they are in nature.”

You can imagine what delightful excitement there was then! To study
outside the classroom! What a change! Miss Riker led forth the boys and
girls, and, as they left the school yard, marching two by two as they
did at fire drill, the teacher further surprised her pupils by saying:

“You may talk all you wish, but I’d rather you would talk about
something connected with geography. If any of you see a brook that looks
like a little river, tell the rest of us.”

More wonders! To be allowed to go out of the classroom in school hours
and then to talk! The children could hardly believe it. Miss Riker heard
Nan Bobbsey and Nellie Parks timidly whispering.

“You may talk out loud,” she said, smiling.

Was it possible? It was, as the boys and girls soon found out. And then,
how they talked!

“I see a brook!” cried Nan, presently.

“Yes, and I see a pond that might almost be a lake,” added one of the
other girls.

“Yes, and there’s an island in the lake,” put in Bert, quickly, and he
pointed to a small heap of dirt in the center of the pond. This remark
made everybody laugh.

“I see a cliff,” said another boy, and pointed to the edge of a steep
hill.

From Pine Hill they could look down on the lake and could see many
natural formations that, in miniature, resembled the larger ones told
about in the geography. Miss Riker had the boys and girls name the
different formations of land and water.

“It was the nicest lesson we ever had!” said Nan Bobbsey, at home that
night.

“Dandy!” declared Bert. “I wish she’d take us fishing some time!”

“Maybe she will!” chuckled Mr. Bobbsey.

“Hush! Not so loud!” cautioned Mrs. Bobbsey, coming from a bedroom.
“I’ve just gotten Baby May to sleep!”

The next day was Saturday, and of course there was no school.

“Though if it was all like the geography lesson yesterday I wouldn’t
mind going to school on Saturdays,” said Bert, as he looked for his cap
to go out to play.

“Neither would I,” agreed Nan. “Mother, may I take Baby May out in the
baby carriage?” she asked.

“In a little while you and Flossie may wheel her,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “I
don’t like Flossie to take her alone, as she’s been teasing to do.”

“Well, I’m going over and play ball with the other boys,” announced
Bert.

Just then the telephone rang.

“It’s your father,” announced Mrs. Bobbsey, after listening a moment.
“He says,” she went on, “that he has to go to Menton on some business in
the auto, and he wants to know if you two would like to ride with him,”
and she looked at Bert and Nan. Flossie and Freddie were out in the yard
playing.

“Oh, would we!” cried Nan, clasping her hands in joyful anticipation.
“When is he coming?”

“I’d rather ride with dad than play ball,” declared Bert.

“You’re to go down to the lumberyard and he’ll wait for you there,” said
Mrs. Bobbsey. “Don’t say anything about it to Flossie or Freddie, else
they’ll tease to go, and I can’t let them.”

So Bert and Nan departed quietly by the side gate and were soon hurrying
to their father’s office on the lumber dock that extended out a long way
into Lake Metoka.

“What to you suppose daddy’s going over to Menton for?” asked Nan.

“Oh, he buys lumber there,” replied Bert, who had been to this
neighboring city once or twice before with his father. “I guess that’s
what he’s going to do this time.”

And this, the children learned when they reached the office, was exactly
Mr. Bobbsey’s errand to Menton. This city was about fifteen miles from
Lakeport.

“Well, children, I hope I didn’t take you away from your studies or your
home work,” said Mr. Bobbsey, with a smile, as Nan and Bert walked up to
where he waited in the car.

“Oh, Daddy! As if we’d study on _Saturday_!” cried Nan.

“Not me!” declared Bert.

“Then we’ll declare a holiday!” laughed their father. “All aboard!”

It was a pleasant day, the roads were good, and they had a delightful
trip to Menton. Bert and Nan were treated to ice-cream soda in a drug
store while their father did what business he had to look after. Then
they started back.

As they drove past the Menton railroad station Nan suddenly caught hold
of her father’s arm and exclaimed:

“Look! There she is again!”

“Who?” asked Mr. Bobbsey.

“That old lady—the one with the faded shawl and the green umbrella—the
old woman who left Baby May on our doorstep!” gasped Nan excitedly.

“Where is she?” her father cried.

“Look! She’s just getting on the train,” said Nan, for a train was about
to leave the station.

“Oh, I see her!” cried Bert. “It’s the same old woman!”

“I must stop her! I must speak to her!” cried Mr. Bobbsey. “It’s lucky
you saw her! I say there! Hi, madam! I want to talk to you! Wait a
minute!” he called loudly, as he drove the automobile as close to the
track as he dared go.




                               CHAPTER IX
                               IN PURSUIT


Before Mr. Bobbsey could bring his automobile to a stop, and almost as
soon as the old woman in the faded shawl was on the platform of one of
the cars, the engine tooted twice and the train began to move.

“Oh, she’s going to get away!” exclaimed Bert.

“Stop the train!” cried Nan. “Somebody stop the train!”

Mr. Bobbsey brought his automobile to a standstill by a sudden pull on
the emergency brake. Then he jumped out and ran swiftly across the depot
platform toward the moving train.

“Wait a minute! Stop! I want to speak to you! I want that old lady in
the faded shawl!” he cried, for now the strange old woman was out of
sight, inside one of the cars.

“Look out, sir! Don’t try to get on that moving train!” cried one of the
railroad men, stepping in front of Mr. Bobbsey. “It’s dangerous!”

“I don’t want to get on the train! I want to get a passenger off the
train—the little old lady in the faded shawl,” explained Mr. Bobbsey.

“Sorry, sir, but it’s too late. The train’s going too fast and I can’t
stop it,” the railroad man said.

And as Nan and Bert, seated in the automobile, watched, they saw the
train gathering speed. It was carrying farther and farther away from
them the strange woman—the woman who could solve the mystery of Baby
May.

“Well, I guess I’m too late,” sighed Mr. Bobbsey, in disappointed tones
as he watched the train disappear from sight around a curve. “If I had
only been a minute or two sooner! But there’s no use worrying, I
suppose,” he added.

“Is there any trouble?” asked the railroad man. “Was that lady your
wife?”

“Oh, no,” answered Mr. Bobbsey, with a smile. “I just wanted to get some
information from her. Where does that train go?” he asked. “And where
does it stop first?”

“It goes to Brockton,” the railroad man replied. “And the first stop is
Miles Junction. Were you thinking of trying to catch up to it in your
auto?”

“Oh, no. But I think I will send a telegram to the conductor and ask him
about the old woman. He’ll surely be able to pick her out from the other
passengers. I want to get her name and address so I can talk to her.
There is something of great importance I want to ask her.”

“It would be a good idea to telegraph on ahead to the conductor,” said
the railroad man. “The train dispatcher will do the telegraphing for
you. The conductor’s name is Jerry Simpson. The old woman didn’t rob
you, or anything like that, did she?”

“Oh, no!” laughed Mr. Bobbsey. “Nothing like that!” But he did not tell
why he wanted to find out who she was. There was no need of mentioning
Baby May.

“What are you going to do, Daddy?” asked Bert, as his father returned to
the automobile, the engine of which was still running.

Mr. Bobbsey told the children his plans, adding:

“While I am waiting for the train conductor to telegraph back to me,
I’ll make some inquiries around here to see if I can find out anything
about the old woman.”

“And shall we have dinner when we get back home?” asked Nan.

“Dinner! Good gracious! Here it is nearly noon!” exclaimed Mr. Bobbsey,
looking at his watch. “Well, we can get a lunch here while waiting for
an answer to my telegram. And I guess I’d better telephone your mother
to let her know we shall be delayed. This is the first chance I’ve had
to get on the trail of the strange old woman, and I don’t want to miss
it.”

Mr. Bobbsey sent a telegram to Miles Junction for Jerry Simpson,
conductor of the train, asking him to wire back the name and address of
the old woman in the faded shawl. She did not have the green umbrella
with her this time, and of course the big basket, in which Baby May had
been left, was at the Bobbsey home.

In his telegram Mr. Bobbsey asked the conductor to send word back in
care of the train dispatcher at Menton. This having been done, the
twins’ father began to make inquiries of railroad men and others about
the strange woman.

None of them knew her, and few of them had noticed her coming to the
station to take the train. So his questions did not bring him much
information.

“We must wait for an answer to the telegram,” said Mr. Bobbsey.

“And can we eat now?” asked Bert. “I’m mighty hungry.”

“I’m hungry, too,” added Nan.

“You certainly shall eat!” laughed their father, and he took them to a
restaurant.

They had to wait nearly an hour for the answer to come back from the
conductor, as the Miles Junction stop of the train was many miles away.
But finally, as the three sat in the station, waiting, the train
dispatcher came out of his little office, where a hundred clocks seemed
ticking. In his hand he held a paper.

“Are you Mr. Bobbsey?” he asked.

“Yes,” replied the twins’ father.

“Oh, yes, I remember you. You sent a message to Mr. Simpson on train
thirty-two. Well, here’s his answer.”

“Thank you,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “Any charge?”

“No charge.”

The dispatcher went back to his clicking instruments. Mr. Bobbsey read
the message to himself.

“What does it say, Daddy?” Bert ventured to ask.

“Will she come back and tell us about the baby?” Nan wanted to know.
“Will she take Baby May away from us?”

“This isn’t a message from the strange woman—it’s from the train
conductor,” answered Mr. Bobbsey. “It says that the old woman in the
faded shawl got off at Hankertown. Um! I thought the train didn’t stop
this side of Miles Junction, but it must have done so.”

“Where’s Hankertown?” asked Bert.

“About fifteen miles from here,” his father said. “Wait until I ask the
dispatcher about this.”

The dispatcher, who was also the ticket seller explained that sometimes
the train stopped at way stations, before reaching Miles Junction, in
case there were passengers to get off or on.

“And that’s what must have happened in this case,” the dispatcher gave
as his opinion. “The party you inquired about must have had a ticket to
Hankertown, and that’s why she got off there. Is there anything more I
can do for you?”

“Thank you—no,” answered Mr. Bobbsey. “Come, children,” he called to
Bert and Nan.

“Where are you going?” they asked him.

“I’m going to keep on after the little old lady. I must find her! We can
go to Hankertown by auto. It’s only fifteen miles.”

“It isn’t as far as that if you go by the back road,” the train
dispatcher told them. “It’s fifteen miles by railroad, about the same by
the main highway, but much less by the back road.”

“Is it a good road?” questioned Mr. Bobbsey.

“Fair,” answered the dispatcher. “You’ll make time if you take the back
road.”

“That’s what I’ll do, then,” said Mr. Bobbsey.

He had already telephoned to his wife, telling her that they had caught
sight of the strange woman who had deserted the baby.

“I’m going to make her tell the secret!” said Mr. Bobbsey.

“What about Nan and Bert?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey, over the wire.

“I’ll keep them with me,” their father replied. “They’ll be all
right—don’t worry. Are Flossie and Freddie all right?”

“Yes; only Freddie fell in a mud puddle and pulled Flossie in after him!
They’re sights, but that’s nothing new!”

“Is the baby all right?”

“Oh, yes, she’s a little darling. I almost hope we never have to give
her up—but of course we must do what is right.”

So it was that Mr. Bobbsey with Bert and Nan started for Hankertown in
the automobile, trying to arrive as soon as possible after the train had
left the strange, old woman there. But, as the train had gone on to
Miles Junction before the conductor received the telegram, the old woman
might have disappeared again.

“Do you think she lives in Hankertown?” asked Nan, as the automobile
dashed along the country road.

“She may,” answered Mr. Bobbsey. “Even if she doesn’t, some one there
will be sure to know her and we can find out about her from them. At
least I hope so.”

“I do, too,” murmured Nan. “But I love Baby May!”

“She’s awfully cute!” exclaimed Bert. “You ought to see her grab hold of
my nose! She holds on so tight!” And he laughed at the remembrance.

Mr. Bobbsey was driving the car along at as fast a pace as was safe, and
they were about half way to Hankertown when Bert noticed little jets of
vapor coming from the radiator.

“Look, Dad!” he exclaimed. “She’s steaming!”

“Whew!” whistled Mr. Bobbsey. “I’m out of water! Must stop and get some
right away! It won’t do to overheat the engine!”

He stopped the car, and at once a loud hissing was heard while from
beneath the car a big cloud of steam poured out.

“Oh! are we on fire?” screamed Nan.




                               CHAPTER X
                           LOST IN THE WOODS


“Don’t be silly, Nan!” exclaimed Bert, as he held his sister back. She
seemed about to leap from the car, which Mr. Bobbsey had already left.

“What do you mean—silly?” demanded Nan, a bit angrily.

“Because the car isn’t on fire—is it, Daddy?” he appealed to his
father.

“Of course not!” replied Mr. Bobbsey. “It was stupid of me, but I forgot
to put water in the radiator. What little there was in there has become
so hot that it has boiled and turned into steam. Now the steam is simply
escaping through the overflow pipe, which comes out beneath the front
axle. Here, Nan, come and look at it, and you’ll know what it is the
next time.”

“Oh,” murmured Bert’s sister, feeling the least little bit ashamed of
herself because she had been frightened. Then she got out, Bert helping
her politely, and looked to where the steam in a white cloud was hissing
its way out of a small pipe.

“No danger at all, if you don’t run too long after your water begins to
boil,” explained Mr. Bobbsey. “But I’ve got to get a fresh supply. I
wonder if there’s a roadside spring anywhere around here?”

“I’ll look,” offered Bert.

“So’ll I,” chimed in Nan.

“Well, then,” agreed their father, “one of you go a little way up the
road and the other a little way down the road. Don’t go too far, if you
don’t find water. I’ll stay here by the car and take the cap off the
radiator. That will let the steam out more quickly.”

The two Bobbsey twins separated, going in different directions along the
lonely country road.

“Doesn’t seem to be much chance of getting water here,” thought Bert, as
he trudged along. “It’s as dry as a desert.”

This was true. There had been no rain for some time—not more than
little showers since the big storm in which Baby May came—and the grass
and weeds along the road were dry and dusty.

Nan, too, looked in vain for a spring or a brook where her father could
scoop up water in the folding canvas pail he carried under the seat of
the automobile.

“I wonder what we’ll do if daddy can’t get water,” Nan was thinking,
when she rounded a turn in the road and saw, in the midst of a clump of
apple trees, a small house almost like a log cabin save that it was
built of boards instead of logs.

“Oh, I guess some one must live there,” thought Nan. “And if they do
they must have a well of water. I’ll go and ask, to make sure, before I
go back and tell daddy.”

She made her way toward the weather-beaten, paintless hut, going slowly
for fear some savage dog might rush out at her. But none came, and she
opened the gate. The gate swung shut after her. It was pulled by a piece
of iron fastened to a bit of clothesline for a weight.

“Who’s comin’ in my yard?” a shrill voice demanded—the voice of an old
woman, Nan decided, for she could see no one. For a moment, she thought
it might be the woman in the faded shawl, the woman who had deserted the
baby. Was it possible that little May had come from here?

“Who’s comin’ in my yard?” the voice went on. Nan felt that she must
answer.

“If you please, could we get some water—for the auto?” faltered Nan.
“It’s boiling over—I mean the auto is—and it needs cool water, and—”

She stopped suddenly as an old woman came around the path that twined
itself around the house. One look showed Nan that it was not the little
old woman of the faded shawl. This was quite a different person, in
fact.

“What is it you want?” demanded the old woman sharply.

“Some water, if you please, for my father’s auto. It’s just down the
road a little way,” replied Nan.

“Oh, water! I s’pose ye heard of my spring, ain’t ye?” said the woman,
in a rasping voice.

“Your spring? No, I didn’t know you had a spring,” answered Nan. “But I
thought maybe you might have a well, and—”

“I ain’t got a well; but I’ve a fine deep spring, an’ the water’s as
cold as ice. But, say, look here! Did you ever throw stones at my frog?”
The old woman asked this question sharply.

“Your frog! No!” gasped Nan, wondering whether or not she might have to
do with a crazy person. “I never saw your frog,” she added.

“Oh, all right then,” said the woman, more gently. “Girls ain’t so bad
as boys. It’s the pesky boys that’s allers throwin’ stones at my frog.
He’s the biggest bullfrog you ever saw. Him an’ me’s friends, an’ I
never let anybody get a drink from my spring that has throwed stones at
my frog. Seein’ as how you ain’t, you can have all the water you want.
Come, I’ll show you where the spring is.”

She started to lead the way down a weed-tangled path at the side of the
house, but Nan drew back. She did not exactly like this old woman with
that queer story about a giant frog.

“I’ll—I’ll go call my father,” said Nan. “He’ll get the water in a
pail, thank you. I’ll call my father,” and she turned away.

“Your father never throwed stones at my frog, did he?” demanded the old
woman sharply. Nan decided she was so queer that she must be a
hermit—living all alone in the half-tumbled-down hut.

“Of course not!” exclaimed Nan. “Daddy wouldn’t throw stones at any
animal.”

“Wa-all, mebby he did when he was a boy. But I’ll let him get some water
from my spring,” said the old woman.

Before Nan could reach the swinging gate she heard her father calling,
and Bert, too, added his voice, saying:

“Nan! Nan! Did you find any water?”

“Yes, there’s a spring here,” Nan replied, “But—”

She was going to add something about the frog, but she did not have
time, for her father and Bert at that moment opened the gate. They
caught sight of the old woman.

For a moment, Bert said later, he thought she was the one for whom they
were searching. But he had no time to say anything for no sooner had the
old woman caught sight of Bert, than she exclaimed:

“Oh, ho! There’s a boy! A pesky boy! Did you ever throw stones at my
frog in the spring? If ye did—”

“No, I never did!” declared Bert.

“Are ye sure?”

“Sure!” he repeated, wondering what it all meant.

“What’s this about a frog in the spring?” asked Mr. Bobbsey, smiling,
for he saw that he had to do with a queer person.

“It’s my frog, Ebenezer,” explained the old woman. “The biggest bullfrog
that ever lived. I’ll show him to you and let you get water from my
spring if you never throwed stones at him.”

“I’m sure we never did, for I have never been on this road before,”
answered Mr. Bobbsey.

The old woman looked at him sharply, then at Bert; and, as if satisfied
that they were telling the truth, she said:

“Wa-all, all right. Come on and bring your blickie.”

“My blickie?” exclaimed Mr. Bobbsey. “What’s that?”

“Your pail—your bucket—whatever you call it. I calls ’em blickies.
That’s what I calls ’em—blickies,” said the old woman. “It’s
Dutch—Pennsylvania Dutch,” she explained. “I’m Pennsylvania Dutch.”

“Oh,” murmured Mr. Bobbsey, making a side motion to Nan and Bert to tell
them not to laugh.

The old woman shuffled along, leading the way down the weed- and
vine-obstructed path until she pointed to a stone-lined hole in the
ground, near a small shed.

“There’s the spring,” she said. “Help yourself. Fill your blickie,” and
she motioned to the canvas pail in Mr. Bobbsey’s hand. “But it’s the
queerest blickie I ever see. And don’t you bother my frog!” she warned.

Mr. Bobbsey and the children hardly knew whether or not to believe that
there was a frog. But when Mr. Bobbsey leaned over the edge of the deep,
clear spring, to fill the canvas pail, he saw, sitting on the bottom, in
the clean, white sand, the largest frog he had ever beheld.

“Look, children!” he said. “It is a giant frog!”

And so it was—an immense green bullfrog, that looked at them with its
bulging, fishy eyes from the bottom of the pool. Perhaps the water
magnified the frog, making it appear larger than it really was, but it
certainly seemed immense.

“That’s my pet frog,” mumbled the old woman. “I don’t let no boys stone
him if I can help it, but sometimes I can’t help it. They peg rocks at
him when he sits on the edge of the spring. An’ if I ketch them
boys—wa-all, if they do it once they never can drink from my spring
again.”

“What boys are they?” asked Mr. Bobbsey, as he filled his canvas pail,
the frog not seeming to be disturbed.

“Oh, pesky boys—boys what go up in the hills to take their cows to
pasture or drive ’em home. Pesky boys,” answered the old woman.

“Well, I never stoned any frogs,” said Bert.

“Then you must be one of the few good boys,” said the old woman, and she
gave a half-smile, for the first time in many days it seemed.

“Thank you for the water,” said Mr. Bobbsey, as he started off with the
dripping pail.

“Ef the children want any there’s a dipper in the spring house,” said
the old woman.

“I’d like a drink,” said Bert.

“Oh,” murmured Nan. “Would you take a drink from the spring where that
big frog is?”

“Sure!” answered her brother. “A frog is as clean as a fish, and all the
water we drink has fishes in it.”

“Does it, Daddy?” asked Nan.

“Of course,” laughed Mr. Bobbsey. “The frog doesn’t hurt the water any.”

“Then I’ll take a drink,” decided Nan. And they all drank, finding the
water cool—almost ice-cold, in fact—and delicious.

“Come ag’in any time ye like as long as ye don’t stone my frog,” invited
the old woman.

“Thank you,” said Mr. Bobbsey.

The automobile was much cooler by the time they went back to it, and
pouring the cold spring water into the radiator enabled them to go on
without further delay. Bert told Nan that, when he could find no water
on his part of the road, he went back to the car and Mr. Bobbsey, and
then the two of them went in search of Nan, who had walked a bit farther
than her brother.

“She was a queer old character,” said Mr. Bobbsey, as he drove the
machine along toward Hankertown. “Lives all alone, I guess, except for
her giant frog.”

Later he learned that the woman, while considered partly crazy, was a
good and harmless old soul with a horror of boys who might stone her
frog—as, alas, many of the lads did.

Without further mishap Hankertown was reached, and Mr. Bobbsey decided
to begin his inquiries at the railroad station, since it was there the
little old lady in the faded shawl had left the train.

The station at Hankertown was a small one—there did not seem to be much
business done there—and Mr. Bobbsey decided that the agent would
probably remember having seen the old lady. He might even know her name
and where she lived.

But when the twins’ father had told the agent what was wanted, asking if
he knew the strange woman, the agent said:

“No, I can’t say I know her. But I do remember seeing her get off the
train. She had a shawl, just as you describe.”

“Which way did she go?” asked Mr. Bobbsey. “Does she live in the
village?”

“I can’t say, I’m sure. I don’t know where she lives. But she went up
the wood road after she left the train.”

“Which is the wood road?” Mr. Bobbsey wanted to know. “It is very
important that I find this old woman, or I should not trouble you with
so many questions,” he said.

“Oh, that’s all right,” answered the station agent, good-naturedly. “I’m
used to answering questions. That’s why I’m here. The wood road is that
one crossing the track and going up though the woods,” he explained,
pointing.

Then Mr. Bobbsey and the children noticed it—a narrow, winding road,
half hidden amid the trees.

“Where does it lead to?” asked Mr. Bobbsey.

“Well, if you keep on it long enough, and don’t turn off on any of the
side trails, it will take you to Coopertown.”

“Hum—yes. I know that place. They make a lot of barrels there,” said
Mr. Bobbsey.

“But it’s thirty miles to Coopertown, and there are a lot of little
villages in between,” said the agent. “But be sure to keep to the main
road.”

“I will,” replied Mr. Bobbsey. “Thank you.”

He was about to start on again in the automobile with the children,
hoping to overtake the strange woman, when Bert saw a lunch wagon not
far from the station.

“Daddy, I’m hungry!” he cried.

“So’m I,” added Nan.

“Yes? Well, I could eat a sandwich myself,” Mr. Bobbsey said. “I’ll get
some at the wagon, and some bottles of soda, and we’ll eat as we go
along. I don’t want to delay, for that old woman may disappear again.”

He bought some things at the lunch wagon, and started once more, driving
through the woods. The road was a fair one, of dirt, but so narrow that
the branches of the trees on either side brushed the children as they
passed.

“I wouldn’t like to meet a big truck now,” said Mr. Bobbsey, as they
reached a very narrow place and squeezed through. “There is no room to
pass.”

But they met no other cars, and heard none. It was very still and quiet
in the road, save for the chugging of their own motor and the occasional
notes of birds.

“Daddy, it’s getting late, isn’t it?” asked Nan, when they had gone
several miles, with never a sign of the old woman. They had not even
passed a house at which they might inquire.

“My gracious, it is late—nearly six o’clock!” exclaimed Mr. Bobbsey,
looking at his watch. “We’ve been traveling the best part of the day.
Whew! I don’t know whether we’d better go on or not. It doesn’t look
very promising ahead,” he added, as he slowed down the car. “We’re
getting deeper into the woods all the while.”

“Do you think the old woman came along here?” asked Bert.

“It’s hard to say, Son,” answered his father. “I’ll keep on a bit
farther, and then, if we don’t catch up to her, I’ll turn back.”

They went on for another mile, and then, finding a good place to turn,
Mr. Bobbsey did so.

“Guess we’ll have to give it up,” he said. “That agent spoke of several
towns or villages between Hankertown and Coopertown, but we haven’t seen
a single house. Yes, I’ll turn back.”

It was getting dusk now, and Mr. Bobbsey turned on the lights. He peered
from side to side of the road, and tooted his horn at curves. Suddenly
Nan exclaimed:

“Daddy, we didn’t pass that big rock before. Look!”

“That’s right,” her father admitted, as they swung around a boulder as
large as a small house. “Whew, this is bad! I was afraid of this!”

“What’s the matter?” asked Bert.

“I’m afraid we took the wrong road,” his father replied.

“Are we lost—in the woods?” faltered Nan.

“It begins to look that way,” her father, answered. “Yes, it surely
begins to look as though we were lost!”




                               CHAPTER XI
                        ADVENTURES OF THE NIGHT


Mr. Bobbsey brought the automobile to a stop not far from the great rock
which Nan had first caught sight of. She did not remember to have passed
it earlier in the trip, and this fact caused her to think they had come
back by another road. And she was right.

“What are you going to do, Daddy?” asked Bert, as he saw his father
getting out of the car.

“I’m going to look around a bit,” was the answer. “There may be a sign
near this rock, telling us where we are. I don’t very often get lost,
but I suppose I was thinking so much of the strange woman we are after
that I didn’t pay proper heed to the road.”

“S’posing there isn’t any sign?” asked Nan.

“Well, we’ll wait and see whether there is or not before we look for
trouble,” laughed Mr. Bobbsey. His laugh made Nan and Bert feel better.

There was still a little, lingering light where the trees did not quite
meet in an arch overhead in the road, and by this faint glow Mr. Bobbsey
looked around the rock for some sign that would tell him which direction
to take to get to the nearest town.

But he saw no sign. The big rock jutted out from the side of a hill,
around which the wood road turned, but there was no signboard or
post—nothing to tell travelers where they were.

“Um,” said Mr. Bobbsey to himself, as he came back to the automobile
where Nan and Bert waited. “This isn’t very pleasant.”

“What are you going to do?” asked Bert, as he watched his father turning
on the ignition to get ready to start the car.

“I’m going to drive on a little way and see if we don’t get somewhere,
or reach a cross road that will take us to a town,” said Mr. Bobbsey.
“If I don’t find one within a mile or two I’ll turn and go the other
way—back from here,” and he pointed over the road they had just
traveled.

“I hope you find a road,” murmured Nan. “I don’t want to stay in these
woods all night.”

“Crickity grasshoppers! I think it would be fun,” laughed Bert. “Look,
we have plenty of sandwiches left!”

He showed several in a bag.

“Perhaps it’s a good thing we have them,” said his father. “There is no
restaurant around here, I’m sure.”

“We have three bottles of soda water left, too,” went on Bert. He had
bought more than was really needed for lunch.

Mr. Bobbsey drove the car carefully along the road. It was rapidly
growing darker, and the lights of the automobile made two gleaming paths
through the gloom.

“There doesn’t seem to be anything down this way,” said the twins’
father, after going about two miles. “Now we’ll try it in the other
direction from the big rock.”

But that plan, likewise, amounted to nothing. Not a cross road did they
see which they might take and so get to some town or village. And Mr.
Bobbsey did not want to go too far back lest he get in a worse place
than near the great stone.

“Well, we seem to be in the midst of a deserted wilderness,” he said, as
once more he drove the car back to the big stone. “I guess we’d better
stay here.”

“Oh! All night?” faltered Nan.

“Well, it won’t be light until morning,” her father said, with a laugh.
“And we’d only get more confused and lost, if that’s possible, traveling
in the darkness. Cheer up, little girl, it won’t be so bad!”

“I think it will be sport!” declared Bert. “We can sleep in the car, and
we’ve got something to eat. Can I make a campfire, Daddy?”

“No, I hardly think we will need that, and you might set fire to the
woods—they are very dry. We have nothing to cook, and the car lamps
will give us light enough.”

“No, we haven’t anything to cook—only some sandwiches to eat,” murmured
Bert. “But it’s lucky we have them!” he added.

“Yes, I think it is,” his father said.

Mr. Bobbsey backed the car under an overhanging ledge of the great rock
off the road, so that, if necessary, other cars could pass them in the
night.

“But I hardly think other cars will come along,” said the children’s
father. “I guess ours is the only auto within fifteen miles.”

“How shall we ever get home?” asked Nan.

“Oh, I can see to find my way out well enough when morning comes,” said
her father. “It’s just that I don’t want to drive on a strange road
after dark, and in the forest. Now then, let’s get ready to camp out for
the night.”

“What will mother think when we don’t come home?” asked Nan.

“She may worry a little,” Mr. Bobbsey replied. “But she will know you
children are all right as long as you are with me. She’ll guess what has
happened—that we have either had a breakdown or are lost. Your mother
won’t worry too much, I think.”

Mr. Bobbsey’s automobile was a large touring car, and there would be
plenty of room for Bert and Nan to cuddle up and get what sleep they
could on the back seats. Luckily there was a robe on the rail in the
rear, and this could be put over the children to keep them warm. For,
though it was almost summer, the nights were still cool.

“And I’ll put up the side curtains,” decided Mr. Bobbsey.

“Where will you sleep?” asked Bert.

“Oh, I’ll curl up on the front seat. It won’t be the first time I’ve
been out all night in an auto,” laughed Mr. Bobbsey.

With the side curtains on the car it really was snug and comfortable,
and they would be protected even in the case of rain. But they could
catch glimpses of the stars and did not think there would be a storm.

“Now for our supper!” cried Mr. Bobbsey cheerfully.

He divided the sandwiches, giving Nan and Bert the most, and the bottles
of soda water were opened.

“I’ve a cake of chocolate, too,” said Bert, fishing up a square of milk
chocolate from one pocket.

Night now settled down over the woods where the Bobbsey twins—at least,
half of them—were lost. They ate and drank and then, curled up on the
back seat, Nan and Bert listened to stories their father told them.

At first the children asked questions or made comments as the stories
were told. But, after a while, Mr. Bobbsey noticed that the questions
were shorter and farther apart. Soon he heard Bert and Nan breathing
heavily.

“I believe they’re asleep,” he said softly.

He looked back, and, by the light of the dashboard lamp, he saw the
twins slumbering. Mr. Bobbsey pulled the robe over them. Then, making
himself as comfortable as he could in the front seat, he prepared to
pass the night. He did not at once fall asleep, for he was thinking of
many things.

“Queer how I got on the wrong road—for that’s what I must have done,”
he mused. “And it’s queer that the old woman in the faded shawl would
come up this lonely road. I wonder who she is? I wonder why she deserted
Baby May?”

He could find no answers to these questions, so, after a while, he began
to doze off. Before he knew it his eyes were closing, and he was
slumbering.

But it was not for long. Suddenly he sat up, he felt the auto jar, as
though some one had brushed against it, or had tried to get in.
Instantly Mr. Bobbsey was awake and sitting up.

“Who’s there?” demanded Mr. Bobbsey, in a whisper, for he did not want
to awaken Nan and Bert, who were still sleeping.

There was no answer, so he turned on the bright headlights of the car.
As he did so there was a scurrying in the underbrush, and in the
powerful gleam of the lamps he saw a small animal scurrying away amid
the trees.

“A fox or a stray dog,” decided Mr. Bobbsey. “It must have knocked
against the wheel and jarred me awake. It’s just as well the children
don’t know it.”

He turned off the lights and again composed himself to sleep. He was
dreaming that he was trying to catch the big frog in the spring of the
queer woman when, through his dream, he seemed to hear a voice saying:

“Daddy! Daddy, wake up! I hear a noise!”

Mr. Bobbsey sat up with a start, to find Nan leaning over the back of
the front seat and gently shaking him by the shoulder.

“Eh? What’s the matter?” murmured Mr. Bobbsey, sleepily.

“I—I heard a noise!” whispered Nan. “Listen!”

Faintly, through the darkness of the night, came a crackling sound, as
though some large animal was approaching the car.




                              CHAPTER XII
                                RESCUED


“What is it, Daddy?” asked Bert, who had also been awakened, more by
Nan’s voice than by the noise in the night. “What is it?” he inquired
again.

“Nan heard something. I guess we can all hear it now,” answered Mr.
Bobbsey, as the sound of breaking twigs, branches and underbrush told of
some large body advancing.

“Do you think it could be a—bear?” faltered Nan.

“Of course not,” laughed her father. “There are no bears in these woods.
It may be another auto coming, breaking its way along a narrow road.”

“It sounds more like one of those war tanks we saw in the soldiers’
parade, Nan,” remarked Bert. “It’s coming over everything.”

And, truly, this seemed to be the case. Whoever or whatever it was, drew
on crashingly. Nearer and nearer to the automobile came the loud sounds.
Nan was almost ready to scream. Mr. Bobbsey had turned on the headlights
again, but nothing showed directly in front of their glare.

Then, suddenly, Bert gave a yell and leaped to Nan’s side of the car.

“Oh! It’s coming into the auto!” he cried.

Nan looked through the celluloid windows of the side curtains and saw,
in the gleam of the little light on the dash, the head and face of what,
at first, she took to be a monster animal.

She opened her mouth to scream, but her father caught sight of the
animal at the same time, and he gave a loud laugh. This kept Nan from
screaming, and also made Bert turn around to look.

“It’s only a horse!” cried Mr. Bobbsey. “A wandering horse. It has been
crashing its way through the underbrush, and now it has come to see what
we are doing here, I suppose.”

“Oh! Only a horse!” faltered Nan, somewhat ashamed of her needless fear.

“Just old Dobbin, the horse!” chuckled her father.

“He made noise enough for a whole circus,” declared Bert. “And when I
saw him looking in through the curtain I thought—well, crickity
grasshoppers, I didn’t know what to think.”

“I’m glad the horse came along,” said Mr. Bobbsey, as the animal, after
sniffing at the automobile once or twice, continued on his wandering
way, crashing through the masses of underbrush in the darkness.

“Well, I’m not,” declared Nan. “He frightened me.”

“Why are you glad about the horse, Daddy?” asked Bert.

“Because it shows there must be a farm near here, and we’ll find our way
out in the morning,” was the answer.

“I hope so,” murmured Nan.

“Better go to sleep again,” suggested her father. “And don’t be
frightened by any more noises. Noise can’t harm you, and there are no
bears or other wild beasts in these woods.”

Nan and Bert curled up again, and were soon sound asleep, though their
bed was not the most comfortable one they might have had. But being
young and tired, they soon fell into a sound, healthy slumber.

Once again during the night Nan heard a noise. It was the distant
hooting of an owl, who kept inquiring:

Who? Who? Who?

But Nan had heard owls before and knew what they were. So she paid
little attention to this one, and was soon asleep again.

Mr. Bobbsey, however, was not so lucky. He nearly dozed off once or
twice, but when he got to thinking of all that had happened during the
day—the chase after the strange woman with the faded shawl, the old
woman with the big frog, and how he had taken the wrong road and so
become lost—it excited him a little and kept him awake.

“And I do hope the folks at home aren’t worrying too much,” thought Mr.
Bobbsey. He knew his wife would worry a little—that could not be
helped. He felt that she knew he would have sent word to her had it been
possible. However, there was no telephone in the woods, but he made up
his mind to talk to her as soon as possible in the morning—calling her
up from the first telephone he reached.

In truth, Mrs. Bobbsey did worry some. But she felt that the children
were safe with their father, and she knew her husband would have sent
word had he been able. Baby May was somewhat troublesome, on account of
cutting a tooth, and this kept Mrs. Bobbsey rather busy all night.

In the woods hours of darkness passed, and at last those waiting in the
automobile saw another day coming. At least, Mr. Bobbsey noticed the
growing light in the east. Nan and Bert were still sound asleep.

“I guess I’ll get out and stretch my legs—I’m all cramped up,” said Mr.
Bobbsey to himself, when it grew a little lighter. “We’ll soon start and
see where we come out.”

He slipped quietly from the car so as not to awaken Nan and Bert, and,
walking a little way down the woodland road, he saw a spring of water.
There he washed his hands and face, and felt much refreshed. He also
took a long drink.

“Not much of a breakfast, but it will have to do,” chuckled Mr. Bobbsey.
“I feel sorry for the children, though.”

However, Nan and Bert thought it rather jolly fun. When they awakened
they, too, washed and drank at the spring, and then Bert brought out his
cake of milk chocolate.

“Nan, you set the table and I’ll get breakfast,” he jokingly said. And
Nan, joining in the joke, put three broad green leaves for plates on a
flat stump.

“Now we’ll eat,” said Bert.

He was about to break the chocolate into three pieces, but his father
said:

“None for me, Bert, thank you. I never could eat sweet stuff so early in
the morning. You two eat it all and then we’ll start for home, if we can
find the way.”

The boy broke the chocolate into two pieces, giving the larger one to
Nan, for which she thanked him. She was very fond of chocolate, even in
the morning. For that matter, so was Bert, and I give him credit for
being unselfish. Not that he wasn’t a “regular boy.” Indeed, he had his
faults—he wouldn’t have been a boy if he hadn’t had some. But he was of
a generous nature.

“Please take a little bite of my breakfast, Daddy,” begged Nan, as she
nibbled her chocolate.

“I really don’t want it,” her father said. But she prevailed on him to
take a nibble, and so did Bert.

It did not take long to finish “breakfast,” and then Mr. Bobbsey started
the automobile, which did not balk, refuse to go, or anything like that.

“Which way are you going, Daddy?” asked Bert, as he and his sister took
their seats again.

“I don’t know that it makes much difference,” Mr. Bobbsey replied. “But
I think I’ll travel back and see if we can get on the road we first
took. This big rock doesn’t seem to be the right one. We must have
turned off the road on which we were traveling, some distance back.”

On they chugged through the forest, but it was with lighter hearts
now—hearts that were lightened by the smiling sun even as the dark
woods were made less gloomy. They would certainly get out of the forest
soon, they felt.

However, look about him as Mr. Bobbsey did, he could not tell where the
main road was—at least, the road by which he had entered the forest in
search of the strange woman.

He saw several wood roads leading off the one which he had traveled, and
he tried to tell, by looking at the marks of automobile wheels, which
was the way they had originally taken. But other cars had also gone over
the same road, so the marks of the wheels of the Bobbsey car could not
be picked out.

The twins’ father was about to decide to turn about and go the other way
when suddenly, from just ahead of them, came a voice, shouting:

“Whoa there! Where you tryin’ to go? You’ve been out all night, an’ now
you want to run away ag’in! Whoa, I tell you!”

“Sounds like somebody talking to a horse,” observed Bert.

“Maybe it was the horse that tried to get into our auto,” suggested Nan.

Then, around a bend in the road, came a lanky farmer boy, of not more
than fourteen, leading a horse. Whether it was the same animal that had
frightened Nan and Bert could not be said for certain at once, though,
later, they learned that it was.

The boy, leading the horse, advanced toward the automobile, which Mr.
Bobbsey had stopped.

“Mornin’, neighbors,” called the youth pleasantly and not at all
bashfully. “You’re out early.”

“I might say the same of you,” remarked Mr. Bobbsey. “We’ve been out all
night—lost in the woods. Can you put me on the road to Hankertown?”

“Straight ahead and take the first turn to the left,” said the lad.
“You’re on the old lumber road that isn’t used much any more. This horse
seems to like it, for he ran away last night and I only just found him.”

“I think we found him first,” said Mr. Bobbsey, and he described the
visit of the animal in the night.

“I reckon that was our horse,” the boy said. “It’s just like old Jim to
go pokin’ his nose in where he isn’t wanted. Hope he didn’t do any
damage.”

“Not any,” laughed Mr. Bobbsey. “And I’m much obliged to you for setting
us right. I got all mixed up on these wood roads. Is there any
restaurant or eating place before I get to Hankertown?”

“Restaurant? Good land, no! But say! ain’t you folks had any breakfast?”
he demanded.

“Not yet,” said Mr. Bobbsey.

“Well, neither have I, but I reckon on havin’ some right soon. Our house
is only about a mile back, on another road. If you want to go there my
mother’ll be glad to give you something hot.”

“I wouldn’t want to trouble her,” objected Mr. Bobbsey.

“No trouble at all. She likes to have folks to meals. Say, I believe I
could sit on the back of your machine and lead old Jim along by his
halter, if you didn’t go too fast. Then I could be right there with you
and explain.”

“Thank you, I wish you would,” replied Mr. Bobbsey. And the farmer boy
was soon sitting on the back seat, between Nan and Bert, while,
following behind, led by the long halter, was Jim, the
midnight-wandering horse.

“There’s our place,” said Silas Remington, which proved to be the name
of the farmer boy. “Drive right up. My mother’ll be s’prised to see me
comin’ back in style, I reckon,” and he chuckled as he pointed out a
small house set in a little clearing of the woods.




                              CHAPTER XIII
                              THE LAST DAY


“For the land sakes, Silas! what happened? Did ye break your leg?”

This was what Mrs. Remington asked as she saw her son driving up in the
automobile to the little house in the clearing, leading the strayed
horse by the halter from the back seat.

“There has been no accident,” said Mr. Bobbsey quickly, for he did not
want the boy’s mother to worry. “We just met your son and gave him a
ride home, and—”

“These folks have been out in the woods all night, Mother!” Silas
Remington explained. “I found them when I was hunting old Jim down the
wood road. Now if you can give them some breakfast—”

“I’m sure we don’t want to trouble you,” interrupted Mr. Bobbsey. “But
I’d be glad to pay—”

“Pay! Nonsense! No trouble at all! Come right in, and I’ll have
breakfast ready in a jiffy!” exclaimed the kind Mrs. Remington. “You
take the horse to the barn, Silas, and then come in and get your
breakfast, and bring your pa with you. Silas started out early to find
Jim,” she explained to the Bobbseys, as she bustled about.

“It’s a good thing for us that he did,” said Mr. Bobbsey, “or I don’t
know how much longer we might have been wandering in the woods. But
where can I get a telephone? I must let my wife know we are all
right—she’ll be worried.”

“We’ve got a telephone,” said Mrs. Remington. “I don’t bother with it
much myself, but my husband thought he had to have one. Next I know
he’ll be gettin’ a tin Lizzie, I guess,” and she laughed.

Mr. Bobbsey was soon talking to his wife over the telephone, while the
farmer’s wife was getting breakfast.

“Oh, I’m so glad you’re all right!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, when she
heard her husband’s voice. “I couldn’t imagine what had happened, but I
knew the children would be all right with you. How’s Baby May? Oh, she’s
fine, and she’s cut another tooth! That’s why she fretted so last
night!”

Bert and Nan were glad to know all were well at home, and then they sat
down to a good breakfast. All their troubles were over now, for Mr.
Remington, who had come into breakfast with Silas and who had a small
farm on the edge of the woods, told Mr. Bobbsey where to drive to get
back to the main road to Hankertown.

“But about that strange old woman with the faded shawl you were after, I
don’t know,” and the farmer shook his head. “I never seen her around
these parts. She must be a stranger here.”

“Could it have been old Mary Dodd back by the spring?” asked Mrs.
Remington. “She’s very odd.”

“You mean the woman with the frog in the spring?” inquired Mr. Bobbsey.
“No, we saw old Mary and she gave us water. The woman I am seeking is
another person.”

“Wa-all, then I’m afraid I can’t help you,” said Mr. Remington, with a
shake of his head. “But if Silas or I see the old woman around I’ll try
and find out who she is and let you know.”

“Sure we will!” piped up Silas.

“I wish you would,” returned Mr. Bobbsey, and he prepared to set out
again with Nan and Bert in the automobile.

They bade good-bye to the kind farmer and his wife and to his talkative
son, and were soon out of the woods and on the main highway. Mr. Bobbsey
did not think it would be of any use to try further to locate the
strange woman, so he drove directly back to Lakeport.

“My, you had an adventure, didn’t you?” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, when the
twins and their father arrived.

“I should say we did!” ejaculated Nan.

“But it was jolly fun!” laughed Bert. “Even when the horse tried to
stick his head in through the side curtains.”

“Tell me about it!” begged Freddie.

“I want to hear, too,” said Flossie. “And Baby May has a new tooth—she
has!”

“Yes, we heard about that over the telephone,” laughed Nan.

The smaller twins were delighted to hear the account of the adventures
of Nan and Bert in the night, and Freddie declared that the next time
his father went on a trip like that he was going too.

“Well, so you didn’t find the old woman after all?” remarked Mrs.
Bobbsey, after she had talked matters over quietly with her husband.

“No. And it begins to look as if we never should. She is more of a
mystery than ever. I have notified the police of Hankertown, though, and
they said they would keep a lookout for her.”

“And until she is found and tells us the secret of Baby May, we will
keep the little girl,” suggested Mrs. Bobbsey.

“Wouldn’t you rather send her to an orphan asylum?” asked Mr. Bobbsey,
thinking perhaps the care of the baby was too much for his wife.

“Oh, no indeed!” she exclaimed. “I never could give her up now, unless
it were to her real mother.”

“I’d like to know where the real mother is,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “It
certainly seems very strange!”

Baby May did not seem to mind being the center of a mystery. She grew
fatter and taller, her eyes seemed bluer, her hair more golden, and
certainly her smile was sweeter. She was a dear little baby, and every
one loved her, especially the Bobbsey twins.

Summer was close at hand now. Every day it seemed warmer and warmer to
have to go to school. With the windows open, so the sweet wind blew in
and the songs of birds could be heard, it was quite a task to keep the
children at their lessons. Miss Riker found it so in the room where Bert
and Nan recited.

“Well, children,” said the teacher one Monday afternoon, as the class
was about to leave for the day, “Friday, you know, is the last day of
school for the term.”

The girls looked at one another with glad eyes, and the boys wanted to
shout, but that would not have been allowed. So they kept quiet, though
it was hard work.

“We will have some exercises in our room for the last day,” went on Miss
Riker, “and those who wish to may recite a piece or sing. We will make
up a program. There will be no lessons, but just some exercises. Now,
those of you who wish to recite will please tell me the name of their
piece after school. Now you may go!”

There was a buzz of excitement, all the boys and girls talking about the
joyous “last day” of school.

Examinations were over, Nan and Bert successfully “passed,” as did most
of their chums, and Freddie and Flossie proudly brought home their
report cards, showing that they had done well and could be advanced to a
higher class next term.

“I’m going to speak that piece about the Indian Chief,” announced Bert,
as the last day drew near.

“And I’m going to sing a duet with Nellie Parks,” said Nan.

The two children were practicing hard to have their numbers a success
when they got up before the class on the last day of school.

There was in Bert’s class a boy named Sam Todd. He was a pretty good
boy—sometimes; but he was very fond of playing tricks or jokes—on
others, you must know. Bert didn’t remember that he ever played a trick
or joke on himself, though.

Sam had heard about the piece Bert was going to speak, and just before
the last day Sam said to his chum, Joe Norton:

“I’m going to play a good joke when Bert Bobbsey gets up to speak his
piece.”

“What are you goin’ to do?” Joe asked.

“Well, I got a lot of turkey feathers and I fastened ’em to an old
football. I made it look like the head of an Indian. I made this
football-Indian-head fast to a string. I sit right near the window, you
know, and when Bert gets up to speak I’m going to pull on the string,
and I’ll pull it in through the window, the football with feathers on.
I’ll pull it in just when Bert hollers out that line about: ‘What is
this fearful thing I see?’ In will pop the feathered football, and
say—won’t there be a howl!”

“Goodness, yes!” gasped Joe. “That’s a dandy trick! But are you sure the
thing will come in the window when you pull the string?”

“I’ll put it outside the window just before we come in for the last day,
and I’ll tie the string to my desk. It’ll be easy for me to pull it in.
Oh, boy! Some joke! Eh?”

“Oh, boy! Some joke!” echoed Joe, with a chuckle.

Bert, knowing nothing of this, kept on studying his piece. Finally the
last day of school came. There were to be exercises in the different
rooms, more simple ones where Flossie and Freddie were.

After Nan and Nellie had sung and other boys and girls had taken their
parts, Bert’s turn came. He walked rather nervously up to the platform
on which stood Miss Riker’s desk.

“Now for the joke!” whispered Sam Todd to Joe, who sat in front of him.
There was a string running from Sam’s desk out of the open window. The
other end of the string had been fastened to the old football covered
with feathers. At a distance it did look like the head of an Indian.

Bert started his recitation. He got along very well, and at last he came
to the line where he had to call, several times, loudly:

“What is this fearful thing I see?”

Just as Bert started this Sam gave a hard pull on the string. He
expected to haul in his “trick.”

But something had gone wrong!




                              CHAPTER XIV
                              A BIG SPLASH


Bert Bobbsey was speaking his piece so well that his teacher and the
other boys and girls did not see what Sam Todd was trying to do. The
eyes of all in the room were fixed on Bert—that is, the eyes of all but
Sam and his chum Joe. Bert had practiced his recitation many times at
home, his mother helping and correcting him, until he could do it very
well.

All this mattered nothing to Sam, however, if he could spoil Bert’s
recitation by playing the trick. With all that, Sam did not intend to be
mean. It was all just a “good joke” to him and Joe.

But, as was said, something went wrong.

When Sam pulled on the string it seemed to be caught on something
outside the window. The football with its feathers, making it look like
the head of an Indian, did not bounce in through the open window, as Sam
hoped it would.

There was no time to lose. Bert was just beginning the startling line—

“What is this fearful thing I see?”

If the football did not pop in now the joke would be spoiled. As all
eyes were on Bert, Sam felt it would be safe to leave his seat to look
and find out what the trouble was. He had a little time, as Bert had to
say this line three times—slowly.

Bert gave the line once. He paused. He repeated it. Sam was now leaning
over the edge of the window sill, looking down to see what was holding
the string of the feather-decorated football.

Then Bert exclaimed, very loudly:

“What is this fearful thing I see?”

As he did so, Sam Todd lost his balance and fell out of the window. But
that was not all! Just under the window was a big barrel of water, that
had been used by masons when they had done some work on the school
foundation.

With a splash and a cry of surprise, Sam Todd toppled into this barrel
of water, his shout of alarm mingling with Bert’s dramatic demand to
know what fearful thing it was that he saw.

“Oh, dear, look at that!”

“Sammie’s out of the window!”

“He’s in the water!”

“He’ll be drowned!”

“What was he doing anyway?”

And so the cries of the children ran on.

Well, of course that brought Bert’s recitation to a sudden end. No boy
could speak a piece with another lad falling out of the window into a
barrel of water and yelling at the same time.

“What is it? What has happened?” exclaimed Miss Riker, leaping to her
feet.

“Sammie Todd fell out of the window,” answered Sadie Moore, who was a
quick little thing.

“What in the world was he doing? Why was he leaning out of the window in
that way?” demanded Miss Riker, for she had seen Sam at the sill just
before he fell.

“He wanted to—he was going to—” began Joe Norton. Then Joe happened to
think it was hardly the fair thing to tell on Sam—to let the teacher
know about the joke. She might find out, anyhow—very likely she
would—but Joe could not tell.

“What was Sam going to do?” demanded Miss Riker. But no one answered
her, and from outside the window sounded the splashing in the barrel of
water and the voice of Sam begging for help.

“We must go to him. Maybe he is hurt,” the teacher said, starting for
the door.

But Bert was ahead of her. He did not much mind having his recitation
broken up in this queer way. As a matter of fact, Bert only laughed
about it afterward.

But now Sam might be in danger, through his own foolishness, and might
need help. So Bert and some of the other boys rushed out of school ahead
of the teacher. These boys, too, rather welcomed the interruption. They
did not care much about “speaking pieces.”

As Bert and his chums reached the school yard under the open window,
they saw Sam, dripping wet and covered with bits of lime and plaster,
climbing from the barrel of water.

“I—I—now—I fell in!” spluttered Sam, as if there was any need of an
explanation. “I—I—now—fell right in!”

“I should say you did!” laughed Bert. He could laugh now, and so could
the other boys, for Sam was not in the least hurt.

Sam balanced himself for a moment on the edge of the barrel and then
slipped down and out, over the edge. The water ran from him and made
little puddles around his feet.

“How did it happen? Are you sure you aren’t hurt?” asked Miss Riker.

Sam did not answer the first question, but to the second he replied.

“Oh, no’m—thank you—I’m not hurt. I—I’m just—wet!”

“Yes, we see you are,” observed Miss Riker, trying not to smile, for by
this time she began to suspect that something was wrong. No boy sitting
in his seat in a quiet schoolroom, where “speaking pieces” is going on,
can fall out of the window and into a barrel of water without having
done something himself to bring it about.

Once it was certain that Sam had suffered no more than a wetting, the
teacher began to cast about to find an explanation. Her quick eye caught
sight of the string running in through the open window to the
schoolroom. Stepping to the window she looked inside and saw that the
string was fastened to Sam’s desk.

Another look, on the ground near the barrel, disclosed the football and
the feathers on it. Then she understood.

“Oh, I see,” she murmured. “This was a sort of—joke, Sam? Was that it?”

“Ye—ye—yes’m,” faltered the dripping lad.

“Very well. You may go back to your seats, children—that is, all but
Sam. You had better go home and change into dry clothes,” she added, and
this time she smiled broadly.

“Shall I—now—shall I come back?” asked Sam. All the joking spirit had
departed.

“No, you don’t need to come back,” said Miss Riker. “School will be out
for the term by the time you could return.” And as Sam, rather
shame-faced, made his dripping way toward his home, the teacher
remarked: “I hardly think it worth while to go on with the closing
exercises. They were almost finished, anyhow. Unless, Bert, you wish to
conclude your recitation?” she added, turning to the Bobbsey twin
questioningly.

“Oh, no’m—thank you—I don’t mind quitting!” Bert made haste to say. He
did not exactly object to “speaking pieces,” but if there was a good
excuse to get out of it, he was glad of that excuse. “I can recite it
next term,” he added.

“Yes, I suppose so,” returned Miss Riker, with a laugh. “Well, boys and
girls, you may go now. School is over for the term. I hope you’ll all
have a happy vacation.”

“Thank you! Thank you! The same to you!” chorused the boys and girls.

There were murmurs, talks, laughter and a general movement of relief. No
more books or studies for more than two months—oh, joy!

Some of the pupils returned to the classroom to get things from their
desks. Charlie Mason was beside Bert as the two boys walked over to the
water barrel to look more closely at the “joke.”

“Say, Bert, I’m glad you said you didn’t care about going on with your
piece,” said Charlie.

“Why?” asked Bert.

“’Cause I was after you, and I didn’t know my piece very well. There’s
one verse I never can remember, and I know I’d have broken down up on
the platform. So I’m glad I didn’t have to speak.”

“So’m I,” murmured Bert. “Say, what is that thing, anyhow?” he asked, as
Joe Norton pulled into view the “joke” Sam Todd had prepared with such
care.

“Looks like a scalped Indian,” remarked Danny Rugg.

“That’s what Sam made it for,” chuckled Joe. “He was going to pull it in
when you said that line, Bert, about what a fearful thing you saw.”

“Ha! Ha!” laughed Bert. “He was going to pull it in, was he? Well, he
pulled himself _out_ instead! It was a good joke all right!”

And so it was, only it turned just the other way from what Sam intended.
But very often jokes do turn that way.

However, nothing much now mattered except that school was out for the
long vacation.

“Where are you going for your vacation?” asked May Miller of Nan
Bobbsey, as she walked home with Flossie and Freddie. Bert had gone on
ahead with some of the boys.

“We don’t exactly know,” Nan replied. “Since we have Baby May with us,
mother and daddy haven’t made up their minds. I guess we’ll go away
somewhere.”

“We’re going to the seashore,” said May.

“We’ve been there—lots of times,” Nan said.

“I like the seashore!” murmured Flossie. “We went there and played in
the sand.”

“And Flossie fell into the water!” added Freddie, anxious to tell all
the news.

“So did you fall in, too!” countered Flossie.

“Yes, we both fell in!” laughed her twin brother, shaking his head of
golden hair. “It was lots of fun.”

“Well, I want to go swimming in the ocean,” said May, laughing at the
smaller Bobbsey twins, “but I don’t exactly want to fall in. I suppose
Baby May is too young to be taken to the seashore,” she added, for by
this time every one in Lakeport knew about the little foundling who had
been left on the Bobbsey doorstep.

“Yes, I suppose so,” agreed Nan. “But we’ll go away somewhere, I’m sure.
Good-bye, May!”

“Good-bye,” May answered, as she turned down her street.

“I’m going to ask mother if I can wheel Baby May out in the baby
carriage,” said Flossie, as she and her sister and brother neared home.

“You’ll have to be very careful, and stay right in front of the house,”
cautioned Nan. “We don’t want any more runaways.”

“I’ll be careful,” promised Flossie.

But when they reached the house and went clattering up the steps, Mrs.
Bobbsey came softly out of the door with a hand raised to stop them.

“Hush!” she whispered. “Don’t make any noise!”

“What’s the matter?” asked Nan, in a low voice.

“Baby May is sick,” Mrs. Bobbsey replied. “The doctor has been here, and
the poor little thing has just gone to sleep. Don’t make any noise!”




                               CHAPTER XV
                         FREDDIE SEES SOMETHING


With hushed voices and walking on tiptoes, the smaller Bobbsey twins and
Nan entered the house. Mrs. Bobbsey closed the door softly after them.

“Where is she? Where is Baby May?” asked Flossie.

“May I look at her?” asked Freddie soberly.

“Not now, dears,” their mother answered. “She has just fallen asleep,
and I don’t want her to awaken. You may see her after she has had her
nap—that is, if she is well enough.”

“Is she very sick?” Nan wanted to know. “It must have come on suddenly,
for she was all right when we went to school this morning.”

“Yes, it was sudden,” Mrs. Bobbsey answered. “She was taken with a spasm
after you left, and I had to telephone for the doctor.”

“What did he say?” Nan asked, while Flossie and Freddie, hardly
breathing so anxious were they to make no noise, waited for the answer.

“He said he thought it was something she had eaten, and he gave me some
medicine for her. After she took it she fell asleep. She is up in my
room now.”

“Is anybody with her?” asked Nan. “We got out of school a little earlier
on account of Bert speaking his piece.”

“Dinah is sitting beside Baby May,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “But what do you
mean about getting out earlier on account of Bert speaking his piece? I
hope he didn’t fail or cut up or—”

“Oh, no, _he_ was all right,” softly laughed Nan. “It was Sammie Todd.
He fell out of the window—”

“Fell out of the window!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey, and then she suddenly
lowered her voice for fear of waking Baby May. “Was he hurt?” she
whispered.

“No,” chuckled Nan, and then she told what had happened. “I’ll go up and
sit by the baby,” she added, when she had finished the story.

“All right, then Dinah can come down,” Mrs. Bobbsey said. “You and
Flossie go out and play, Freddie,” she added to the younger twins. “But
don’t make any noise.”

“I’ll play with my paper dolls—they don’t make a sound,” decided
Flossie.

“And I’ll take my little cart with the rubber tires on the wheels—that
doesn’t make any noise, either,” said Freddie.

“Why can’t you give my family a ride in the cart?” suggested Flossie.
“The children haven’t had a ride for a long time.” By children, she of
course meant her paper dolls.

“I’ll tell you what I’ll do,” answered Freddie. “We’ll pretend the cart
is a trolley car and the children can ride on it. Only they have to pay
fare. Little stones will do for money.”

And so it was arranged.

With the younger twins thus safely amusing themselves, Nan could spend
her time with the baby.

She went quietly up to the room where Dinah sat beside the bed on which
little May was lying.

“De honey lamb is gettin’ bettah,” whispered Dinah. “I kin tell by de
way she breeves. Dat doctor man’s medicine done her a powerful sight ob
good! But don’t wake her up. Let her sleep! Sleep’s de best when a
baby’s sick.”

“Yes,” agreed Nan, in a whisper, and then she sat silent beside the bed.

Baby May was a beautiful picture to look upon as she slept—a beautiful
picture, but just a little sad, Nan thought. For the little child seemed
friendless and alone in the world, no one, seemingly, knowing where her
father and mother were. No one ever to have cared for her save the queer
old woman with the green umbrella!

“I wonder where that woman is now,” thought Nan, as she listened to the
breathing of Baby May. As Dinah had said, her “breeves” were quieter,
now that the medicine had its effect. But she still looked ill, Nan
thought, as she tenderly touched one dimpled hand with a finger.

Outside in the yard below the bedroom window Flossie and Freddie could
be heard at their play. They made only a little noise—not enough to
waken the baby. Nan heard them and smiled, then she almost laughed as
she thought of how Sam had fallen into the barrel of water.

The baby stirred uneasily in her sleep and cried faintly. Mrs. Bobbsey
came quickly up the stairs and appeared in the room.

“If she is waking I must give her some more medicine,” she said.

Baby May awoke with a pitiful, fretful sick cry, and she wailed more
loudly as she became more widely awake. It was hard work to make her
take the medicine, but at least she swallowed some, and then she cried
harder than ever.

“Poor little dear!” murmured Nan. “She must be terribly sick!”

“Oh, perhaps not,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Little babies cry very hard for
only a slight illness. The doctor did not seem to think it was anything
serious. But he is coming in again.”

“Shall I take her out in the carriage?” offered Nan.

“Oh, no. She must stay in the house,” her mother answered.

Flossie and Freddie came creeping up the stairs, having left their play
at the sound of the baby’s cries.

“Is she all right now?” asked Flossie. “Could I take her out?”

“She is far from being all right,” answered Mrs. Bobbsey. “Better run
down and play some more, little twins. Nan and I will look after Baby
May.”

“She sounds all right,” observed Freddie. “She’s making a lot of noise,”
for the infant was crying hard.

“All babies have to cry,” wisely remarked Flossie, as she went
downstairs with her brother. “You cried when you were little.”

“I don’t ’member it,” said Freddie.

The doctor came again that evening soon after supper. He carefully
looked the baby over and, after sitting in his chair and appearing to be
in deep thought, he asked:

“Has she ever had the jaundice?”

“I don’t know,” Mrs. Bobbsey answered. “You see, she isn’t our baby,
exactly. She was left on our doorstep, and what she may have had and
gotten over I don’t know.”

“Um—yes,” remarked the doctor. “Well, it looks to me as if she were
going to have a touch of the jaundice; she’s getting a bit yellow. I’ll
give her some new medicine,” and he began to write on one of his
prescription blanks.

“What’s jaundice, Mother?” asked Nan, when the doctor was gone. “Did I
ever have it?”

“Yes, you had it, and you turned as yellow as saffron, so Dinah said. As
a rule, it isn’t anything serious. Little babies often have it. Their
stomachs get out of order. But I will need to have this medicine brought
from the drug store.”

“I’ll get it,” offered Bert.

“I’ll go with you,” said Nan.

“We’ll go, too,” chimed in Flossie and Freddie.

“No, it’s too late,” said their father, for, though it was not yet dark,
night was fast coming on.

However, it was not too late for Bert and Nan to go to the drug store,
which was only a few blocks away, and out they started. Bert had some
money saved up, and he treated his sister to an ice-cream cone while
they waited for the medicine to be prepared.

It was when the twins were on their way home that Bert saw Nan stop,
turn around, and look back several times.

“What’s the matter?” he finally asked.

“I thought I saw some one following us,” she answered.

“Some one coming after us, do you mean?”

“Yes.”

“Who was it—Danny Rugg?” asked Bert. “He isn’t mean any more. He used
to follow you and throw stones at you, but he doesn’t any more.”

“No, it wasn’t Danny Rugg,” Nan answered.

“Who then?”

“It was an old woman.”

“An old woman!” exclaimed Bert. “Do you mean it was the same one who
left Baby May?”

“I couldn’t be sure about that,” replied Nan, once more glancing back
over her shoulder. “But it was some old woman. She has been following us
for two blocks.”

“Wait a minute—we’ll fool her the way detectives do!” exclaimed Bert,
not explaining how he happened to know anything about detectives.

“What you going to do?” asked Nan.

“We’ll turn the next corner, and then we’ll hide in a doorway,” Bert
explained. “If any old woman is following us she’ll think we kept right
on and we can see who she is.”

“Oh, I know, like playing tag,” said Nan.

So the children turned the next corner quickly, and then, swinging back,
hid themselves in a doorway. They waited, but no one followed them. They
waited some little time longer. Then Bert stepped out and looked back
down the street from which they had turned.

“No one’s coming,” he said. “I guess you didn’t see anybody, Nan.”

“Yes, I did,” she insisted.

When the twins reached home with the medicine, and told their parents
about the matter, Mr. Bobbsey said:

“I don’t believe it was the same old woman. She doesn’t want to be found
out, that’s certain; so she wouldn’t come back to the same town in which
she deserted the baby. It was some other old woman, Nan.”

“Well, perhaps it was, Daddy,” said Bert’s sister.

After that they thought no more about it. The new medicine seemed to be
just what Baby May needed, for she was much better the next day. She
really had the jaundice, and her skin grew ever so yellow, causing the
Bobbsey twins to fear for the worst. But their mother laughed at their
alarm and said Baby May would soon be better.

And she was. A few days later she could be taken out in the yard and
allowed to sleep in the hammock beneath the overshadowing trees.

Mrs. Bobbsey placed Baby May in the hammock, where the little thing
crowed and cooed in her happiness at feeling well again. Freddie was
with his mother. Nan had taken Flossie down to a store to buy her a new
hair ribbon. Bert had gone fishing with some of the boys.

“De telafoam am ringin’,” announced Dinah, coming to the back door and
calling to Mrs. Bobbsey. “Somebody done want yo’, Mrs. Bobbsey.”

“I’ll come right in, Dinah. Freddie, you watch Baby May a little while,
and don’t swing the hammock.”

“No’m, I won’t,” Freddie promised.

He sat beside the baby, smiling at her, for she was so pretty and cute,
and letting May catch hold of one of his fingers. Then, as Freddie
looked toward the street he saw something—or rather, some one. And that
some one was an old lady in a faded shawl. Freddie insisted afterward
that the shawl was faded.

At any rate, an old lady passed the Bobbsey house, and when she saw a
baby swinging in a hammock in the side yard, with a little boy sitting
beside the hammock, a strange look came over her face.

“Oh!” softly murmured Freddie. “Oh, it’s the same old woman!”

As he spoke thus to himself the old woman put her hand on the closed
gate, and seemed about to push it open.

“Don’t come in here! Don’t you come in!” screamed Freddie, in such a
loud voice that he frightened Baby May and she began to cry.

“Don’t you come in!” Freddie shouted again.




                              CHAPTER XVI
                              A LOST BABY


Very much frightened and hardly knowing what he was doing, Freddie
sprang toward the hammock and started to take Baby May up in his arms.
It was almost more than he could do, for he did not know much about the
way to carry babies. But he made up his mind to keep Baby May safe.

Freddie gave one look back over his shoulder as he reached down to take
up the infant, and he saw that the old lady, whoever she was, did not
intend to come into the yard. She had put her hand on the gate as if to
open it, and then she seemed to change her mind.

She was muttering something to herself, but what it was Freddie could
not hear.

Again he cried:

“You can’t come in here! Go away! You can’t have Baby May!”

The old woman turned away without opening the gate, and walked off down
the street. Freddie’s heart stopped beating so fast.

Mrs. Bobbsey, alarmed by Freddie’s screams, came running out of the
house after having answered the telephone.

“Freddie, what is the matter?” his mother asked. “You shouldn’t take
Baby May up out of the hammock!” she went on. “You might drop her. Don’t
lift her up!”

By this time Freddie had ceased trying to lift Baby May. He let her sink
back on the soft blankets in the hammock and, then, turning to his
mother, he said:

“I was going to bring her into the house.”

“Why, Freddie Bobbsey! What in the world made you do that?” his mother
asked. “Didn’t I tell you never to try to carry May?”

“I didn’t want the old lady to get her!”

“What old lady?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey, though she knew, almost without
asking, what person Freddie must mean.

“That same old lady,” Freddie replied. “The one with the green umbrella,
but she didn’t have a green umbrella this time. She had on a faded shawl
and—”

“Did she try to come in here and get May?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey, now
almost as much excited as Freddie was. “Where is she? Where did she go?”

“She didn’t come in,” the little boy replied. “But she put her hand on
the gate and I yelled and—”

“Yes, I heard you,” gasped Mrs. Bobbsey. “But go on—what else happened,
Freddie?”

“Nothing, Mother. She just went away—down the street.”

Mrs. Bobbsey hastened to the gate and looked up and down the street, but
she saw no sign of the curious old woman.

“Are you sure you saw her, Freddie?” she inquired.

“Course I’m sure!” replied Flossie’s twin brother. “I saw her with my
own eyes, and so did Baby May! You can ask her!” He looked down at the
cooing child as if May could answer. But May only smiled up at Freddie,
and her smile was very sweet.

“I must telephone daddy about this,” decided Mrs. Bobbsey, after another
look up and down the street, without, however, seeing the strange woman.
“If she is back in Lakeport the police should know about it, so they can
try to find out to whom the baby belongs. I’ll telephone daddy.”

This she did, and Mr. Bobbsey grew rather excited when he heard the
news. He hurried home from the office at the lumber dock and at once
began a search of the neighborhood for the old woman. He inquired of the
neighbors and others, but, though some said they remembered seeing her,
they could not tell where she had gone.

Nor did the police have any better luck, for though two of them scurried
about town, looking for traces of the stranger, she could not be found.

“Well, this is very strange,” said Mr. Bobbsey that night, when Baby May
had gone to sleep and they were talking over matters after supper. “At
first I thought maybe Freddie might be mistaken.”

“You mean that he didn’t see any old lady at all?” asked Bert.

“Yes. I thought perhaps he might have—well, sort of dreamed it,” and
Mr. Bobbsey smiled at the little boy.

“I didn’t dream it!” cried Freddie, very positively. “I saw the old
woman, and so did Baby May. Anyhow, I don’t dream in the daytime with my
eyes open.”

“No, I suppose not,” agreed his father. “Well, since you saw her, and
since others saw her, there is no doubt but that some old lady started
to come into our yard. Whether she was the same one the children saw
just before Baby May was left on our doorstep—that is another
question.”

“I’m sure she was!” insisted Freddie. But of course he was a rather
small boy, and he might have been mistaken.

“Then the next thing to think about is,” said Mr. Bobbsey, “what did the
old woman want?”

“She wanted to take Baby May back!” said Nan promptly.

“I guess she’s sorry she gave her away,” added Bert.

“It’s hard to guess a reason for her strange acts,” observed Mr.
Bobbsey. “If she wanted to get rid of the baby, why, now, does she want
the child back?”

“I don’t want to lose Baby May,” said Mrs. Bobbsey softly. “I have grown
to love her too much. But of course if her real father and mother wanted
her I would be glad to give her up. But I don’t believe that old woman
is her mother. Do you, Daddy?” she asked her husband.

“No,” he replied, “I don’t. I think there is some mystery here that we
don’t understand. Though I can’t see why we haven’t heard some news in
some of the papers about a missing or kidnapped baby. It certainly is
very strange. But I have decided on one thing. We shall have no more
scares such as Freddie had to-day.”

“How are you going to stop it?” asked Bert.

“We will go away for a time,” answered Mr. Bobbsey.

“Go away!” echoed the Bobbsey twins.

“Yes. On a little vacation trip,” went on Mr. Bobbsey. “We will go to
the country where the old woman can’t find us.”

“Oh, to the country!” cried Nan, in delight.

“To Meadow Brook?” asked Bert.

“No, we can hardly go as far away as Meadow Brook,” said his father.
“Though, no doubt, Uncle Daniel would be glad to see us. But I heard
to-day of a nice boarding house in a small country town not far away,
and we will go there for a vacation trip.”

“Oh, goodie!” cried Flossie.

“Have they got cows?” Freddie demanded.

“I guess so,” his father answered. “So, Mother, you had better get ready
to go and take Baby May with you,” he added.

“If they have cows they must have horses,” was Freddie’s comment. “And
if they have horses I’m going to go horseback riding.”

“Why must they have horses if they have cows?” Flossie wanted to know.

“Oh, ’cause they always do. When they take the milk to the station they
have to carry the cans in a wagon, don’t they? And horses have to pull
the wagon, don’t they?”

“I’ll ride in the wagon. I don’t want to go on a horse’s back,” said
Flossie.

There were busy times during the next few days, and then came a short
but delightful trip to Pine Hill, a little country town where a farmer
and his wife took a few boarders during the summer.

The Bobbsey family about filled the place, and there were only two other
people as boarders, two old ladies. Mr. and Mrs. Meekin, who kept the
boarding house, welcomed the Bobbsey twins, their parents and Baby May.

“Oh, what a sweet child!” exclaimed Mrs. Meekin. “How old is she?”

“I don’t know exactly,” replied Mrs. Bobbsey.

“You don’t?” cried the two old lady boarders, in surprise.

“No. You see May isn’t my child. She is a foundling left on our
doorstep,” explained Mrs. Bobbsey. She thought it best to tell the true
story of Baby May. If she did not, one of the twins would be sure to do
so.

Another reason for giving out the fact about Baby May was that Mrs.
Bobbsey wanted all in the house to know about the strange old woman in
the faded shawl, so, if by any chance she should appear at Pine Hill,
the alarm would be given promptly.

“She is a dear, sweet baby, whoever owns her,” said Miss Himson, one of
the old lady boarders.

“Indeed she is!” agreed Miss Jackson, the other old lady boarder.

Happy were the days the Bobbsey twins spent at Pine Hill. Not only were
there cows, to Freddie’s delight, but there were sheep and horses,
besides ducks and chickens.

Freddie never tired of watching the ducks swim, and once he fell into a
mud puddle as he tried to fasten a long string to one of the ducks. The
string was tied to a boat Freddie had made, and he wanted the duck to
pull it. My, you should have seen Freddie after he fell into the duck
pond! Oh, so muddy and wet!

But the Bobbsey twins had lots of fun, and Baby May grew fat and
rosy-cheeked in those days spent in the fresh air of the country.

One day Nan was allowed to wheel the baby in her carriage to a little
clump of woods not far from the house. Bert, Flossie and Freddie also
went along, and the children took a lunch with them.

The twins had a regular picnic under the trees in the cool, shady grove,
and played games, having a lovely time. Baby May went to sleep in her
carriage on top of a little hill, covered with slippery pine needles,
down which Freddie and Flossie slid. The needles made the hill almost as
slippery as snow or ice would have done.

After a while Bert wandered away to see if he could find a place to
fish, for he had brought a hook and line and some bait with him. Flossie
and Freddie begged Nan to go with them to look for wild flowers.

“All right, I’ll go a little way,” agreed Nan. “I guess Baby May will be
all right asleep in her carriage.”

The two girls and Freddie were gone rather longer than they meant to be,
and when they returned to the grove where they had left May in the
carriage, the carriage and the baby were gone.

“Oh! Oh!” gasped Nan. “Where is May?”

“Maybe Bert came back and wheeled her around ’cause she was crying,”
suggested Flossie.

“Oh, maybe! I hope so!” murmured Nan.

But when Bert came back a little later, having found no place to fish,
he said he had not wheeled away Baby May.

“Then where is she?” gasped Nan, her heart fluttering strangely.

“She—she’s lost!” cried Flossie, and then, as the dreadful thought
became clearer to her she sobbed: “Baby May is lost!”




                              CHAPTER XVII
                           THE GREEN UMBRELLA


Certainly it was very strange—this vanishing of Baby May, carriage and
all. What could it mean?

“Oh! Oh!” sobbed Flossie. “What will mother say? It wasn’t my fault, was
it?” she asked, remembering the time she had left the baby carriage for
a moment and it had so nearly rolled under the runaway horses hitched to
the coal wagon.

“No, dear, of course it wasn’t your fault,” replied Nan soothingly. “But
where can the baby be? We weren’t gone so very long. Bert, are you sure
you aren’t playing a joke on us?”

“Course I’m not playing a joke!” ejaculated Bert earnestly. “I wouldn’t
play a joke like this!”

And Nan believed him.

“It’s that old woman—I know ’tis!” declared Freddie.

“Let’s look around,” suggested Nan eagerly. “If the old woman did take
May away she can’t have got very far. Let’s look around!”

Standing on top of the little hill, the Bobbsey twins began to look
about them for a possible sight of the old woman hurrying away and
wheeling Baby May. But they saw no one.

Suddenly Freddie slipped on the pine needles and began sliding down the
hill. It was what he and Flossie had done before, to have fun, but now
Freddie’s slipping was an accident.

“Oh!” he cried as he felt himself going. “Oh, I’m skidding!”

He had heard his father say this while driving the automobile on a wet
and slippery pavement.

Freddie slid all the way down to the bottom of the hill. He came to a
stop near a clump of bushes—bushes covered with thick, green leaves.

And then, all of a sudden, while Flossie, Bert and Nan stood on the top
of the hill, hardly knowing whether or not to laugh at Freddie, and when
they were wondering what dreadful thing might have happened to Baby May,
Freddie gave a loud cry.

It was not a cry as if he were hurt. It was, rather, a cry of joy. Then
the little fellow yelled:

“I’ve found her! I’ve found Baby May! Here’s her carriage in the bushes!
I’ve found her!”

You can imagine how swiftly Bert raced down that hill. Nan tried to
follow as fast as her twin brother, but she slipped and slid on the pine
needles—she “skidded” just as Freddie had done. As for Flossie, she
started to run, but she tripped and fell on her face. Then she, too,
slid down the remainder of the way on the brown needles.

In this way all four of the Bobbsey twins reached the bottom of the
hill. Bert was the first to get to where Freddie sat, pointing his
chubby forefinger.

“Where is it?” demanded Bert. “Where’s the carriage and Baby May?”

“Right in there!” Freddie answered.

Bert saw the carriage, almost completely hidden behind a screen of green
leaves. At the same time Nan and Flossie saw it.

“Oh,” murmured Nan. “Oh, maybe she isn’t in the carriage! Maybe the old
woman took May out and pushed the carriage down the hill!”

“We’ll soon see!” exclaimed Bert.

He dashed into the bushes, pulled aside the branches that almost covered
the carriage, and cried:

“She’s all right! She’s here fast asleep!”

As he spoke, his loud voice awakened the baby, who cooed and gurgled so
that the others heard her.

“I’ll wheel her out,” said Bert, and a moment later Baby May was
surrounded by the Bobbsey twins. Everything was all right now—the lost
baby had been found.

“Oh, Baby May! Baby May!” cried Nan, gathering the infant up in her
arms. “Oh, if that old woman had taken you what would I have done?”

“Maybe the old woman did try to take her,” suggested Bert. “She may have
come as far as this down the hill, and then she heard us coming and she
hid the carriage here.”

“Maybe,” agreed Nan. And then, as she remembered how she and the two
smaller twins had slipped down the pine needle hill she added: “And
maybe the carriage rolled down by itself, Bert. I put the brake on, but
sometimes it doesn’t hold.”

“Yes, maybe it did happen that way,” Bert admitted. “The carriage could
have rolled down the hill, and it could have rolled in behind the bushes
and we wouldn’t see it until we went down close and looked—as Freddie
did. I guess maybe the carriage did roll down by itself. It could slide
easy on the pine needles, and it wouldn’t wake up Baby May.”

Having caught no sight of the strange old woman, the children finally
decided it must all have been an accident.

The brakes did not hold very well, as Nan said, and some movement of the
baby in her sleep might have started the carriage to rolling. Down the
hill it could easily coast and push its way in through the screen of
green leaves, the branches springing back into place, thus hiding the
carriage from view until Freddie happened to see it.

“Well, I’m glad everything is all right,” announced Nan, as they started
back for the boarding house. “I wouldn’t want to go home without Baby
May.”

“Nor I,” said Flossie.

It was not easy for Nan and Bert to tell their mother what had happened,
but they knew they must. They feared she would blame them for being
careless, but all Mrs. Bobbsey said was:

“You must be a little more careful. If you knew the brakes on the
carriage didn’t hold, Nan, you should have blocked the wheels with a
stone or a piece of wood. But I’ll have daddy fix the brakes.” And the
next day Mr. Bobbsey tightened the brakes so they would hold better.

Mr. Bobbsey also went to the hill and looked at the place where it was
supposed the carriage had rolled down by itself.

“Yes, it could have happened that way,” he said to his wife. “But I must
make sure the old woman is not sneaking around here. She may have
followed us.”

“But we didn’t tell any of the neighbors where we were going!” exclaimed
Mrs. Bobbsey. “Just on that account we didn’t tell them—so if the old
woman came back and inquired of the neighbors where we had gone, they
couldn’t say.”

“All the same she may have found out and have come here,” returned Mr.
Bobbsey. “I’ll make some inquiries.”

But as no one around Pine Hill had seen the stranger, the father of the
Bobbsey twins began to feel a little easier in his mind.

“Probably it was just an accident,” he said.

The summer days at Pine Hill were happy ones for the Bobbsey twins. They
played about in the woods and fields, and Mrs. Bobbsey sometimes went
with them, taking Baby May in her carriage. Flossie and Nan had their
dolls to play with, and many a little party they made up under the apple
trees. There was a big swing, too, in the orchard, and there the twins
had fun all day long.

Bert had become very fond of fishing since coming to Pine Hill. There
were several small streams in the country round about, and from them he
had pulled several good-sized fish that Mrs. Meekin cooked for him.

One day Bert took Freddie off on a fishing trip to a place about a mile
from their boarding house. Freddie had a little pole of his own, and
Bert promised to bait the hook for him, as Freddie, otherwise, might get
it stuck in his fingers.

The boys sat down on the bank of the stream under a shady buttonwood
tree, and tossed their baited hooks into the water. Fastened on their
lines were bits of cork, painted green.

“When you see your cork bobber go under the water,” said Bert to
Freddie, “you want to pull in quick.”

“Why?” asked Freddie curiously.

“’Cause why,” answered Bert. “’Cause when your green bobber goes under
it means there’s a fish on the hook, and you want to pull it in before
it gets off.”

“Oh,” answered Freddie. Then, after a moment, suddenly he cried: “There
she goes!” and he jerked up his pole. On the end of his line was a
large, wiggling fish.

“Oh, you caught a good one!” cried Bert.

He took Freddie’s fish off the hook, and then Bert caught one himself.
The boys were having good luck with their fishing. Presently Freddie
stood up to “stretch his legs,” as he called it. He gave a sudden start
and, looking at Bert, exclaimed:

“I just saw it again, Bert! I just saw it!”

“Saw what?” Bert asked, not paying much attention to his brother, for he
felt a nibble at his bait. “What did you just see, Freddie?”

“The green umbrella!” whispered the little fellow. “I just saw a green
umbrella going along the road,” and he pointed to the highway which
passed not far from the stream where the two were fishing. “It was a
green umbrella, just like that kidnapper woman carried, Bert!”




                             CHAPTER XVIII
                               KIDNAPPED


For a moment Bert hardly knew whether or not to believe what Freddie
said. Of course he knew that his little brother would not tell an
untruth, but Freddie might be mistaken. So Bert made up his mind to ask
him again what he had said. The fish which had been nibbling at Bert’s
bait seemed not to like it, and swam away.

“What did you say you saw, Freddie?” asked the older boy.

“I saw—now—I saw that green umbrella!” whispered Freddie, getting up
from his seat on the bank and walking over to Bert. “The green umbrella
went past in the road—the same kind of a green umbrella the little old
woman had when afterward we found the baby on our steps.”

Freddie seemed very sure about this. He was not fooling—Bert could tell
that. And the little boy seemed somewhat frightened. Otherwise he would
not have whispered and have come over so close to his older brother.

“Maybe you saw a tree waving in the wind—a tree with green leaves on
it, Freddie,” suggested Bert, to try him. “Or it might have been a bush
that you saw.”

“No, sir!” insisted Freddie stoutly. “It was a green umbrella.”

“Did you see the little old woman, Freddie?”

“No, I didn’t see her. But I saw her umbrella—a green one.”

“Well, we’ll take a look down the road,” decided Bert. “I guess we have
enough fish, anyhow, and we might as well go home. We can look and see
if the old woman is there.”

“If she is, you won’t let her take me, will you, Bert?”

“Of course not! Don’t be silly!”

“But she’s a kidnapper—Nan said she was.”

“Well, maybe she did kidnap Baby May and then leave her with us; but she
wouldn’t take a big boy like you.”

“If she did,” declared Freddie, winding up his line, “I’d bite her and
I’d kick her and I’d scratch her.”

“Well, I guess that wouldn’t be any too much for a kidnapper,” laughed
Bert. “But I don’t believe we’ll see any one, Freddie.”

When the two brothers had crossed the field of clover and reached the
highway, there was neither a green umbrella nor an old woman in
sight—nothing but the dusty road.

“She isn’t here,” said Bert. “I didn’t think there would be anybody.”

“But I did see a green umbrella,” insisted Freddie. “Maybe if you looked
in the dust you could see her feet marks like when you and the other
fellows make believe trail Indians and wild game. Take a look, Bert.”

“Well, we can look, but I don’t believe we’ll find anything,” the older
boy answered.

But when he saw the plain marks of a woman’s shoes in the dust at the
side of the road, Bert had to admit that there might have been some
woman along there. The footprints came on to the highway at a place
where a narrow path wound back into the woods, and they showed that the
woman, whoever she was, had come out of the clump of trees and had
walked along the dusty road.

“There! What’d I tell you?” exclaimed Freddie. “Wasn’t an old woman
along here with a green umbrella? I saw it!”

“Some woman has been here—that’s plain enough,” Bert had to say. “But I
can’t tell by these marks how old she was, and nobody could tell if she
had a green umbrella or not.”

“If she had an umbrella, and she kept sticking the end down in the dirt
like daddy sticks his cane on Sundays, then you could tell,” said
Freddie.

“Yes,” admitted Bert, “then you could tell. But I don’t see any umbrella
marks.”

Neither could Freddie, but he was sure he had seen the green umbrella
passing along the highway. But it had been held up, and the old woman
was probably using it as a sunshade; so Freddie had to admit that it
could not have made marks in the dust.

The boys followed the trail of the woman’s footsteps in the dust as far
as they could see them. Then the woman, whoever she was, had stepped
from the side of the highway, where the dust was thickest, into the
hard, middle part, where there were many wheel marks, both of
automobiles and wagons, and also the prints of horses’ feet.

“We’ve lost ’em!” announced Bert, as the footprints vanished. “No use
trailing her any farther.”

“Can’t you tell which way she went?” asked Freddie.

“No,” his brother replied. “Maybe she turned around and walked back, or
maybe she kept on, and, if she did, she might have turned off on any
cross road. No use following her any farther, Freddie.”

“All right. But we’ll tell daddy and mother, sha’n’t we?”

“Oh, sure!” Bert agreed.

The boys trudged back to the house with their strings of fish.

“Oh, what fine luck you had!” cried Nan, as she met them.

“And we had an adventure, too!” burst out Freddie. “I saw the old woman
kidnapper—I mean, I didn’t _zactly_ see her, but I saw her green
umbrella and—and—”

But he had to stop, for he was out of breath.

“What does he mean, Bert?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey, with a quick look at her
older son.

“Well, he surely thinks he saw the green umbrella,” Bert explained, and
then he went on with the story.

Mr. Bobbsey looked a bit serious when, later, he heard all about it.

“What do you think?” his wife asked him.

“Of course that strange old woman may have followed us here, and she may
be anxious to get Baby May back,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “Though how she
found us I don’t know. And I can’t imagine why she is so mysterious. If
she wanted the baby, why did she desert her in a storm on our steps? And
if she gave her away, why, now, does she want her back?”

“It’s all very mysteriousness, isn’t it?” asked Nan, and when Bert
laughed at her for saying the big word wrong she wrinkled up her nose at
him, which was as near as Nan ever came to “making a face.”

“Yes, it is strange,” her father said, and he did not even smile at
Nan’s error. “I think I must make some more inquiries around here.
Surely if there is a mysterious woman going about and carrying a green
umbrella, some one ought to see her. Meanwhile, you had better take
extra good care of Baby May.”

“I certainly will do that!” said Mrs. Bobbsey.

For the next few days Baby May was not wheeled in her carriage very far
from the house. Or, if she was, either Mr. or Mrs. Bobbsey went with the
children who took May out for an airing. Neither Flossie nor Freddie,
together or singly, were allowed to wheel Baby May now, unless Bert or
Nan went along.

“We can’t take any chances,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “Of course May isn’t our
baby, but I love her as much as though she were, and I don’t intend that
some one who has no right to her shall take her away from us.”

So Baby May was given extra care. She seemed to have gotten all over her
illness and laughed and cooed and “talked” for she could now say a few
words, though of course she could not put them together in a sentence.
She smiled and made her blue eyes sparkle, until Nan, hugging and
kissing her, declared she was the “dearest, sweetest and loveliest baby
in all the world.” And of course she was—just as every baby is to those
who love children.

Meanwhile Mr. Bobbsey rode about in his automobile, sometimes taking Nan
and Bert with him, and he made inquiries of all whom he met about the
mysterious old woman with the green umbrella.

At first he could learn no news. No one seemed to have seen her. But one
day, when Mr. Bobbsey and Nan and Bert stopped at a lonely farmhouse so
the children could get a drink of water, he got a “clew,” as he called
it. Afterward he told Bert and Nan that a “clew” on a ship was something
to which a rope may be fastened.

“And when you are searching for some one or something, a clew is a bit
of information to which you may fasten other news and so, after a while,
get enough clews to lead you to what you are looking for,” said Mr.
Bobbsey.

“Let’s see now—a queer old woman with a green umbrella,” musingly
repeated a farmer of whom Mr. Bobbsey asked this question. “Yes, I did
see such a person. She came to our door four or five days ago and asked
for a drink of milk. My wife gave her a glass. I’ll call her. She can
tell you more than I can.”

Mrs. Kenton said that she had seen the queer old woman.

“She carried a faded green umbrella, and she wore a faded shawl,” she
said to Mr. Bobbsey. “She acted queer, too, and kept putting her hand to
her head as if it hurt her. I asked her if it ached and if she didn’t
want a cup of tea to cure it. But she said it wasn’t exactly an ache,
but a sort of buzzing. It was getting better she told me, after she had
taken the milk.”

“Did she say anything about having lost a baby or of having left one on
the steps of our house?” asked Mr. Bobbsey.

“Good land! Left a baby on your steps! No, she didn’t say anything about
that!” exclaimed Mrs. Kenton. “Do tell! Land sakes!”

“I am anxious to know why she is acting so strangely around here,” went
on Mr. Bobbsey. “Do you know where she lives?”

This the Kentons did not know. The old woman had departed, green
umbrella, faded shawl and all, after resting herself and drinking the
milk.

“Well, at least we have proved that she is real,” said Mr. Bobbsey to
Bert and Nan, on their way home. “She isn’t imaginary.”

“Do you think Freddie saw her?” asked Nan.

“He may have,” admitted her father. “I wish I knew what to do about it.
I don’t want to keep Baby May away from her parents, but I don’t want
this queer old woman to have her.”

Mrs. Bobbsey was a bit excited when she heard the news her husband
brought.

“Here, Nan,” she said to her daughter, “you take Baby May out in the
side yard under the trees with Flossie and Freddie. I want to talk to
your father undisturbed for a little while.”

Bert had gone with Mr. Meekin to help with the evening “chores,” and
this left Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey free to talk when Nan had taken Baby May
and the smaller twins out in the yard.

“What do you think we had better do?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey of her husband.
“I don’t like this shadow of a strange woman always hovering over us and
the baby.”

“Neither do I. Suppose we go to some other place, and go in such a
way—perhaps at night—that she can’t find us?”

“I think that would be a good plan. She must have inquired of the
neighbors back in Lakeport and so have traced us.”

“I suppose so; though I thought we had kept it quiet. But we don’t want
to spoil the children’s summer. I’ll look for another place.”

The sound of footsteps on the side porch was heard and, looking out,
Mrs. Bobbsey saw Nan coming in, followed by Freddie and Flossie.

“You shouldn’t come in and leave Baby May out there all alone!” warned
Mrs. Bobbsey.

“Oh, she’s all right,” said Nan. “She’s sound asleep, and I can see the
carriage from here, and Flossie and Freddie wanted something to eat.”

“It’s too near supper time,” said their mother. “You must wait, my
dears,” she told the smaller twins. “Don’t spoil your appetites.”

“I can’t spoil mine—it’s too big,” chuckled Freddie. “I just wanted a
cookie.”

“So do I,” said Flossie.

Their mother finally allowed them a cookie apiece, for she found out
that supper would be a bit late, as Mrs. Meekin wanted to finish
skimming the milk as she was going to churn the next day.

Then Nan decided she wanted a cookie for herself, so it was perhaps five
or ten minutes before the children went back to where they had left Baby
May in the carriage.

But, all the while, the carriage was in plain sight from the porch. Even
Mr. Bobbsey could watch it, so nothing was feared.

Nan and Flossie and Freddie, munching their molasses cookies, went back
to where they had left Baby May, Nan gently raised the coverings to see
if May was still asleep.

“Oh! Oh!” she gasped.

“What is it?” Flossie wanted to know.

“Is a bee stinging Baby May?” asked Freddie.

“Oh! Oh, no!” cried Nan, and she was very pale. “Baby May—she—she
isn’t here! She’s gone!”

From the porch Mrs. Bobbsey was watching. She realized that something
was wrong, and she ran down to the carriage about which Nan, Flossie and
Freddie stood.

“What is it, Nan?” she asked quickly. “Has anything happened?”

“Baby—Baby May!” sobbed Nan, “She’s gone! She’s been kidnapped!”




                              CHAPTER XIX
                              ON THE TRAIL


Flossie, Freddie and Nan were sobbing now. Their tears fell thick and
fast and they wailed aloud.

“Children! Children! Be quiet!” ordered Mrs. Bobbsey. “What does it all
mean? Baby May can’t have been taken. The carriage has been in plain
sight all the while. She’s probably under the covers, Nan! Don’t be
silly!”

“I’m not si-si-silly, Mother! Baby May’s gone! I—I felt under the
covers and she—she isn’t there.”

“I—I can’t feel her to-toes!” sobbed Flossie, her hand in the lower end
of the carriage.

By this time Mrs. Bobbsey herself had made sure there was no baby in the
carriage. She took out all the coverings.

“She must have tumbled out and crawled away,” she said. “She can’t be
gone! Look in the grass and bushes, children!”

“Wouldn’t she cry if she fell out?” Freddie wanted to know. He had
stopped crying when his mother came along.

“She might not cry if she fell on soft leaves and didn’t hurt herself,”
answered Mrs. Bobbsey. “Look carefully, children!”

But all the looking in the world would not have found Baby May just
then, and it did not take Mrs. Bobbsey long to make certain that the
infant was not around the carriage.

“Well, the worst has happened,” she said, and there was the sound of
tears in her own voice. “Baby May didn’t fall out. She was taken away!”

“I said she was kidnapped!” declared Nan. “Soon as I didn’t see her in
the carriage and didn’t feel her, I knew she was kidnapped! Oh, Mother!
what are we going to do? Poor Baby May!”

“I—I want her back!” sobbed Flossie.

“It was that old woman—that old woman with the green umbrella!”
exclaimed Freddie. “She took May off, I know she did!”

“I’m beginning to believe so,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “We must do something
at once. Call your father, Nan—oh, never mind. Here he comes now!”

Mr. Bobbsey had gone in the house after Nan and the children had
departed with their cookies, and now he came out on the porch again.
Seeing his wife and the children gathered around the carriage he seemed
to guess that something was wrong.

“Has anything happened?” he asked, as he hurried across the grass. “Did
May fall out? Why, where is she?” he asked, seeing Nan wheeling the
empty carriage.

“Oh, Richard!” sobbed Mrs. Bobbsey, “the little one is gone—kidnapped!”

“No! It isn’t possible! Under our very eyes! How could it happen?” Mr.
Bobbsey asked.

“I don’t know,” his wife said. “But she’s gone. The old woman must have
sneaked up between the time the children left the carriage to get the
cookies and the time they went back.”

“Then she must have been hiding around here, waiting for just such a
chance,” declared Mr. Bobbsey. “This is too much! I must notify the
police at once. An alarm must be sent out and we must get on the trail
of this person. I believe she is crazy! She ought not to be allowed at
large with a baby!”

“Will she—will she hurt Baby May?” asked Flossie, alarmed by her
father’s excitement.

Then, as his wife made him a signal to be more careful, so as not to
frighten the children, Mr. Bobbsey said:

“Oh, no, I don’t believe the old woman will hurt May. She must love her
a great deal to want to take her away. But anybody who will leave an
infant on the steps in a thunder storm shouldn’t be allowed to have
charge of children. I’ll get the police after her at once.”

It was one thing to speak about getting the police to work, but it was
quite another thing to do this. In the quiet little hamlet of Pine Hill
there were no regular police officers—only a constable or two and a
justice of the peace.

“But Jim Denton is pretty smart,” said Mr. Meekin, when he and his wife
had been told of the terrible happening. “I had a horse stolen once, and
Jim got it back for me in less than a week. I’ll telephone him.”

“Say, Dad, can’t you and I take the trail after this old woman
ourselves?” asked Bert, in a whisper of his father, while Mr. Meekin was
at the telephone, calling up the constable.

“Yes, I intend to do what I can,” answered Mr. Bobbsey. “I’ll take the
auto and ride along every road I think the old woman must have taken.
And you may go with me, Bert.”

“Oh, do you think that will be wise?” asked his wife, overhearing what
was said.

“Yes,” her husband answered. “Bert will be a help to me. We may have to
be gone all night.”

Bert’s eyes sparkled with pleasure as his father said this. It might be
a great adventure!

“Bert, you must take good care of yourself,” said his mother anxiously.
“I wouldn’t have anything happen to you for the world!”

“Oh, I’ll be all right, don’t worry,” returned the son, with all the
confidence of a growing boy.

“But that woman may not be as nice as you think. For all we know, she
may be crazy and liable to do any wicked thing,” remarked Mrs. Meekin.

“I’ll keep my eyes open,” declared Bert sturdily.

“Jim’ll be right over in his car,” said Mr. Meekin, as he hung up the
telephone. “And while we’re waiting, let’s look the ground over and see
what happened.”

“And you must have supper—I’ll get it ready right away,” said Mrs.
Meekin. “Land sakes! To think of such things happening! My goodness!”

She bustled off to get the meal, which was almost ready, and Mr.
Bobbsey, with Bert and Mr. Meekin, went to the place where the carriage
had been left for just a few minutes alone with Baby May in it. And yet
those few minutes were enough for the kidnapping to have taken place.

That it was a kidnapping—and done by the strange old woman in the faded
shawl and with the green umbrella—all were now certain. Of course no
one had seen her, but everything pointed to her.

“She just waited her chance and then sneaked up,” said Bert.

That seemed to have been the manner of it. The back of the carriage was
turned toward the house, to keep the sun out of May’s eyes as she lay
asleep. It would have been an easy matter for the old woman—or any one
else—to have sneaked up and taken the baby. She could lift the child,
asleep as she was, out of the carriage under the cover of the hood, and
the children and Mr. and Mrs. Bobbsey on the porch could not see this
take place.

“Well, I can’t see anything here,” said Mr. Meekin, looking all around
the carriage.

“Nor I,” agreed Mr. Bobbsey.

“Let’s take a look up and down the road,” suggested Bert.

But nothing was in sight—no one in view. This was not strange, as there
were trees and bushes on either side of the highway, and it would have
been an easy matter for the kidnapper to have concealed herself in these
for a moment, or longer, and then to have taken some hidden path.

“Well, we must get on the trail at once,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “You have
the police, or whoever does such things, send out a general alarm, Mr.
Meekin. Bert and I will start off in our car, and when Jim Denton comes,
he can do his part.”

“Jim’s pretty good,” repeated Mr. Meekin. “He got back my horse.”

Mrs. Meekin had supper ready in a “jiffy,” as she called it. The meal
was not quite over when some one was heard running up the side porch. It
was some one in a hurry, that was very plain.




                               CHAPTER XX
                           AN EXCITING CHASE


The Bobbsey twins stopped eating and looked one at the other. What could
it mean—this hurried rush of some one up the steps? Then Flossie spoke.

“Maybe it’s the old woman bringing back Baby May,” she whispered.

“If it is, I’m going to catch her!” declared Freddie, getting ready to
slip down from his chair.

“Sit still, children,” ordered Mrs. Bobbsey.

Bert acted as though, he, too, would like to see who it was, for, as
yet, the caller was not in view. But a look from his father kept Bert in
his seat. He looked at Nan in a disappointed manner.

“It’s Jim Denton,” announced Mr. Meekin, as he saw the hurrying visitor
through the open door. “Come right in, Jim!” he called. “Had your
supper? If you haven’t—”

“Oh, I ate long ago,” announced the caller, who was the constable, or
chief policeman, for Pine Hill. “What’s all the excitement about?” he
asked. “Have you had another horse stolen, Pete?”

“No, not a horse this time. It’s worse—a little baby,” said Mr. Meekin.
“Didn’t they tell you at the post-office, where I telephoned to you?”

“No, they didn’t say what it was. Just said something was missing over
here and for me to hurry. I did, as soon as I could get a bite to eat.
But what do you mean—a baby taken? Is it lost?”

“Worse’n that, Jim,” said the farmer. “It’s a kidnapping case. You want
to do your best on this!”

“I will,” promised the constable. “Tell me all about it.”

“I’ll let Mr. Bobbsey do that,” said Mr. Meekin. “It’s his baby; or at
least he and his wife took care of it. And it was stolen out of the
carriage, right in my yard, Jim, with folks on the side porch. Greatest
mystery we ever had here! The children left the baby a moment and—”

“Say, I thought you were going to let Mr. Bobbsey tell the story,”
remarked Jim, with a smile, as he looked at his watch. “If this is a
kidnapping case the sooner we get on the trail and chase after the
kidnapper the better.”

“That’s right. You tell him, Mr. Bobbsey,” begged Mr. Meekin. “I get so
excited thinking about it that my tongue runs away with me.”

Then the story was told, the Bobbsey twins telling their share in the
sorrowful affair of how Baby May was stolen right out of her carriage,
when she was left alone but for a moment.

“Hum!” remarked Constable Jim Denton, when the story was finished. “It
is very strange. I’ll take a look at the place.”

“You won’t find any clews there, because we looked,” said Bert, with a
very grown-up air.

“Well, maybe, I won’t. But I’ll take a look, just the same,” replied the
constable.

They all went with him while he looked over the place where the carriage
had been left just before Baby May was stolen from it. As Bert had said,
there was little in the way of clews, or anything to tell who the
kidnapper was or which way she had gone.

That it was the strange woman with the faded shawl and the green
umbrella, every one felt sure.

“I’ve heard something about that old woman hanging around these parts,”
the constable said, “but I’ve never laid eyes on her. This time I hope I
do.”

“I’m going to help in the search,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “My son and I will
go off in our auto, but of course we’ll act under your orders, Mr.
Denton, as you are in charge.”

“Well, I don’t know that I have any special orders,” the constable said
slowly. “The main thing is to catch that old woman and get back the
baby.”

“Oh, yes, I want Baby May back!” sighed Mrs. Bobbsey.

“And I want her, too,” said Flossie, with tears in her eyes.

“Have you an automobile, Mr. Denton?” asked the father of the Bobbsey
twins.

“Well, some folks call it that, and then again they speak of it as a tin
Lizzie,” chuckled the constable. “It gets me where I want to go and back
again. Well, we’d better start if we’re going,” he added.

“That’s what I think,” agreed Mr. Bobbsey. “And as there is no telling
which way this old woman has gone, one of us can go up the main road,
and the other down the main road until we get some sort of clew.”

“A good idea,” said the constable. “It ought not to be hard to find this
old woman. Traveling with a baby, as she is, some one is bound to take
notice of her. It’ll be an easier case than your lost horse, Pete,” he
said to Mr. Meekin.

“I’m sure I hope so,” said Mrs. Meekin, who had learned to love Baby
May, as had every one else.

After arranging to telephone in as soon as he should have any news,
Constable Jim Denton went off in his little automobile, going up the
road, or toward the next town of Rosemount.

“Well, Bert, I guess we’d better start on our part of the chase,” said
Mr. Bobbsey to his son.

“Do you think it safe to take Bert with you?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.

“Why not?” asked her husband.

“Oh, Mother, I want to go!” pleaded Bert. “Crickity grasshoppers—”

“But your father may be on the road all night—or at least away all
night, my dear.”

“I can stay up all night, Mother!” insisted Bert.

“He’ll be all right,” said Mr. Bobbsey, with a smile. “And I may need
him to help me. We sha’n’t travel quite all night. If we get too far
away to return by, say, eleven o’clock, we’ll stay at a hotel all night.
Don’t worry, Mother!”

He kissed his wife good-bye, and kissed Nan, Flossie and Freddie.

“I’ll bring back Baby May!” said Bert firmly, as he, too, kissed his
mother.

“I’m sure I hope so,” murmured Mrs. Bobbsey.

Mr. Bobbsey and Bert took the “down road,” as it was called, leading to
the city of Millville, though the city itself was several miles away.
However, there were small towns and villages in between, and it was
thought that some news might be obtained in one of these of the old
woman and Baby May.

“Maybe she might go off into the woods and camp there, like a gypsy,”
suggested Bert, as he and his father started off in the automobile.

“No, I hardly think so,” replied Mr. Bobbsey. “A little baby like May
would not fare very well if kept out all night in a camp in the
woods—that is, unless the woman had a tent, and I don’t believe she has
that.”

“But where has she been staying all the while she’s been spying on us
and trying to get the baby back?” asked Bert.

“That’s what I can’t find out,” said his father. “She must have lived
somewhere around here, and yet we can’t get a trace of her. If she
boarded with any of the farmers we would have heard about it.”

“Maybe she found an old hut or cabin, and is staying in that,” said
Bert.

“Perhaps,” his father admitted. “Well, we’ll inquire all along as we go,
and we may find her.”

They stopped at the first house they passed after leaving the home of
Mr. Meekin. But the people there had not seen a woman and baby going
past. They asked all sorts of questions, wanting to know all about the
kidnapping, but Mr. Bobbsey did not have time to say much. As soon as he
found out they could tell him nothing he hurried on with Bert.

It was the same at the next half dozen houses they stopped at—no one
had seen the kidnapper.

“But we must keep on with the search,” said Mr. Bobbsey.

“Of course,” agreed Bert. “I want to get back Baby May!”




                              CHAPTER XXI
                            IN THE DUCK POND


Meanwhile, back in the house at Pine Hill, the other Bobbsey children
and their mother waited anxiously for news from Bert and his father.

At first Nan was sure the two would come back in an hour after setting
off, bringing back Baby May. But when the long hand of the clock had
gone slowly all around the face twice, making two hours, Nan sighed and
said:

“I guess it’s going to take longer than I thought.”

“I’m afraid so,” agreed her mother.

Flossie and Freddie, however, though just as anxious to get back Baby
May as were Bert and Nan, did not think so much about the kidnapping of
the little one. Flossie and Freddie liked to have fun all the while, and
just waiting for some one to come back was not much fun.

“Let’s do something,” proposed Freddie, after a while.

“All right,” agreed Flossie. “What’ll we do?”

Freddie thought for a few moments. Then he said:

“Let’s go wading in the pond.”

“Oh-o-o-oo!” exclaimed Flossie, her eyes opening wide in surprise.
“Mother said we mustn’t go there!” she added.

“That was yesterday,” said Freddie, with a shake of his curly head.
“Yesterday it looked like it was going to rain, and she told us not to
go to the pond. To-day it isn’t going to rain, so we can go to the pond
and wade—with our shoes and stockings off,” he went on, after another
thought.

“Are you sure?” asked Flossie.

“Course I’m sure,” answered Freddie. “Come on!”

Perhaps if Flossie had not wanted so much to go and wade in the pond she
might have thought more of what her mother had said the day before. This
was that neither she nor Freddie was to go in wading. But then Freddie
might be right. Mrs. Bobbsey might not have wanted the children to play
in the water when it was likely to rain.

Now the sun was shining and the water of the pond sparkled in the bright
light. The pond was out of sight of the house. It was a place where a
brook widened out, making a swimming space for the ducks. Flossie and
Freddie had been allowed to sail toy boats on it, but had not been
allowed to go in wading.

“It’s too muddy,” Mrs. Bobbsey had said.

But now the two little Bobbsey twins made their way down to this pond,
no one in the house seeing them.

“I’ll get my shoes and stockings off before you do!” cried Freddie,
sitting down on the ground near the water.

“You will not! I can beat you!” cried Flossie.

She did, but she tore one of her stockings while taking it off in such a
hurry.

“I beat! I beat!” she cried, dancing up and down.

“But you tore your stocking!” cried Freddie, pointing to the hole.

“I don’t care—it was an old stocking,” replied Flossie.

“Well, anyhow, I’ll get in wading first!” shouted Freddie. He made a
dash toward the water, Flossie following closely after him.

“Oh! Oh!” suddenly cried the little girl.

Freddie turned and saw that she had fallen down.

“Did you hurt yourself, Flossie?” asked her brother kindly.

“N-n-no; not mu-mu-much!” she stammered. “Is my—now, is my nose red?”
she asked, raising her head from the ground, where she still lay.

Freddie ran forward and dipped one foot in the water of the pond.

“That’s to show I beat and got in first,” he said. Then he went back to
Flossie who was still stretched out on the ground. He wanted to be kind
to his sister, but a race was a race. “Your nose is a little red,” he
went on.

“Is it bleeding?” Flossie wanted to know, about ready to cry.

“No, it isn’t bleeding,” Freddie answered.

“Then I guess it’s all right,” Flossie went on. “Please help me up,
Freddie.”

Freddie did this, and the two barefooted Bobbsey twins, hand in hand,
walked toward the pond. Freddie did not care now if Flossie got in ahead
of him, for he had wet his feet first.

However, Flossie was a bit timid, so she stood on the edge of the pond
and said:

“Wade in again, Freddie, and tell me if it’s very deep and if it’s
cold.”

“It isn’t deep and it isn’t cold,” declared Freddie. “I’ll show you,
Flossie!”

He waded boldly out into the pond, splashing about and getting the
bottoms of his little trousers wet. He turned toward Flossie, to tell
her to come on out, but, suddenly, a queer look came over the little
boy’s face.

“Oh, Flossie!” he cried. “Something’s got me by the toe! Oh, I guess
it’s a mud turkle! Go call mother!”

Flossie paused for a moment on the edge of the pond.

“Go on! Go on!” cried Freddie, dancing about with one foot out of the
water. The other seemed stuck in the mud. “Go on. Call mother! Tell her
a mud turkle has me by the toe!”

“I don’t see any turkle,” remarked Flossie. Both she and Freddie called
it “turkle,” instead of turtle.

“Well, the turkle is here all right!” Freddie exclaimed. “He has me by
the toe! Maybe it’s a snapping turkle ’stid of a mud turkle! But go call
mother!”

Away ran Flossie, and she was soon gasping to her mother:

“It’s got him by the toe! It’s got him by the toe!”

“What has who by the toe?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.

“The turkle has Freddie by the toe,” explained Flossie. “Come on,
Mother!”

“Where is Freddie?” asked his mother.

“Down in the duck pond,” answered Flossie.

“Didn’t I tell you not to go wading there?” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. But
she did not wait for Flossie to answer. On hurried the mother of the
Bobbsey twins, Flossie keeping alongside of her.

“Freddie said it was all right to go in wading to-day, ’cause it was
yesterday you said we couldn’t go in,” remarked Flossie.

“Oh, my goodness!” gasped Mrs. Bobbsey. “Such children!”

By this time she was within sight of the pond where Freddie stood near
the edge. He was crying and was splashed from head to foot with muddy
water.

“Oh, Freddie! Are you hurt, child?” called his mother.

“The—the turkle’s—got hold of my toe yet and he won’t let go!” Freddie
sobbed.

There was a plank on the edge of the pond, and, pushing this out into
the water, Mrs. Bobbsey stepped on it until she could reach the little
boy without getting her own feet wet. She put her arms around Freddie
and lifted him from the water. That is, she tried to lift him, but at
first he did not come.

“He’s stuck in the mud!” shouted Flossie.

“It’s my foot! The turkle has hold of it!” screamed Freddie.

“It must be a very large turtle!” gasped Mrs. Bobbsey. But she did not
really believe that a turtle had hold of the little boy’s foot, though
he certainly was held fast.

She gave another pull, and this time Freddie came up in her arms.
Something was dangling from one foot. At the sight of it Flossie, on the
bank, set up a shout.

“Oh, it isn’t a turkle after all!” cried the little girl. “It’s a big
jug!”

And so it was. Freddie, wading about in the pond, had stuck his big toe
in the mouth of a brown jug that some one had thrown into the duck pond.
The jug had stuck to the little boy’s foot, and to him it seemed exactly
as if a “turkle” had him.

As Mrs. Bobbsey raised Freddie up in her arms, the jug fell from his toe
and splashed back into the pond.

“There goes your turtle,” said his mother. “My! what a time you’ve had!
You shouldn’t have gone in wading, Flossie and Freddie!”

“I told him you said not to,” remarked the little girl.

“But I didn’t think you meant to-day,” observed Freddie, as he sat down
on the grass and looked carefully at his big toe. Aside from being red,
like Flossie’s nose, it was not cut or hurt.

“I didn’t want you to go in wading any time in this pond,” said the
children’s mother. “There is broken glass in it and pieces of tin on
which you might cut your feet. That’s why I wanted you to stay out.”

“Oh!” murmured Freddie. “I thought it was ’cause you didn’t want us to
get wet.”

“Don’t go in again!” warned Mrs. Bobbsey, and thinking Freddie had been
frightened enough she did not punish him any more.

“I—I tore my stocking a little,” confessed Flossie, wanting to have all
the unpleasant things over with at once.

“That’s too bad,” said her mother. “You should have minded me. Well, put
on your shoes and we’ll go back to the house.”

One might have thought this would be the last of the adventures of
Flossie and Freddie for that day, but it was not. Just before sunset
they went out in the barn to play in the hay. They slid on the
sweet-smelling dried grass for a time, coasting down from the mow to the
barn floor.

Then Flossie had an idea.

“Let’s hunt where the hens lay their eggs and bring in some,” proposed
the little girl.

“That’ll be fun,” agreed Freddie.

They crawled about in the hay, looking here and there for nests with
white eggs in them. Suddenly Flossie gave a cry as she felt herself
slipping on the smooth hay into a hole.

“What’s the matter?” asked Freddie, who was in another part of the barn.
“Did you find a nest?”

Flossie answered “yes,” for she had found a nest. She had slid right
into one containing nearly a dozen eggs. She had sat down on them,
smashing the eggs and covering herself with broken shells and sticky
whites and yellows.

“Oh, you’d better call mother!” sighed Flossie, when she saw what had
happened.

“This is worser than when the jug-turkle caught me by the toe!” shouted
Freddie, as he dashed for the house.

“Oh, my goodness, what will happen next?” sighed Mrs. Bobbsey, when she
saw the woeful sight of Flossie, very dirty, sitting in the nest, for
right there the little girl had stayed, waiting for her mother to come
to her. She took the little girl into the house to clean her, and when
Flossie had on dry clothes her mother said:

“Now you and Freddie stay on the porch until bedtime.”

“Do you think Daddy and Bert will come back soon?” asked Freddie.

“Perhaps,” said their mother. “At any rate, I hope so.”




                              CHAPTER XXII
                             CAUGHT AT LAST


Meanwhile Bert and his father were keeping on with the search for Baby
May. Once they saw an old woman going along the road ahead of them,
carrying a sack over her back.

“Oh, maybe she has Baby May in that bag!” cried Bert.

His father hardly thought so, but speeded up the auto until they reached
the old woman.

“What do you want?” she demanded.

“Have you a baby in that sack?” asked Mr. Bobbsey.

“Goodness, no! I should hope not,” answered the woman, with a laugh.
“I’ve got potatoes in here. Why would I be carrying a baby?”

Then Mr. Bobbsey explained that he and Bert were looking for a kidnapper
and they inquired of the “potato woman,” as they called her, whether she
had seen anything of Baby May.

“No, I haven’t,” she answered. “I’ve just been after these potatoes,
that’s all.”

As the bag was heavy, Mr. Bobbsey gave the woman and her potatoes a ride
to the woman’s house.

“Thank you,” she said, as she got down. “I hope you find that kidnapper
and the baby.”

“We may get some news of her in the morning,” said Mr. Bobbsey, for it
was now getting on toward night.

The two in the automobile kept on to the next town where Mr. Bobbsey had
decided to stay all night. There was little use in going farther, and
they could get no news of the strange woman by inquiring at the
post-office and the stores.

Bert and his father went to the one hotel in the place, and from there
they telephoned back to Mrs. Bobbsey at Pine Hill, telling her their
plans.

“I don’t suppose you have any news, have you?” asked Mr. Bobbsey of his
wife over the wire. “Did Jim Denton get any clews?”

“Yes,” she answered. “He found some persons who had seen the old woman,
carrying a bundle, going down the road. That was the baby, I’m sure. But
Jim lost trace of the woman. Very likely she got a ride in some auto.
But he’s going to keep right on with the search.”

“If she went down his part of the road, then there isn’t much use in our
keeping on this way,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “Bert and I will return in the
morning.”

So it was decided. Bert was rather sorry his adventure had come to such
an end, for he hoped they might get some trace of the strange woman in
the direction he and his father had taken, but it was not to be.

In the morning Mr. Bobbsey and Bert went back to Pine Hill, reaching
there about ten o’clock. Soon after they arrived they had a telephone
message from Mr. Denton.

“The old woman was seen around the town of Cardley,” the constable said.
“You’d better go over there, and I’ll meet you. I don’t know her and I
might make a mistake and pick out the wrong one.”

“I’ll know that old woman again, if I see her!” exclaimed Bert.

“And I’ll know Baby May,” added his father.

“Oh, can’t I go with you?” begged Nan, as her father and brother were
about to start off again.

“You might take her with you,” suggested Mrs. Bobbsey. “If you do get
Baby May back Nan can take care of her.”

So Nan was allowed to go. Flossie and Freddie cried and begged to go
also, but this was not permitted. However, their mother promised to take
them on a picnic to pass the time until the others should return.

Constable Jim Denton proved to be a good detective. He had finally got
trace of the old woman carrying the baby, and he found that, as had been
thought, she had been given a ride—a “lift,” the constable called
it—by a kind farmer.

“He left her in Cardley, and she said she was going to stay there all
night,” Mr. Denton explained.

Mr. Bobbsey made good speed to Cardley and found the constable there
waiting for him.

“Where is the old woman?” asked Mr. Bobbsey, as he met the constable at
the village hotel.

“She’s stopping at a farmhouse just outside the town,” he said. “I
located her, but I didn’t want to make any move to arrest her, for fear
she’d get excited and maybe hurt the baby, or steal off again. She’s
pretty well tired out, from what I hear, and I guess it will be an easy
matter to catch her.”

“Is Baby May all right?” Nan asked anxiously.

“Oh, bless your heart, yes!” replied Mr. Denton. “I guess the old woman
took good care of the baby.”

They all went out to the farmhouse in Mr. Bobbsey’s automobile, as the
constable said his little car had a flat tire. As they approached the
place Nan and Bert saw, standing out in the front yard, a figure they
well knew.

It was that of the strange old woman they had first seen passing their
house and later sneaking around Pine Hill. As soon as the woman, who was
without her shawl now and who did not have an umbrella, saw them, she
made a dash toward the house.

But Jim Denton was too quick for her. Leaping from the automobile while
it was still moving, he caught her by the arm and cried:

“No, you don’t! We have you now! You can’t get away with the baby
again!”

The old woman did not struggle. Indeed, now that she was caught, she
seemed very calm and not at all queer.

“Very well,” she said. “I am not going to run away. You will find
everything all right. I have a very good claim to this baby.”

“That you’ll have to explain to the police,” said Mr. Bobbsey, in a
stern voice. “Where is Baby May?”

“Her name isn’t May. It’s Jenny,” returned the old woman, with a faint
smile. “Jenny Watson. If you’ll come in I’ll explain everything.”

Wonderingly the two Bobbsey twins followed their father, the constable
and the old woman into the farmhouse. The old woman suddenly burst into
tears as she was about to open the door of a room.

“I hope nothing has happened to Baby May,” said Mr. Bobbsey, for he and
his wife had grown to love the baby very much.

“Oh, no, Jenny is all right. She is asleep, I think,” said the old
woman. “But I feel so bad over all that has happened. It wasn’t exactly
my fault—I couldn’t help it. But if I had not gotten the baby back! Oh,
it would have been terrible!” She wiped away her tears.

“Don’t feel bad,” said Mr. Bobbsey kindly. “Of course I don’t understand
it at all—why you should abandon the baby and then kidnap her—but—”

“Hush!” whispered the old lady, putting her finger to her lips as she
stepped into the darkened room. Softly she raised the curtain, and there
on a bed Nan and the others saw the baby sweetly sleeping.

“Oh, the little darling!” murmured Nan. “I’m so glad we have her back!”

“Well, my dear,” whispered the old woman, “I’m afraid I can’t let you
have her back. You see she has a father and mother of her own, and they
will want their baby.”

“Then you aren’t the mother?” asked Mr. Bobbsey, more and more puzzled
over the matter.

“No, I am not Jenny’s mother,” was the answer. “If you will come into
the next room, where we can talk without waking baby, I’ll tell you the
story. It is a very strange one.”

“Well,” said Mr. Bobbsey, when they were all seated in a pleasant room
of the farmhouse where, the old woman said, she had engaged board for
herself and the baby, “we are now ready for the story. And then I must
telephone to my wife that the baby is all right.”

“Your wife took very good care of Jenny, and I want to thank her when I
see her,” said the old woman. “Now I will be as short as I can.

“My name,” she said, “is Sarah Martin. I have been a widow for a number
of years. Several months ago my cousin, Mrs. Henry Watson, came to me
and said her husband had to go to South America on a business trip, and
she felt that she ought to go with him, as he was not in very good
health.

“They did not think it would be safe to take the baby to South America
with them, so I agreed to look after little Jenny—that’s her real
name—Jenny Watson.”

“We called her May Washington Bobbsey,” said Bert.

“We did that,” explained his father, “because we found her on the first
day of May, and we understood from the railroad men that you had given a
name that sounded like Washington.”

“Wassingham was my name before I was married,” explained Mrs. Martin.
“Very likely I gave that name when I was out of my mind—partly crazy, I
guess I must have been—and they understood me to say Washington.”

“Was that on account of the baby?” asked the constable.

“No, not exactly. But the fact that I had lost Jenny made me feel
worse,” replied Mrs. Martin. “Well, as I was telling you, my cousin and
her husband went to South America and left Jenny with me. They were to
be gone about six months, and they are now on their way home. If I
hadn’t been able to get Jenny for them before they arrived, I don’t know
what I would have done!

“Everything went along nicely for the first month. I kept Jenny with me
in my home at Blakeville, and she grew and thrived. Then, one day, when
I was cleaning a closet, some dishes fell on my head. I was knocked
unconscious, and when I was able to get up I had a queer feeling. I
wasn’t myself. I seemed to have forgotten my name, and all I could
remember about the baby was a feeling that I ought to get rid of her.

“So, not really knowing what I was doing, I put her in a basket, wrapped
a shawl around myself, and, taking a green umbrella, I set out. I had
only one idea in mind—to leave the baby at some house where there were
other children. I must have felt that in such a place she would be well
taken care of.

“I took the train from my home to your town, though I don’t remember
anything about getting off the train. I do remember, though, tramping
around in the rain. I saw some children’s faces at a window, and I made
up my mind that would be a good house at which to leave the baby.”

“That was our house,” murmured Nan.

“Yes, dearie, that must have been your house,” said Mrs. Martin. “Well,
once I had picked out the house, I lingered around until after dark, and
then, making sure the baby was well protected in the basket, I left her
on your doorstep and, ringing the bell, slipped off in the rain and
darkness. I hid myself and watched to see if the door would be opened,
and when it wasn’t, I went softly up again and rang the bell a second
time.”

“We thought it was the lightning making the bell ring,” explained Bert,
“for we couldn’t see any one on the steps.”

“No, I slipped away as soon as I rang the bell, and I suppose you didn’t
notice the basket in the darkness,” said Mrs. Martin. “But after I had
rung the bell the second time I felt sure you would take in the baby, so
I slipped away for good.

“What happened for several weeks after that, I don’t remember. But
finally some one noticed that I was acting queerly, and I was taken to a
hospital, and there I was cured. Then when I remembered what I had
done—taken Baby Jenny away and deserted her—I went nearly crazy again.
I tried to remember where I had left her, but for a long time I
couldn’t. Then, when I did get to your house, I watched my chance to
take the baby away again.”

“Why didn’t you come in and tell us your story?” asked Mr. Bobbsey. “We
would have given you back the baby had we known.”

“I was afraid you wouldn’t believe me,” answered Mrs. Martin. “So I
watched my chance. I managed to find out that you had gone to Pine Hill,
and I followed you there. Then I kept on waiting for an opportunity to
take back the baby, as I had a right to do. At last, yesterday, my
chance came. I saw Baby Jenny asleep in her carriage, I slipped up and
took her out. Then I slipped away, hiding in the woods until after dark,
and getting a ride until I reached this place.

“I thought everything would be all right and that I could restore the
baby to her parents, who are expected home in a few days. But when I saw
you coming I feared you would take her away from me again, so I rushed
in here. Then I decided to tell you the whole story. I knew I had a
right to the baby, now that my mind is well again.”

“Of course you have a right to the baby until her parents come,” said
Mr. Bobbsey. “It has been a queer mix-up all around, and I am very sorry
for you. Have you written to Mr. and Mrs. Watson?”

“I didn’t write and tell them I had lost the baby,” answered Mrs.
Martin. “I didn’t dare do that. But I had a cablegram from them asking
how Jenny was, and to-day I sent them a message, saying she was well.
For indeed she is. Your wife took very good care of her. Oh, I am so
sorry for all the trouble I have caused,” and the old woman wept again.

“You couldn’t help it,” said Mr. Bobbsey kindly. “Perhaps you had better
come back and stay with my wife until Mr. and Mrs. Watson arrive from
South America. Bring Baby Jenny and stay with us.”

“Oh, yes, please do!” begged Nan. “We won’t know what to do without Baby
May—I mean Baby Jenny!” she quickly corrected herself.

“All right, I’ll do that,” said Mrs. Martin.

The children were very excited and began making plans for taking care of
the infant. They were to get good practise for their next adventure to
be known as “The Bobbsey Twins Keeping House.”

Before going to the farm, they telephoned the news to Mrs. Bobbsey at
Pine Hill, and there was a happy meeting when, once more, the baby was
with those who had cared for the little foundling.

“You poor woman! How you must have suffered,” said Mrs. Bobbsey to Mrs.
Martin, after having heard the story.

“You will never know how terrible it was when I realized that I had
given the baby away—left her on a strange doorstep. And then I couldn’t
remember for a long while where it was!” said Mrs. Martin. “But now it
has all ended happily.”

And so it had, for a few days later the ship bearing Mr. and Mrs. Watson
came in from South America, and the parents made a quick trip out to
Pine Hill, where the mother gathered into her arms the baby who had gone
through so many strange adventures.

No one blamed Mrs. Martin, for it was an accident, though undoubtedly if
she had come to the Bobbseys and explained everything, instead of trying
to kidnap the baby, it would have been much better. But, as she said,
she hardly knew what she was doing.

“Well, I wish we could keep the baby,” said Nan. “But maybe something
else will happen pretty soon.”

“Maybe,” agreed Bert. “Anyhow, it was exciting while it lasted.” And the
other Bobbsey twins agreed with this.

                                THE END




                                  THE
                          BOBBSEY TWINS BOOKS
                          _by_ Laura Lee Hope

These are books that charm boys and girls between the ages of three and
ten. Many of the adventures of these famous twins are comical in the
extreme, and all the accidents and incidents that ordinarily happen to
youthful personages happen to these many-sided little mortals.

THE BOBBSEY TWINS

           IN THE COUNTRY            KEEPING HOUSE
           AT THE SEASHORE           AT CLOVERBANK
           AT SCHOOL                 AT CHERRY CORNERS
           AT SNOW LODGE             AND THEIR SCHOOLMATES
           ON A HOUSEBOAT            TREASURE HUNTING
           AT MEADOW BROOK           AT SPRUCE LAKE
           AT HOME                   WONDERFUL SECRET
           IN A GREAT CITY           AT THE CIRCUS
           ON BLUEBERRY ISLAND       ON AN AIRPLANE TRIP
           ON THE DEEP BLUE SEA      SOLVE A MYSTERY
           IN WASHINGTON             ON A RANCH
           IN THE GREAT WEST         IN ESKIMO LAND
           AT CEDAR CAMP             IN A RADIO PLAY
           AT THE COUNTY FAIR        AT WINDMILL COTTAGE
           CAMPING OUT               AT LIGHTHOUSE POINT
           BABY MAY                  AT INDIAN HOLLOW

                            GROSSET & DUNLAP

_Publishers_                                                     NEW YORK




                                  THE

                           HONEY BUNCH BOOKS

                      _by_ Helen Louise Thorndyke

Honey Bunch is a dainty, thoughtful little girl, and to know her is to
take her to your heart at once. Little girls everywhere will want to
discover what interesting experiences she is having wherever she goes.

                              HONEY BUNCH:

     JUST A LITTLE GIRL                HER FIRST TRIP IN AN AEROPLANE
     HER FIRST VISIT TO THE CITY       HER FIRST VISIT TO THE ZOO
     HER FIRST DAYS ON THE FARM        HER FIRST BIG ADVENTURE
     HER FIRST VISIT TO THE SEASHORE   HER FIRST BIG PARADE
     HER FIRST LITTLE GARDEN           HER FIRST LITTLE MYSTERY
     HER FIRST DAY IN CAMP             HER FIRST LITTLE CIRCUS
     HER FIRST AUTO TOUR               HER FIRST LITTLE TREASURE HUNT
     HER FIRST TRIP ON THE OCEAN       HER FIRST LITTLE CLUB
     HER FIRST TRIP WEST               HER FIRST TRIP IN A TRAILER
     HER FIRST SUMMER ON AN ISLAND     HER FIRST TRIP TO A BIG FAIR
     HER FIRST TRIP ON THE GREAT LAKES HER FIRST TWIN PLAYMATES

                            GROSSET & DUNLAP

_Publishers_                                                     NEW YORK




                     Stories of Fun and Friendship
                            THE MAIDA BOOKS
                          by INEZ HAYNES IRWIN

                          MAIDA’S LITTLE SHOP

In a darling little shop of her own Maida makes many friends with the
school children who buy her fascinating wares.

                          MAIDA’S LITTLE HOUSE

All of her friends spend a happy summer in Maida’s perfect little house
that has everything a child could wish for.

                         MAIDA’S LITTLE SCHOOL

Three delightful grownups come to visit and the children study many
subjects without knowing that they are really “going to school.”

                         MAIDA’S LITTLE ISLAND

Great is the joy of the Big Eight when Maida’s father takes them for a
vacation to _Spectacles_, where exploring the island provides endless
fun and many thrilling adventures.

                          MAIDA’S LITTLE CAMP

High in the Adirondacks the four boys and four girls of the Big Eight
spend a glorious month of fun and discovery.

  GROSSET & DUNLAP                  :   _Publishers_   :        NEW YORK




                                  THE

                          LITTLE INDIAN SERIES

                            _by_ David Cory

The beauty of Indian legend—the thrill of Indian adventure—the poetry
of the Indian’s religion, and, above all, the sturdy manhood and the
idealism of the Indian boy will be an inspiration to every child.

                LITTLE INDIAN        LONE STAR

                WHITE OTTER          RAVEN WING

                RED FEATHER          HAWK EYE

                STAR MAIDEN          CHIPPEWA TRAIL

                            GROSSET & DUNLAP

_Publishers_                                                     NEW YORK




                             THE CHILDREN’S
                               HOUR BOOKS

            _Delightful story books by well-known authors,_
                        _charmingly illustrated_

       BOYS AND GIRLS OF MODERN DAYS    THE CIRCUS COTTON-TAILS
       Carolyn Sherwin Bailey           Laura Rountree Smith

       BOYS AND GIRLS OF COLONIAL DAYS  THE COTTON-TAILS IN TOYLAND
       Carolyn Sherwin Bailey           Laura Rountree Smith

       BOYS AND GIRLS OF DISCOVERY DAYS BUNNY BOY AND GRIZZLY BEAR
       Carolyn Sherwin Bailey           Laura Rountree Smith

       BOYS AND GIRLS OF PIONEER DAYS   A CHILD’S GARDEN OF VERSES
       Carolyn Sherwin Bailey           Robert Louis Stevenson

       THE CIRCUS BOOK                  AB, THE CAVE MAN
       Laura Rountree Smith             William Lewis Nida

                            GROSSET & DUNLAP

_Publishers_                                                     NEW YORK




                           TRANSCRIBER NOTES


Misspelled words and printer errors have been corrected. Where multiple
spellings occur, majority use has been employed.

Punctuation has been maintained except where obvious printer errors
occur.