The Bobbsey Twins Megapack

by Laura Lee Hope

  Jugglers they were, men with trained horses, trick ponies, trained dogs and trained elephants. Some elephants played a ball game, others turned somersaults. Clowns jumped over their backs, and through paper hoops.

  “Look here!” Nan would exclaim.

  “No, see over there!” Bert would cry.

  “Oh, mamma, a man jumped from the top of the tent right into a big fish net!” exclaimed Freddie.

  “Look at the monkey riding on the dog’s back,” Flossie shouted.

  “And see that man jump off a horse and jump on him again backwards!” called Tom Mason.

  “Oh, but look at the cute ponies,” sighed Mabel Herold.

  There was so much to see and talk about that the children’s eyes must have been tired, and their necks aching before the circus was over.

  At last it came to an end with the exciting chariot races, and the crowd began to leave the big tent.

  “Now keep close together, children,” warned Mrs. Bobbsey. “You must not get lost in this crowd.”

  “Yes, follow me,” advised Uncle Daniel.

  How it happened they could not tell, but when they reached the outside of the tent, and found a space where the crowd was not so thick, Freddie was missing.

  “Where is Freddie?” asked Nan, looking about for him.

  “Freddie!” exclaimed her mother! “Isn’t he here?”

  But Freddie was not with them, and with anxious faces they looked at one another.

  CHAPTER XV

  Found Again

  “Where can he be?” asked Bert.

  “I saw him but a moment ago,” said Aunt Sarah.

  “An’ he jest had hold ob mah hand!” cried Dinah. “Oh, mah honey lamb am done et up by de ragin’ lion what goes about seekin’ who he kin devouer! Oh landy!”

  “Quiet, Dinah, please,” said Uncle Daniel. For Dinah had called out so loudly that many in the crowd turned to look at her.

  “But I wants Freddie—mah honey lamb!” the loving colored woman went on. “I wants him an’ he’s losted!”

  “We’ll find him,” said Uncle Daniel. “Now whom was he with when we came out of the tent?”

  “He had hold of my hand,” said Bert, “but he pulled away and said he wanted to walk with Dinah.”

  “De lubbin honey lamb!” crooned Dinah.

  “Did he come with you, Dinah?” went on Uncle Daniel, trying to find out exactly who had seen Freddie last.

  “Yais, sah, he done comed wif me fo’ a little while in de crowd, an’ den he slid away—he just seem t’ melt away laik,” explained the cook.

  “Which way did he go?” Uncle Daniel wanted to know.

  “Which way? I dunno,” Dinah answered.

  “Oh, perhaps he went back to the animal tent,” suggested Mrs. Bobbsey. She was not really frightened as yet. Often before Freddie had been lost, but he had generally been found within a few minutes. But he had never before been lost at a circus. This time he seemed to have melted away in the big crowd.

  “Let’s go back to the animal tent,” suggested Uncle Daniel. “Freddie was so taken with feeding the elephants peanuts that he may have gone back to do that. We’ll look.”

  “Oh, if only dem ugly lions or tigers habn’t got him!” sighed Dinah.

  “The wild animals couldn’t get him, ’cause they’re shut up in cages, aren’t they?” asked Flossie.

  “Yes, dear,” Nan said to her, not wanting her little sister to be frightened. “No wild animals could get Freddie.”

  “We’ll soon find him,” declared Bert.

  “We’ll help you look,” spoke Tom Mason. “Come on, Harry.”

  The three boys started to push their way back through the crowd toward the animal tent.

  “Now don’t you three get lost,” said Uncle Daniel.

  “We won’t!” answered Bert, “but we’re going to find Freddie!”

  “Oh, where can the darling be?” gasped Aunt Sarah, looking around at the crowd all about her.

  “What is it? What’s the matter?” asked several ladies.

  “A little boy is lost—my nephew,” Aunt Sarah explained.

  “Oh, isn’t that too bad!” cried the sympathetic ladies. “We hope you find him!”

  Back into the animal tent the Bobbseys and their relatives and friends pushed their way. It was not easy to work back through the crowd that was anxious to get away, now that the afternoon performance of the circus was over.

  “He must be in there,” said Uncle Daniel. “We’ll find him.”

  Carefully he looked through the crowd of persons who were still in the animal tent. A number had remained, with their children, to get another look at the elephants, lions and tigers. Men were feeding some of the animals, now that there was a little quiet spell, and this was interesting to the youngsters.

  “He doesn’t seem to be here,” said Aunt Sarah, as she peered through her spectacles.

  “Oh, he must be!” exclaimed Mrs. Bobbsey. “He can’t have gone on ahead of us, and if he turned back he would have to come into this tent.”

  “Oh, isn’t it too bad!” exclaimed Nan, looking at her brother Bert, as though he could help. But Bert, Harry and Tom, though they had quickly made a round of the circle of animal cages, had come back to say that they found no trace of Freddie.

  “I know what to do, mamma,” spoke up Flossie.

  “What, dear?” asked her mother, hardly knowing what she was saying.

  “We ought to get a policeman,” went on Flossie. “Policemans can find losted people. One found me once.”

  “That isn’t a bad idea,” spoke Uncle Daniel. “I think perhaps I had better speak to some of the town constables who are on duty here.”

  “Suppose we look in the big main tent,” said Tom Mason. “Freddie may have wandered back in there to try and turn a somersault on one of the trapezes.”

  “Yes, it wouldn’t do any harm to take a look,” agreed Uncle Daniel. “We’ll go in the big tent.”

  Into that large canvas house they went. Men were busy putting away some of the articles used for the animal tricks, and the balls, hoops knives and things the Japanese jugglers had used.

  “Oh, where can he be?” murmured Mrs. Bobbsey.

  “Something the matter, ma’am?” asked the ring-master, in his shiny tall hat, as he cracked his long whip. “Is someone lost?”

  “Yes, my little boy Freddie, and we are so worried about him!”

  “Well, don’t worry,” said the ring-master kindly. “Boys, and girls too, are lost every day at our circus performances, but they are always found all right. Don’t worry. I’ll have some of the men hunt for him. And you folks come with me. It’s just possible he has been found and taken to the lost tent.”

  “The lost tent!” exclaimed Uncle Daniel. “Have you lost a tent, too?”

  “No, but we have a sort of headquarters tent, or office, where all lost children are taken as soon as the circus men find them. A woman in the tent takes care of the little ones until their folks come for them. Your boy may be there waiting for you.”

  To the lost tent went the Bobbseys. They found two or three youngsters there, crying for their fathers or mothers, but Freddie was not among them.

  “Oh, he isn’t here!” cried Mrs. Bobbsey, and tears were in her eyes now. “I wish his father were here,” she went on. “He would know what to do.”

  “Now don’t you worry, ma’am,” said the ring-master again. “We’ll surely find him for you. He may have gone in one of the side shows, to see the fat lady, or the strong man. I’ll have those places searched for you.”

  The ring-master did send some of his men to look in the side-show tents, but they came back to say that no one like Freddie had been seen. By this time Mrs. Bobbsey and Aunt Sarah were almost frantic with fright. Nan was crying, and even Bert, brave as he was, looked worried. A number of persons who had come to the circus offered to help look for Freddie, but, though they searched all over, the little fat fellow could not be found.

>   “Oh, dear! What shall we do!” cried Mrs. Bobbsey.

  “Dat ugly ole lion—” began Dinah, when Nan gave a scream.

  “Oh, what is it, child?” asked Aunt Sarah.

  “Look. There’s Freddie!” cried Nan. “There he comes!” and she pointed to her little brother being led toward them by a boy about Bert’s age.

  CHAPTER XVI

  Frank’s Story

  They all gazed in the direction in which Nan pointed. The crowd of visitors to the circus was thinning out now, and down toward the edge of a little creek could be seen the missing Freddie walking along, his hand thrust trustingly into that of the strange boy.

  “Why—why!” began Bert. “That fellow—that boy—he—” and then he stopped. Bert was not exactly sure of what he was going to say.

  “Oh, Freddie!” cried Mrs. Bobbsey, running forward. “Where have you been! Such a start as you’ve given us! Where were you?”

  But Freddie himself did not seem as anxious to rush into his mother’s arms as she was to clasp him. He plodded along with the strange boy, looking quite content, and as if he wondered what all the fuss was about.

  “Dere de honey lamb am!” exclaimed black

  Dinah, a grin spreading over her face. “De ole lion didn’t cotch him after all. Dere’s mah honey lamb!”

  “Freddie! Freddie!” cried Flossie, who had been resting in Uncle Daniel’s arms, “did a lion eat you, Freddie? Did he?”

  “A lion eat him? Of course not!” laughed Bert. And Bert was doing some hard thinking as he stared at the strange boy who had Freddie by the hand.

  “I thought we should find him,” said Uncle Daniel. “I knew he couldn’t be lost with all these circus people around. I say!” called Mr. Bobbsey’s brother to one of the men who had been helping hunt for the missing boy. “Just tell them that we found him, will you, please? Freddie’s found.”

  “Yes, sir, I’ll tell ’em,” said the man. “I’m glad he’s all right. I’ll tell ’em!”

  “But where were you, Freddie?” asked his mother, who by this time had him safely in her arms. “Oh, where were you?”

  “I found him down by the edge of the creek, watching ’em water the elephants,” explained the strange boy, who, Mrs. Bobbsey thought, had a good, kind face. “You see, we water the elephants every afternoon when the show is over,” the boy went on, “and it was down there I found him.”

  “Oh, I can’t thank you enough for bringing him back to us,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “You were so good!”

  “I didn’t know just where he belonged,” the strange boy explained. “But he told me his name, and where he lived, and of course I knew I could send word to his folks, though I didn’t see, at first, how he got here all the way from Lakeport.”

  “Oh, we are visiting at his uncle’s farm at Meadow Brook,” explained Mrs. Bobbsey.

  “So he said,” went on the boy. “I was bringing him to the lost tent, when he spied you and said you were his folks.”

  “And I saw ’em water the elephants!” cried Freddie, struggling to get loose from his mother’s arms. “The elephant sucked the water up into his nose, ma, and then he squirted it down his throat just like my fire engine squirts water. Only, ’course an elephant squirts lots more water than my engine. But I’m goin’ to get a bigger one that squirts as much as a elephant, that’s what I goin’ to do. And I saw one elephant, ma, he went right out in the water and laid down in it. What do you think of that!”

  “The elephants often do that, ma’am,” explained the strange boy. “They like to get a bath now and then, but we don’t often have time to give it to them.”

  “You speak as though you belonged to the circus,” said Uncle Daniel.

  “I do,” answered the boy. “That is, I’m with one of the side-shows, and I help around when there’s nothing else to do.”

  “Well, it was very kind of you to bring back my little boy,” went on Mrs. Bobbsey. Freddie was busy telling Flossie all the wonderful things he had seen.

  “Oh, I didn’t do anything, ma’am,” the boy said. “I sort of knew this little fellow.”

  “You knew him?” questioned Uncle Daniel.

  “Well, that is I’d seen him before.”

  “But I can’t understand how Freddie became lost,” said Mrs. Bobbsey, while Uncle Daniel was wondering where the strange boy had seen Freddie before. “How did you get lost, Freddie?” his mother asked him.

  “Lost! I wasn’t lost!” he exclaimed. “I knew where I was all the time. I was with the elephants. It was you who got lost, mamma—you and Nan and Flossie and Bert—”

  “Well, we called you lost,” laughed Uncle Daniel. “But you’re all right now, thanks to this boy. Do you live around here?” he asked. “I don’t seem to remember you, though I know most of the folks in this section. But if you have seen Freddie before you must live around here.”

  “Oh, no, sir,” was the answer. “I’m with the circus. But I used to live—”

  “I know you now!” interrupted Bert. “You’re Frank Kennedy, and I was with my father, calling on Mr. Mason, when I saw you. Freddie was with me then. Don’t you remember, Freddie?” asked Bert. “This is the boy we saw—the boy we saw getting a—”

  And Bert stopped. He did not want to say “shaking,” for it was when Frank Kennedy was being severely shaken by Mr. Mason, on account of the bad twenty dollar bill, that the strange boy had last been seen by the Bobbsey lads. And on that occasion Frank had run away.

  “Oh, now I know you!” cried Freddie, laughing.

  “Yes, I am the boy you saw getting a shaking, for something that wasn’t my fault!” exclaimed Frank, and his voice was hard and bitter. “I made up my mind I wouldn’t stand Mr. Mason’s cruel treatment any longer, so I ran away. I did see you two boys that time I got a shaking,” Frank admitted. “You were in an automobile then,” he went on, “and Mr. Bobbsey was with you.” He looked around as though in search of the twins’ father.

  “Mr. Bobbsey had to go back to Lakeport on business,” explained Mrs. Bobbsey. “We came over from Meadow Brook to the circus here today. And I remember Mr. Bobbsey speaking of you. So you ran away?”

  “Yes’m, I ran away. I couldn’t stand it in that lumber office any longer the way Mr. Mason treated me. It wasn’t fair. And I’m never going back again, either. I don’t like him, and he doesn’t like me. I’ll never let him be my guardian again.”

  “Poor boy!” murmured Mrs. Bobbsey. “You must have had a hard time. Did you come with this circus as soon as you ran away?”

  “No’m, I had a pretty bad spell first along. When I ran away I had only the clothes I wore, and only a little money. It was my own!” he said, quickly, lest they think he might have taken it from Mr. Mason’s lumber office. But one look at Frank’s face showed that he was honest.

  “What did you do?” asked Uncle Daniel.

  “Well, I walked as far as I could the first night,” Frank said, going on with his story. “Then I crawled in a barn to sleep.”

  “Didn’t you have anything to eat?” asked Nan softly. She felt very sorry for the boy.

  “Well, I had a couple of crackers I had saved from my lunch that day,” he explained. “Then near the barn was a cow, and I milked her. That and the crackers was all I had for supper. But I slept good in the hay.”

  “I had a good sleep in some hay!” exclaimed Freddie, as he remembered the time they had played hide-and-go-seek in the barn.

  “It makes a good bed when you’re tired,” said Frank.

  “What did you have for breakfast?” asked Flossie. “I like an orange and oatmeal for mine.”

  “Well, I didn’t have anything like that for mine,” explained Frank with a smile. “I didn’t have much of anything the first morning. I tramped on, and finally I found a place where I could chop some wood, and a lady gave me some bread and milk. It tasted very good.”

  “How did you get with the circus?” asked Bert. That part interested him more than how Frank got something to
eat.

  “Well, I just happened to come to the town where the circus was giving a show,” explained Frank. “I was around when the men were watering the horses and other animals, and I helped carry water. Then one of the men asked me if I didn’t want work, and I said I did. I was hungry then, too, and I could smell the things cooking in the circus kitchen tent. So I went to work for this show, and I’ve been here ever since. It’s better than working in a lumber office when you get shook up every now and then,” he added with a smile.

  “And do you still help water the elephants?” asked Uncle Daniel.

  “Oh, no, I help take tickets at one of the side shows,” explained Frank. “The one where the fat lady and snakes are. I like it, though sometimes I help water the animals when I have nothing else to do. The circus people are good to me. I’ve earned enough money to get some clothes, and I’m never hungry any more. I was pretty ragged when I came to the circus, for I had been tramping around sleeping in barns, or wherever I could.”

  “Wouldn’t it have been better to have gone back to Mr. Mason, your guardian?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey, for she had heard her husband tell of the time he, Bert and Freddie had seen the boy shaken before he ran away.

  “Oh, no’m!” Frank exclaimed. “I’m never going back to that lumber office. Mr. Mason accused me of losing twenty dollars for him. Well perhaps I did, but it wasn’t my fault that the man gave me bad money that looked like good. I’m never going back!”

  “Well, I don’t know as I blame you,” said Uncle Daniel softly, “but a circus is no place for a young boy. It’s a hard life.”

  “Are you going to stay with this show?” asked Mrs. Bobbsey.

  “Until I can get something better to do,” answered Frank. “I know it isn’t a good business, but I’ll stay here until I can save some money, and then I’ll look for something better. But I’ll have to stay here for a while.”

  “Maybe you could give him work on the farm,” suggested Aunt Sarah to her husband in a whisper. “I don’t like him to be with a circus. And he was so good to Freddie that we ought to do something for him.”

  “He’s too young to work on a farm,” replied Uncle Daniel. “And he might be in a worse place than this circus. But we must be starting back home. It’s getting late.”