Mr. Randall first warned the other boys and girls about going too near the hole, then he stuck one of the planks up near it, with a piece of rag on it as a danger signal.
Beside the warm fire in the lumber office Tommy was undressed and wrapped in warm blankets. One of the men made some hot cocoa, and when Tommy drank this he felt much better.
“But you can’t put on your clothes for a long time—not until they are well dried,” said Mr. Bobbsey. “I guess Bert has an extra suit that will fit you. I’ll telephone to my wife and have her send it here.”
Sam, who was Dinah’s husband, came a little later with an old suit of Bert’s, and Mrs. Bobbsey sent word that Tommy was to keep it, as Bert did not need it any longer.
“But it’s a fine suit for me,” said Tommy, when he was dressed in it. “I guess it was lucky I fell in the water—I got some nice clothes by it.”
“But don’t fall in again even for that,” said Mr. Bobbsey with a laugh. “You may take cold yet.”
But Tommy did not. One of Mr. Bobbsey’s friends happened to stop at the office on business, and, having a closed automobile, he offered to take Tommy home, so the boy would not have to go out in the cold air after his unexpected bath in the lake.
Bert and Harry, on coming back after their race to the lower end of the lake, were surprised to learn what had happened to Tommy. And when he had had enough of skating Bert said he would go and see if Tommy had reached home safely, and if Mrs. Todd needed anything.
Bert and Harry, who went with him, found Tommy sitting near the fire in the humble home near the city dumps.
“I’m glad I don’t live here,” said Harry, as he looked around before entering the house.
“I am too,” added Bert. “It isn’t very nice. I suppose when Tommy’s father was alive they had things much nicer.”
Tommy smiled at his two boy callers.
“This isn’t working,” he said. “And I ought to be at work, for it’s Saturday and I do most of my errands then. But grandmother thought I ought to get warmed through before going out again.”
“I guess that’s right,” said Bert. “How is your grandmother? Father told me to ask.”
“She isn’t very well,” Tommy answered. “In fact, she had to go to bed after I came home. She says she feels sick.”
“Maybe she ought to have a doctor,” said Bert.
“Don’t let her hear you say that,” whispered Tommy. “She’s in the next room, and she doesn’t like to think of calling in a doctor. She says she hasn’t any money to pay him.”
“But that’s not right,” Bert began. “She ought to—”
Just then Harry nudged his cousin, and winked his eye in a way Bert understood. So Bert did not finish what he had started to say. Instead he remarked:
“Is there anything we can do for you, Tommy?”
“No, thank you, I guess not,” answered the other. “I’m all right now, and I don’t believe I’ll take cold.”
When Bert and Harry were outside and on their way home, Bert asked:
“What did you punch me for in there?”
“I didn’t want you to talk so much about a doctor. I guess they haven’t any money to pay one.”
“No, I guess they haven’t.”
“But what’s the matter with my paying for one to make a visit?” asked Harry. “Dad gave me some money to spend when I came on this visit, and I have most of it left. You’ve been doing all the treating. And you gave Tommy that suit; so I want to pay for a doctor’s visit.”
“We’ll ask mother about it,” said Bert. “I guess it would be better to have a doctor see Mrs. Todd.”
Mrs. Bobbsey said it was very kind of Harry to think of using his pocket money to pay for a doctor for the sick.
“But you will not need to,” she said. “There are physicians paid by the city to visit the poor. But I think we will have our own Dr. Young call and see her. The city physicians have enough to do in the Winter when there is so much illness. I’ll send Dr. Young, and pay him myself.”
Afterward Dr. Young told Mrs. Bobbsey that Mrs. Todd was not dangerously ill. She needed a tonic, perhaps, and this he gave her.
“But what she needs, most of all,” he said, “is to get into a better house. It is not healthful down there. And she needs more and better food.”
“Then I’ll look after her,” said Mrs. Bobbsey. “I belong to a club, the ladies of which are glad to help the poor. We will make Mrs. Todd our special case. I’ll see what we can do about getting her into a better house, too. She is a very good woman and Mr. Bobbsey says he never had a better errand boy than Tommy.”
Mrs. Bobbsey and the members of her club did many things for Mrs. Todd and Tommy. They planned to have them move into another house, but as the weather was very cold they decided that it was better for Mrs. Todd that she should wait a bit before making the change. Mrs. Bobbsey often sent good food to Tommy’s grandmother. Sometimes Bert or Nan took the basket, and, when the weather was nice, Flossie and Freddie were allowed to go.
One Saturday afternoon about a week after the country visitors had gone home, when Dinah had finished baking bread, cake and pies, Mrs. Bobbsey said:
“I wish Mrs. Todd had some of these good things. But I haven’t time to go down there today, and Bert and Nan are away.”
“Let us go, Mother,” begged Flossie. “Freddie and I can carry the basket easily.”
“Well, I suppose you could,” said Mrs. Bobbsey slowly. “It isn’t very cold out today, though it looks as if it would snow. But perhaps it won’t until you get back. You know the way to Mrs. Todd’s now, and it isn’t too far for you. But hurry back.”
The little twins promised, and were soon on their way. They had often gone on long walks by themselves, for they knew their way fairly well about the city, and down toward Tommy’s house there were few wagons or automobiles, so it was safe for them.
Carrying the basket of good things Flossie and Freddie were soon at the place where Mrs. Todd lived.
“You are good little ones to come so far to bring an old woman something to eat,” said Mrs. Todd, with a smile, when she opened the door. “Come in and sit by the fire to get warm.”
“We can’t stay very long,” said Flossie.
But she and Freddie stayed longer than they meant to, for Mrs. Todd knew many stories and she told the little twins two or three as they sat by the fire.
“Oh, it’s snowing—snowing hard!” said Freddie suddenly, as he looked out of the window when Mrs. Todd had finished a story about a little red hen.
“Then we must hurry home,” said Flossie.
They put on their wraps and overshoes and, bidding Mrs. Todd good-bye, off they went. But they had no sooner got outdoors than they found themselves in a bad storm. The wind was blowing hard, and the white flakes were swirling all around them.
“Why—why, I can hardly see!” cried Flossie. “It’s just like a fog.”
“And—and it’s hard to breathe,” said Freddie. “The wind blows right down my mouth.”
“We could walk backwards and then it wouldn’t,” said Flossie, and they tried that for a while.
The children had been out in storms before, but they could not remember ever having been in one where the snow was so thick. As Flossie had said, she could hardly see because there were so many flakes coming down.
“Take hold of my hand, Freddie, and don’t let go,” said Flossie to her brother. “We don’t want to get lost.”
Along the street they walked as best they could, sometimes going backward so the wind would not blow in their faces so hard, and when they walked with their faces to the wind they held down their heads.
“Are we ’most home?” asked Flossie after a while.
“Well, I don’t see our house,” replied Freddie. “We’ve come far enough to be there, too.”
They walked on a little farther and then Freddie stopped.
“What’s the matter?” asked Flossie.
“I can’t see
any houses, or anything,” answered her brother. “I—I guess we’ve come the wrong way, Flossie. I don’t know where we are.”
“Do you mean we—we’re lost, Freddie?”
“I’m afraid so.”
CHAPTER XXI
The Strange Man
The two Bobbsey twins stood in the snowstorm, looking at each other. Though they were both brave they were rather worried now, for they did not know which way to go to get home. If there had been no snow it would have been easy, but the white flakes were so thick that they could hardly see ten feet ahead of them.
“What are we going to do, Freddie?” Flossie asked.
“Well, I don’t know,” he answered. “I guess we’ll just have to keep on walking until we come to a house, and then we can ask which way our home is. Maybe somebody in the house will take us home.”
“But we can’t see any houses. How can we ask?” said Flossie, and her voice was trembling.
Indeed, the storm was so thick that no houses were in sight. There might have been some near by, but the children could not see any.
Nor were any persons to be seen passing along the street. If there had been, one of them might easily have set the twins right. But the truth of it was that Flossie and Freddie had taken the wrong turn in coming out of Mrs. Todd’s house, and instead of walking toward their home they had, in the confusion of the storm, walked right away from it. Every step they took put them farther and farther away from their own house.
And now, as they learned later, they were on the far edge of the city of Lakeport, beyond the dumps, on what was called the “meadows.” In Summer this was a swamp, but with the ground frozen as it was it was safe to walk on it. But no houses were built on it, and there were only a few lonely paths across this meadow stretch.
In the Summer a few men cut a coarse kind of hay that grew on the meadows, but as hay-cutting is not done in Winter no one now had any reason for going to the meadows.
“Well, we mustn’t stand still,” said Flossie, after a bit.
“Why not?” asked Freddie. “Can’t you stand still when you’re tired?”
“Not in a snowstorm,” Flossie went on with a shake of her head. “If you stand still or lie down you may go to sleep, and when you sleep in the snow you freeze to death. Don’t you remember the story mother read to us?”
“Yes,” answered Freddie. “But I don’t feel sleepy now, so it’s all right to stand still a minute while I think.”
“What are you thinking about?” asked his sister.
“I’m trying to think which way to go. Do you know?”
Flossie looked all about her. It was snowing harder than ever. However, it was not very cold. Indeed, only that they were lost, the Bobbsey twins would have thought it great fun to be out in the storm.
They were well wrapped up, and they had on high rubbers, so they were not badly off except for being lost. That was not any fun, of course.
“Do you know where we are?” asked Freddie of his sister.
“No,” she answered, “I don’t. It doesn’t look as if we were on any street at all. Look at the tall grass all around us.”
Standing up through the snow was the tall meadow grass that had not been cut. Freddie looked at it.
“Oh, now I know where we are!” he cried. “We’re down on the meadows. Bert brought me here once when he was looking for muskrats. He didn’t get any, but I remember how tall the grass grew. Now I know where we are.”
“All right, then you can take me home,” Flossie said. “We’re not lost if you know where we are.”
“But I don’t know which way our house is,” Freddie went on, “and I can’t see to tell with all these flakes coming down. I’ll have to wait until it stops.”
“S’posin’ it doesn’t stop all night?” asked Flossie.
“Oh, I guess it will,” said Freddie. “Anyhow, we know where we are. Let’s walk on and maybe we’ll get off the meadows and on to a street that leads to our house.”
Flossie was glad to walk, as it was warmer than when standing still; and so she and Freddie went on. They did not know where they were going, and, as they found out afterward, they went farther and farther from their home and the city with every step.
“Oh, look!” suddenly cried Flossie.
“What is it?” asked her brother, stumbling over a little pile of snow as he hurried up beside his sister, who had gone on ahead of him. “Did you find the right path, Flossie? But then I don’t believe you did. I don’t believe anybody, not even Santa Claus himself, could find a path in this snow storm.”
“Yes he could,” insisted Flossie. “Santa Claus can do anything. He could come right down out of the sky now, in his reindeer sleigh, and take us home, if he wanted to.”
“Well, then,” said Freddie, shaking his head as a snowflake blew into his ear and melted there with a ticklish feeling, “I just wish he would come and take us home. I’m—I’m getting tired, Flossie.”
“So’m I. But I did see something, Freddie,” and the little girl pointed ahead through the drifting flakes. “It wasn’t the path, though.”
“What’d you see?” demanded Freddie, rubbing his eyes so he could see more clearly.
“That!” and Flossie pointed to a rounded mound of snow about half as high as her head. It was right in front of her and Freddie.
“Oh, it’s a little snow house!” cried Freddie.
“That’s what I thought it was,” Flossie went on. “Some one must have been playing out here on the meadows, and made this little house. It’s awful small, but maybe if we curl up and stick our legs under us, we can get inside out of the storm.”
“Maybe we can!” cried Freddie. “Let’s try.”
The children walked around the pile of snow, looking for the hole, such as they always left when they built snow houses.
“The front door is closed,” said Freddie. “I guess they shut it after them when they went away.”
“Maybe they’re inside now,” remarked Flossie. “If we knocked maybe they would let us in. Only it will be awful crowded,” and she sighed. She was very cold and tired, and was worried about being lost. It was no fun, and she would have been glad to go inside the little snow house, even though some one else were in it also.
“There’s no place to knock,” Freddie said, as he looked about on every side of the round pile of snow. “And there’s no door-bell. The next time I make a snow house, Flossie, I’m going to put a front door-bell on it.”
“That’ll be nice,” his sister said. “But, Freddie, never mind about the door-bell now. Let’s get inside. I’m awful cold!”
“So’m I. And another snowflake just went into my ear. It makes me wiggle when it melts and runs down inside.”
“I like to wiggle,” Flossie said. “I’m going to open my ears real wide and maybe a snowflake will get in mine. Does it feel funny?”
“Terribly funny. But you can’t open your ears any wider than they are now, Flossie. They’re wide open all the while—not like your eyes that you can open and shut part way.”
“Maybe I can open my ears wider,” Flossie said. “I’m going to try, anyhow.”
She stood still in the snow, wrinkling her forehead and making funny “snoots” as Freddie called them, trying to widen her ears. But she gave it up finally.
“I guess I can’t get a snowflake to tickle me,” she said with a sigh.
“You can have the next one that goes into my ear,” offered Freddie. “But they melt so soon and run down so fast that I don’t see how I am going to get them out.”
“Never mind,” said Flossie. “I can get a snowflake in my ear when I get home. Just now let’s see if we can’t get inside this little house. If the door is frozen shut, maybe you can find a stick and poke it open. Look for a stick, Freddie.”
“All right, I will,” and Freddie began kicking away at the snow around his feet, hoping to turn up a stick. This he soon did.
“I’ve found one!” he cried. “Now we can get in
and away from the storm. I’ll make a hole in the snow house!”
With the stick, which was a piece of flat board, Freddie began to toss and shovel aside the snow. The top part came off easily enough, for the flakes were light and fluffy. But underneath them there was a hard, frozen crust and this was not so easily broken and tossed aside. But finally Freddie had made quite a hole, and then he and Flossie saw something strange. For, instead of coming to the hollow inside of the snow house, the little boy and girl saw a mass of sticks, dried grass and dirt. Over this was the snow, and it was piled up round, like the houses the Eskimos make in the Arctic regions.
“Oh, look!” cried Flossie. “It isn’t a snow house at all. It’s just a pile of sticks.”
“Maybe it’s a stick house, with snow on the outside,” Freddie said. “I’m going to dig a little deeper.”
He did so, tossing aside the grass, sticks and dirt. Flossie was watching him, and suddenly the two children saw something moving down in the hole that Freddie had dug. Presently a furry nose was thrust out, and two bright, snapping eyes looked at them.
“Oh, see! What is it?” cried Flossie.
Freddie dropped his stick shovel, and stumbled back. Flossie went with him. The sharp, furry nose was thrust farther out, and then they could see that it was the head of some animal, looking at them from inside the snow-covered stick house.
“Some one lives there after all,” whispered Flossie. “Is it a—a bear, Freddie? If it is, we’d better run.”
“Bears don’t live in houses like this,” said her brother. “They sleep all winter in hollow logs.”
“Well, what is it then?” Flossie questioned, “Will it come after us?”
But the little animal seemed satisfied to look out of the hole in its house to see who had done the mischief. Then it began pulling the sticks and grass back into place with its paws and jaws.
“Oh, I know what it is!” Freddie cried. “It’s a muskrat. They live in these mounds on the meadows. Bert told me so. This one’s house looked extra big because it was all covered with snow. There wouldn’t be room for us inside there, Flossie.”
The Bobbsey Twins Megapack Page 93