The Bobbsey Twins Megapack

by Laura Lee Hope

  “And squirt water on the other clowns and—”

  “And the folks’ll holler and laugh. And I’m going to have a glittery—”

  “Dear me, Flossie and Freddie, we’ve heard all about that at least a dozen times lately,” protested Bert.

  “But Tom hasn’t heard about it. He’s int’rested,” declared Freddie.

  “I knew a feller once that had been in a circus,” said Tom. “He said they had to work awful hard. There’s the show every afternoon and every night and the parade in the mornin’ and the practisin’ and gettin’ ready. He said too that the fellers at the head of the show was awful strict about how everybody behaved themselves. It wasn’t much fun, he said, and it was lots of work.”

  “My!” gasped Freddie. “I—I guess we’ll be gypsies. I don’t like to work—much.”

  “That is, not very much,” agreed Flossie.

  “Are there any gypsies here?” asked Bert, for he thought it would be a good chance to find out what he wanted to know.

  “Yes, there are some,” was Tom’s unexpected answer. “They had a camp on the lower end of the island last week. I expected to see some of ’em today. They’re great blueberry pickers, and that’s one reason I came early. Most always the gypsies get the best of the blueberries ‘fore we white folks have a chance.”

  “Are there gypsies on this island now?” asked Nan, looking over her shoulder into the bushes, as though she feared a dark-faced man, with gold rings in his ears, might step out any moment and make a grab for Flossie or Freddie.

  “Well, I guess they’re here now, ’less they’ve gone,” said Tom. “I saw some of the men and women here day before yesterday. They had been over to the mainland buyin’ things from the store, and they rowed over here. I’d come to look for blueberries, but there wasn’t as many ripe as there is today, though that isn’t sayin’ much. But the gypsies are here all right.”

  “Then we’d better go,” said Nan to Bert.

  “Why?” Tom asked.

  “Because,” said Nan slowly, “we don’t like gypsies. They might take—”

  “They took Helen’s talking doll!” exclaimed Flossie. “She cried about it, too. I would if they’d take my doll, only I got her hid under my bed. You won’t tell the gypsies, will you?”

  “No, indeed!” laughed Tom. “You’re afraid of them, are you?” he asked Nan.

  “Yes—a little,” she said slowly.

  “They won’t hurt you!” Tom said. “They’re not very fond of workin’, and they‘ll take anything they find lyin’ around loose, but they won’t hurt nobody.”

  “They took Helen’s doll,” said Freddie, who had finished his two pieces of cake, “and maybe they got my bugs that go around and around—”

  “And around! They go around three times,” put in Flossie.

  “I was going to say that, only you didn’t wait!” cried Freddie. “But we’ve got a goat!” he went on, “and he’s almost as good as Snap, our dog, and maybe the gypsies got him.”

  “My, you don’t think of anything but gypsies!” said Tom with a laugh. “I’m not worried about them. If I see any of ’em on the island I’ll ask ’em if they have your dog and bugs.”

  “And Helen’s doll,” added Flossie. “She wants Mollie back.”

  “I’ll ask about that,” promised Tom. “You’ve been awful good to me, and I’d like to do you a favor. I know some of the gypsy boys.”

  “I guess I’ll tell my father they’re camping on this island,” said Bert.

  “Let’s go tell him now,” suggested Nan. “We’ve stayed here long enough.”

  “And I guess I’ll row back to the mainland,” added Tom. “There’s no use waiting here for the blueberries to get ripe. I’ll come next week.”

  He walked back a little way with the Bobbsey twins to where he had left his boat. Then he was soon rowing across the lake, waving his hand to his new friends, his white teeth showing between his berry-stained lips.

  “He’s a nice boy—that blueberry boy,” said Freddie. “I saw him first, I did!”

  Mr. Bobbsey nodded his head thoughtfully when the twins, taking turns, told him what Tom had told them.

  “Gypsies on the island, eh?” remarked Mr. Bobbsey. “Well, I suppose they think they have a right to camp here. But I’ll see about it. Maybe some of them are all right, but I don’t like the idea of staying here if the place is going to be overrun with them. I must see about it.”

  For the next few days and nights a close watch was kept about Twin Camp, but no gypsies were seen. Nor did any more blueberry-pickers come. Indeed, the fruit was not ripe enough, as the Bobbseys could tell by looking at some bushes which grew near their tents.

  It was about a week after this, when Mr. Bobbsey had gone to Lakeport one morning on business, that Flossie and Freddie went down to the shore of the lake not far from their camp.

  As they looked across the water they saw drifting toward the island an empty rowboat. There was no one in it, as they could tell, and the wind was sending it slowly along.

  “It’s got loose from some dock,” said Freddie, who knew more about boats than most boys of his age.

  “Maybe it’ll come here and we can get it,” said Flossie. “Let’s throw stones at it.”

  “No, that would only scare it away,” said Freddie. “Wait till it gets near enough, and then I’ll wade out and poke it in with a stick.”

  So the two little twins waited on shore for the drifting boat to come to them.

  CHAPTER XIII

  In the Cave

  “Look out, Freddie! Don’t you go wadin’ too far!” cried Flossie, as she saw her little brother kick off his low shoes, quickly roll off his stockings, and start out toward the boat which now a strong puff of wind had blown quite close to the island shore.

  “I’ll be careful,” he answered. “Mother said I could wade up as far as the wig-wag cut on my leg, and I’m not there yet.”

  Freddie had several scars and scratches on his legs, reminders of accidents he had suffered at different times. One scar was from a cut which he had got when he had fallen over the lawn mower about a year before. It was the biggest cut of all, and was near his right knee. He called it his “wig-wag” cut, because it was a sort of wavy scar, and when he wanted to go in wading his mother always told him never to go in water that would come above that cut, else he would get his knickerbockers wet.

  So now he was careful not to go out too far. He watched the water rising slowly up on his bare legs as he waded along on the sandy bottom of the lake toward the drifting boat.

  “If you took a stick you could reach it now,” called Flossie.

  “I guess I could,” Freddie said.

  “I’ll hand you a stick,” Flossie offered, looking for one along the shore. There were many dead branches, blown from the trees, and she soon handed Freddie a long one. With it the little boy was able slowly to pull the boat toward him, and he had soon shoved the “nose,” as he sometimes called the bow, against the bank of the island.

  “Now I can get in!” laughed Flossie. “And I won’t have to take off my shoes and stockings either,” and into the boat she scrambled.

  “Oh!” exclaimed Freddie. “Are you going to get in the boat?”

  “I am in,” answered his sister. “Aren’t you comin’ in, too?”

  Freddie looked at the boat, at his sister, at the lake, and at his shoes and stockings on the shore. Then he said:

  “Well, it doesn’t belong to us—this boat don’t.”

  “I know,” said Flossie. “But you pulled it to shore and we can keep it till somebody comes for it. And we can make-believe have a ride in it. Momsie won’t care as long as it’s fast to the shore. Come on, Freddie!”

  It seemed all right to Freddie when Flossie said this, especially as the boat was close against the shore. He put on his shoes and stockings, drying his feet in the grass, and then he took his seat in the boat beside his little sister.

  “Now we’ll play going on
a long voyage,” she said. “We’ll take a trip to New York and maybe we’ll be shipwrecked.”

  “Like Tommy Todd’s father,” added Freddie.

  “Yep. Just like him,” said Flossie, “only make-believe, of course.”

  “And I’ll be captain of the ship, and you can be a sailor,” went on Freddie. “It’ll be lots of fun!”

  Bert and Nan had gone riding in the goat wagon to the other end of the island, Mr. Bobbsey was at his office and Mrs. Bobbsey, with Dinah, was working about Twin Camp, so there was no one to watch Flossie and Freddie. Mrs. Bobbsey supposed they were playing safely at the lake shore, and, as a matter of fact, they were on shore, though in the boat.

  “I wonder whose it is?” said Freddie, when they had made a make-believe voyage safely to New York, after having been shipwrecked at Philadelphia—a place the little twins remembered, as one of their aunts lived in that city.

  “Maybe it’s a gypsy boat,” said Freddie.

  “Or else it’s the one the blueberry boy had,” added his sister.

  “Oh, yes, maybe it is his!” cried Freddie. “And if it is, didn’t we better ought to take it to him?”

  “How?” asked Flossie.

  “Why, we can push it along the shore with sticks, ’cause there’s no oars in it, and when we see him picking blueberries we can holler to him to come an’ get his boat.”

  Flossie thought this over a few seconds. Then she said:

  “Let’s!”

  This meant she would do as Freddie said. The twins did not stop to consider whether they were doing something they ought not to do. They planned to keep near shore, and that was as much as they remembered of what their mother had told them—that they were not to go out on the lake in any boat without her permission or their father’s.

  “But paddling along the shore isn’t going out,” said Freddie. “Anyhow, mother and father would want us to give back the boat to the blueberry boy, wouldn’t they?”

  “Course,” said Flossie. “Get another stick, Freddie, and we can poke the boat along, and we won’t have to go far out at all.”

  In a little while the two twins were shoving the drifted boat along the shore by pushing the ends of their sticks into the soft bank. The boat was of good size, and it was flat-bottomed, which meant it would not easily tip over. Flossie and Freddie each knew how to row, though they had to have oars made especially for them. But they knew how to keep in the middle of a boat, and never thought of rocking it or changing seats, so they were much safer than most children of their age would have been.

  Having lived near Lake Metoka all their lives, they knew more about boats and water than perhaps some of you small boys and girls do; and they could both swim, though, of course not very far, nor were they allowed to try it in deep water.

  “Oh, this is lots of fun!” cried Flossie, as she and Freddie poled the boat along. “This is real trav’lin’!”

  “But we mustn’t go too far,” said Freddie, not quite sure whether or not his mother would think what he and his sister were doing was just right. “As soon as we see the blueberry boy we must give him his boat and go back home.”

  “If he wants to row us back, can’t we let him?” asked Flossie.

  “Yes, but he can’t row, ’cause there are no oars in the boat,” said Freddie.

  “Maybe he has ’em with him. I guess that’s what happened,” went on the little girl. “You know we take the oars out of our boat and put them up on shore. And then maybe the blueberry boy forgot to tie his boat.”

  “And it blew away and we found it,” finished Freddie. “Come on, push hard, Flossie. Let’s go fast and make believe we’re a steamboat.”

  That suited Flossie, and they were soon pushing the boat along the shore quite fast. They went out past a little point on the island, some distance away from their own camp, the white tents of which they could see.

  “Oh, how nice the wind is blowing!” cried Flossie, after a bit. “I don’t hardly have to push at all, Freddie.”

  “That’s good,” he said. “We’ll be a sailboat instead of a steamboat. If we only had a sail now!”

  “Maybe you could hold up your coat,” suggested his sister. “Don’t you remember that shipwreck story mother read us. The men in the boat held up a blanket for a sail. We haven’t any blanket, but if you held one end of your coat and I held the other it would be a sail.”

  “We’ll do it!” cried Freddie, as he slipped off his jacket. It was small, but when he and his sister held it crosswise of the boat, the wind, which had begun to blow harder, sent the boat along faster than the children had been pushing it.

  “Oh, this is fine!” Freddie cried. “I’m glad we played this game, Flossie.”

  “So’m I. But look how far out we are, Freddie!” Flossie suddenly cried. “We can’t reach shore with our sticks.”

  Freddie looked and saw that this was so.

  “I wonder if we can touch bottom out here,” he said. “I’m going to try.”

  He let go of his coat, and as it happened that Flossie did the same thing, the little jacket was blown into the water.

  “Oh!” cried Flossie. “Oh! Oh!”

  “I can get it!” excitedly shouted Freddie. “I’ll reach it with my pushing stick.”

  He managed to do this, taking care not to lean too far over the edge so the boat would not tip. Then he caught the coat on the end of the stick and pulled his jacket into the boat.

  “Oh, it’s all wet!” cried Flossie.

  Freddie did not stop to tell her that every time anything fell into the water it got wet. Instead, he began to search in his pockets.

  “What’s the matter—did you lose something?” asked Flossie.

  “I guess we can eat ’em after they dry out,” said Freddie, after a bit, pulling out some soaked sugar cookies.

  Freddie spread them out on one of the boat-seats where the sun would dry them, and then he wrung from his coat as much water as he could. Next he spread the jacket out to dry, Flossie helping him.

  All this time the children failed to notice where they were going, but when they had seen that the soaked cookies were getting dry and had eaten them, Freddie looked about and, pointing to shore, cried:

  “Oh, look, Flossie!”

  “We’re going right toward a big, dark hole!” said the little girl.

  “That isn’t a hole—it’s a cave,” Freddie said. “Maybe it’s a pirate cave, and there’ll be gold and jewels in it. The wind is blowing us and our boat right into it!”

  And that was what was happening. The wind had changed, and, instead of blowing the boat away from the island, was blowing it toward it. And directly in front of Flossie and Freddie was a big hole in the steep bank of the island shore. As Freddie had said, it was a cave. What was in it?

  CHAPTER XIV

  Helen’s Visit

  While the two children sat in the drifting rowboat, which was being slowly blown toward the island shore again, Flossie suddenly gave a little jump, which made the boat shake.

  “What’s the matter?” asked Freddie. “Did something bite you?” for his sister had started, just as you might do if a fly or a mosquito suddenly nipped your leg.

  “No, nothing bit me,” she answered. “But I felt a splash of rain on my nose and— Oh, Freddie! Look! It’s going to be a thunder-lightning storm!”

  Freddie, whose eyes had seen nothing but the cave, now looked up at the sky. The blue had become covered with dark clouds, and in the west there was a dull rumble.

  “I—I guess it is going to rain,” said Freddie slowly.

  “I know it is!” Flossie answered. “There’s ’nother drop!”

  “I felt one, too,” said her brother. “It went right in my eye, too!” and he winked and blinked.

  “And there’s another one on my nose!” cried Flossie. “Oh, Freddie! What are we going to do? I haven’t an umbrella!”

  For a moment the little boy did not know what to do. He looked at his coat, but that was still wet, th
ough it had been spread out on the seat to dry. He could not wrap that around Flossie, as he thought at first he might.

  The wind, too, was blowing harder now, and there were little waves splashing against the side of the boat. But the wind did one good thing for the children—it blew the boat toward shore so much faster, and shore was where they wanted to be just now. They knew they had drifted out too far, and they were beginning to be afraid. The shore of the island looked very safe and comfortable.

  “We can get under a tree—that will be an umbrella for us,” said Flossie. “Aren’t you glad we’re going on shore, Freddie?”

  “Yes, but I guess we can get in a better place out of the rain than under a tree, Flossie.”

  “Then we’d better get,” she said, “’cause it’s rainin’ hard now. I’ve got about ten splashes on my nose.”

  The big drops were beginning to fall faster. The clouds had quickly spread over the sky, which was now very dark, and the wind kept on blowing.

  “Where can we go out of the storm?” asked the little girl.

  “Huh?”

  “Where we goin’, Freddie?”

  “In there,” answered her brother, pointing.

  “What! In that dark hole?”

  “It isn’t a hole—it’s a cave. An’ maybe we’ll find gold and diamonds in there, like in the book Momsie read to us. Come on. We can go into the cave, and we won’t get wet at all. I’ll take care of you.”

  “I—I’m not afraid,” said Flossie slowly. “But I wish Snap was with us; or Whisker. I guess Whisker would like a cave.”

  “So would Snap,” said Freddie. “But we can’t get ’em now, so we’ve got to go in ourselves. Come on. And look out, ’cause the boat’s goin’ to bump.”

  And bump the boat did, a second later, against the shore of the island, close to the open mouth of the black cave. It was raining hard now, and Freddie helped Flossie out of the boat, and then, holding each other by the hand, the children ran toward the cavern. No matter what was in it, there they would be sheltered from the rain they thought.

  The cave, as Freddie and Flossie saw, could be entered from either the land or the water. At one side it was so low that a boat could be rowed into it for a little way. On the other one could walk into it by a little path that led through the trees. The water of the lake splashed into the cave a short distance, and then came to an end, making a sort of little bay, or cove, large enough for two or three boats. And the cave, as the children could see when their eyes became used to the darkness, was quite a large one.