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.