The Bobbsey Twins Keeping House

BY LAURA LEE HOPE AUTHOR OF “THE BOBBSEY TWIN SERIES.”

NEW YORK GROSSET & DUNLAP PUBLISHERS

Made in the United States of America

Copyright 1925, by GROSSET & DUNLAP

The Bobbsey Twins Keeping House

CHAPTER I

DOWN IN A PIPE

“Now it’s Freddie’s turn!” called Nan Bobbsey. “Get ready to catch the ball,” and she motioned, showing that she was going to toss it to her small brother.

“No, I want to have it once more!” cried Flossie, who was Freddie’s twin sister. “Come on, Nan! Please throw it to me!” and she jumped up and down, her light, fluffy hair tossing about her head. It was cold out in the yard where the children were playing, and that is one reason why Flossie jumped up and down. Another reason was that she was excited about the ball game Nan had gotten up for the smaller twins. “Come on, toss it to me!” begged Flossie.

[Pg 2]

“But it isn’t your turn, dear!” objected Nan. “It’s Freddie’s turn. He wants to catch, too,” and she held the big rubber ball, looking at Flossie meanwhile.

“Oh, just one more turn for me!” Flossie begged, jumping up and down faster than ever.

“Oh, all right! Let her have it!” agreed Freddie, good-naturedly. “I’ll wait.”

“That’s kind of you,” said Nan. “All right, Flossie, you may have this next toss! Get ready!”

“One more turn for me!” sang Flossie gaily. “One more turn for me! Hurry up, Nan, please!”

Flossie stopped her jumping-jack movements, and with outstretched hands and shining eyes awaited the ball, which Nan tossed across an old flower bed. In the past summer bright blossoms had made this part of the garden very gay. But now, with winter coming on, the flowers had been killed by Jack Frost and the stalks were sear and brown.

“I got it!” cried Flossie. But she spoke a[Pg 3] moment too soon, for the ball just touched the tips of her fingers, bounced off, and rolled across the frozen ground of the flower garden right to Freddie’s feet. He picked it up.

“Oh, dear!” sighed Flossie. She had so much wanted to catch the ball this last time, but she had missed it.

“You muffed!” cried Freddie. He had heard his older brother Bert speak like that when, in a real ball game, some boy failed to hold the ball. “You muffed it, Flossie!”

Then, seeing that there were tears in his twin sister’s eyes, Freddie did a very manly and generous thing.

“You can have another turn,” he said. “Toss it to Flossie again, Nan. I don’t mind waiting.”

“That’s nice of you, Freddie,” said Nan.

“Thank you!” cried Flossie, quickly “squeezing back” her tears. “I’ll give you some of my candy, Freddie!”

“Will you?” he exclaimed. “What kind is it, Flossie?”

“It isn’t any kind yet, ’cause I haven’t got it,” the little golden-haired girl explained as[Pg 4] Nan took the ball from her small brother and got ready to throw it again. “But I mean, when I do get some candy I’ll give you a piece.”

“Oh!” exclaimed Freddie, somewhat disappointed. “Well, anyhow, you can have another turn to catch the ball.”

“Maybe if Nan should take us down town now she would buy us some candy,” went on Flossie, getting ready for this next attempt to catch the rubber ball. “Then I could give you some, Freddie.”

“Ho! Ho!” laughed Nan. “That’s a gentle hint, I suppose, Flossie, for me to take you after candy. But I’m afraid I can’t to-day. Now get ready. If you miss the ball this time it won’t be fair to make Freddie wait any longer.”

“I’ll catch it this time!” cried Flossie, and she did. Right in her hands she caught the bouncing rubber, and then she threw it back to Nan while Freddie got ready for his turns.

Meanwhile, Flossie danced about, waiting until the ball would again come to her. Flossie[Pg 5] was a lively little girl—always dancing, running, singing, or doing something. And Freddie was about the same. In fact, the Bobbsey twins were a lively set of youngsters.

Freddie had caught the ball four times and Nan was getting ready to toss it to him for the fifth when a whistle was heard around the corner of the house.

“Here comes Bert!” cried Flossie, and she darted off to meet her older brother. Bert was Nan’s twin and these two were a few years older than the smaller Bobbsey twins.

“Maybe Bert will want to play ball,” suggested Freddie, as he caught the rubber sphere for the fifth time, making a perfect score for him.

“We’ll see,” replied Nan.

But when Bert came whistling around the corner of the house, Flossie holding him by one hand, he seemed to have something else in mind than playing toss-ball with his smaller brother and sister.

“You can’t guess what I know!” he called,[Pg 6] swinging Flossie around in a circle by her two hands, her feet flying off the ground.

“Have you got candy?” the little girl demanded, when Bert had set her down.

“Candy? No!” he laughed. “But there’s a new horse in our garage.”

“A horse in our garage!” cried Nan. “Do you mean a runaway?”

“No, he isn’t running away—he’s just standing there,” Bert answered, with a grin.

“How did a horse get in our garage?” asked Flossie.

“A man put it there,” Bert answered.

“Oh, I don’t believe you!” exclaimed Nan.

“A horse couldn’t get in our garage!” added Freddie.

“Why not?” Bert wanted to know. “It’s big enough—our garage is. And, anyhow, it used to be a stable with horses in it before daddy made it over for automobiles. Of course a horse could be in our garage.”

“Well, maybe it could,” admitted Nan. “But what’s the horse doing there?”

“Just standing still.”

“Is he eating?” Flossie wanted to know.

[Pg 7]

Bert thought this over for a moment before he answered:

“No, the horse isn’t eating.”

There was something in her brother’s voice that made Nan look at him sharply. Then she cried:

“Look here, Bert Bobbsey, there’s something queer about this! What kind of a horse is it?”

Before Bert could answer Freddie asked:

“Has the horse four legs?”

“Yes, indeed, it has four legs! I’m sure of that for I just counted them!” and Bert seemed so very positive on this point that Nan didn’t know what to think.

“Come on and I’ll show you the horse if you don’t believe me,” offered Bert, moving off toward the garage.

All thoughts of keeping on with the ball game were now forgotten by Flossie and Freddie. They were eager to see the strange horse in their father’s garage. Nan could not imagine how the animal could have been put there.

“But maybe one of the store wagons broke[Pg 8] and they had to leave the horse in our garage until they get the wagon fixed,” she thought to herself.

Into the garage ran the Bobbsey twins, Flossie and Freddie merrily laughing, Bert with a queer look on his face, and Nan ready for almost anything.

“Where’s the horse?” demanded Freddie, entering first and looking around.

“I don’t see any horse,” added Flossie, who had closely followed her small brother.

“There it is!” exclaimed Bert.

He pointed to a carpenter’s sawhorse in one corner of the building.

For a moment the smaller children looked at it in surprise. Then Freddie burst out laughing.

“Oh, ho! A sawhorse! A sawhorse!” he exclaimed.

“But it has got four legs—one, two, three, four!” counted Flossie. “Oh, isn’t it funny! I thought you meant a real horse, Bert.”

“So did I!” said Freddie.

“And I did, too, for a little while,” admitted Nan. “But pretty soon I thought it must[Pg 9] be a joke. And I don’t think it’s a very good joke, either, Bert Bobbsey, so there!”

“Well, let’s see you think of a better joke!” laughed Nan’s twin brother. “Ha! Ha! I had you all fooled! It’s a sawhorse, and you all thought it was a real horse! Oh, ho!”

“I can get on the back of this sawhorse,” announced Freddie. “Look at me!” He ran toward the wooden thing.

“Don’t fall!” cautioned Nan. But this Freddie almost did in climbing up on the sawhorse, which was rather a high one. Bert caught him just in time.

“How did it get here?” Freddie asked, when he was seated on the back of the “animal.”

“The carpenters have been working here, and they left it,” Bert explained. “When I saw it I thought it would be a good joke to make believe it was a real horse. And I fooled all of you!”

Nan was going to say again that she had not been fooled very much when Flossie, looking out of the window, cried:

“Oh, it’s snowing! It’s snowing!”

[Pg 10]

“Is it? Really?” Freddie wanted to know. “Are you fooling like Bert was with the sawhorse, Flossie?”

“No, it’s really snowing!” the little girl answered.

“Oh, hurray! I want to see it!” cried Freddie, and he was in such a hurry to descend from the back of the sawhorse that this time he fell in real earnest. However, as there was a pile of shavings on the floor, left there by the carpenters, Freddie fell into them and was not hurt at all. But he was covered with the shavings.

However, Nan picked him up and brushed him off, and then he ran to the window out of which the others were looking.

“It really is snowing!” said Nan.

“Looks as if it would last, too,” added Bert.

“Oh, can I have my sled out?” begged Flossie.

“I want mine, too!” chimed in Freddie. “Oh, I’m so glad it’s winter and we’re going to have ice and snow! Come on, let’s go sleigh-riding! Hurray!”

“Don’t be in such a rush,” advised Bert.[Pg 11] “There’ll have to be more snow than this before you can use your sleds.”

“But quite a lot has fallen, and it’s still snowing hard,” said Nan. “It must have started soon after we came in here.”

The twins had been in the garage some little time, laughing and talking about Bert’s joke and playing on the carpenter’s sawhorse, and in that period the ground had been whitened with the flurry of flakes.

“I’m going out and see how deep it is,” announced Freddie.

Before either Nan or Bert could stop him, if they had wanted to, the little fellow went to a side door of the garage and, opening this, rushed out. But he did not go far.

Right at the door a new drain was being put in. A large sewer pipe was set upright in the ground. Work around it was not yet finished, and that was why the side door had been closed.

But Freddie opened it. Then he slipped on the newly fallen snow and a moment later disappeared down the drain pipe!

[Pg 12]

CHAPTER II

A BROKEN WINDOW

For a moment following Freddie’s accident there was silence. Even the little fellow himself was so frightened that he forgot to cry out. But a second or two later he found his voice and set up a series of yells.

“Oh! Oh! Get me out! Help me, Bert!” he begged.

“Oh, Freddie, you poor boy!” gasped Nan.

“Is he dead? Will we ever get him up?” Flossie wanted to know, and she burst into tears.

“Yes! Yes! I’ll get him out! He can’t fall any farther!” shouted Bert. “I’ll lift him out in a minute! You’re all right, Freddie,” he went on. “Don’t cry any more!”

“I am not all right!” wailed the little chap. “I’m down in a pipe! How can I—be all—all right—when I’m in a pipe?”

[Pg 13]

He was crying and Flossie was sobbing. Nan did not know what to do.

Bert, however, seemed to know what he was about. He hurried to the edge of the drain pipe, down which his small brother had slipped, and began to consider the best way to get Freddie out.

And while Bert is doing that I shall take just a moment to tell my new readers something about the four children. They were first introduced to you in the book called “The Bobbsey Twins,” and in that you read about Mr. Richard Bobbsey and his wife, Mary, who lived in the eastern city of Lakeport on Lake Metoka. Mr. Bobbsey owned a lumberyard there.

There were two sets of twins. Bert and Nan were the older. They had dark brown hair and brown eyes. Flossie and Freddie had light hair and blue eyes. Thus the Bobbsey twins were quite a contrast, and when the four walked down the street together more than one person turned to look at them.

The children had good times and many[Pg 14] adventures. They went to the country, to the seashore, and of course attended school. Once they visited Snow Lodge and were storm-bound. They had traveled on the deep blue sea, gone out West, spent some time in Cedar Camp, and had gone through some exciting times at a county fair. They had also camped out.

The book just before this one is called “The Bobbsey Twins and Baby May,” and tells how they found a strange little baby and what happened to it.

Now winter was coming on again, and the children counted on having more fun. Bert had played his joke about the sawhorse, and then had followed Freddie’s fall down the drain pipe.

“Can you get him up?” asked Nan anxiously.

“Sure I can!” Bert answered. “You stand over there, Nan, on the other side of him. Reach down in the pipe and put your hand under Freddie’s left arm.”

Nan did this while Bert did the same thing on the other side. The drain pipe was about[Pg 15] as large as Freddie’s body. He had slid into it feet first, and his hands were down at his sides. The pipe was not large enough for him to lift his hands over the edge, or he might have pushed himself out.

But with Bert and Nan to lift him, he was soon pulled from the drain, more vexed than hurt. Though it was found later that he had skinned one shin rather painfully.

“There you are!” cried Bert, as he and Nan set their little brother on his feet out on the snow-covered ground. “You are all right, Freddie. And don’t go jumping down any more pipes!”

“I didn’t jump down!” declared the little fellow, with some indignation. “I slipped in!”

“You went in so quick,” observed Flossie, “it was as if the sawhorse kicked you in, wasn’t it, Freddie?”

“Yes, it was,” he said, and then he laughed. So did Bert and Nan. A moment later, however, a look of pain passed over Freddie’s face and he put one hand down on his left shin.

“What’s the matter?” Nan asked.

[Pg 16]

“My leg hurts!”

“Maybe it’s broken,” suggested Flossie.

“How could I walk if my leg was broken?” the little boy demanded, and he strutted about, though he limped a little.

“Let me look,” suggested Bert, and when he had pulled down Freddie’s stocking they all saw that the shin had been skinned and was bleeding slightly. It had been scraped on the edge of the drain pipe.

“Oh, look!” cried Flossie. “He’s got the nose bleed on his leg!”

Freddie had been going to cry at the sight of the blood. But when Flossie said this in such a funny way he laughed, and so did Bert and Nan.

“We’d better take him in the house and fix his leg,” said Bert to his twin.

“Yes,” Nan agreed.

“Can’t I go sleigh-riding?” Freddie wanted to know. “Look how nice it’s snowing!”

The white flakes were, indeed, swirling down faster than ever. For the first snow of the season, it was quite a storm, and the[Pg 17] ground was now covered with the soft flakes.

“Oh, my dear, what has happened?” cried Mrs. Bobbsey, when she saw Freddie, covered with snow, limping toward the house, escorted by Nan, Bert and Flossie.

“I—I fell in a pipe!” Freddie answered.

“A pipe? What sort of game were you playing?” his mother wanted to know.

“It wasn’t a game,” said Bert, and then he explained.

Freddie’s leg felt better after his mother had bandaged it with some soothing salve, and then he was allowed to go out and play in the snow on his sled with Flossie.

Bert had thought the snow would not amount to much, but a little later he, too, got out his sled.

Nan did likewise, and the Bobbsey twins and some of their friends had a jolly time on a little coasting hill not far from the house.

“Winter’s come pretty early this year,” said Charlie Mason, one of Bert’s chums, as the two boys went down the hill together, bobsled fashion.

[Pg 18]

“Yes,” agreed Bert. “We’ll have a lot of fun at school to-morrow, making a snow fort. That is, if the snow doesn’t melt.”

But there was plenty of snow on the ground when the children awakened the next morning, though the storm had stopped and the sun was shining.

“I hope the sun doesn’t melt all the snow,” sighed Flossie, as she got ready to accompany her twin brother to school. They were in a lower class than Bert and Nan, but the smaller twins generally walked along with the older brother or sister.

It was when the Bobbsey twins were almost at school that John Marsh, a boy of about Bert’s age, came running around the corner of the street. John seemed rather out of breath and excited.

“What’s the matter?” asked Bert.

“Oh, that Danny Rugg and Sam Todd are pegging snowballs at me,” said John. “I wouldn’t mind soft ones, but they’re using hard balls. And they’re two to one—Sam and Danny both pegged at me.”

“That isn’t fair!” cried Bert. “They[Pg 19] ought to fight square—even on both sides—and with soft balls. Come on, I’ll help you!”

Together the two lads went back and around the corner to the street where Danny and his rather mischievous crony were standing, leaving Nan to go with Flossie and Freddie on to school.

“Hi! There’s John again!” yelled Sam Todd, as he caught sight of the boy who had run away.

“Soak him!” shouted Danny Rugg.

But a moment later the two little bullies, for that is what they were, caught sight of Bert Bobbsey with John and the hands they had raised to throw the hard snowballs fell back at their sides.

“Hello, Danny!” called Bert, for they were on somewhat friendly terms.

“Hello,” said Danny, not very cheerfully.

“Do you want to snowball fight?” demanded Sam Todd.

“No, not now,” Bert answered. “But, anyhow, when you do fight you ought to use soft balls, and not two of you fellows go for one.”

[Pg 20]

“We didn’t use hard balls!” Danny declared.

“You did so!” cried John. “And you both pegged at me at once!”

“Aw, well, it was only in fun,” grumbled Danny. Now that Bert had joined John the odds were against the bullies, for Sam Todd was not a very large lad. “We’ll fight you after school if you like,” went on Danny. “Hard balls or soft balls, and the same number on each side.”

“And we’ll lick you, too!” boasted Sam.

“We’ll see about that!” laughed Bert. “I don’t know if I want a snowball fight or not. But I’m not going to throw any now, I know that. It’s too near the school,” for the boys had been walking along as they talked.

“We aren’t within a block yet,” declared Danny. “It’s only against the rule to throw snowballs within a block of the school,” and he rounded in his hands a ball he had been making.

“I’m not scared to throw one now,” declared Sam, and he tossed a ball at a signboard, hitting it a resounding whack.

[Pg 21]

“Neither am I!” exclaimed Danny, and he also threw. As he did so Bert and John saw something on Danny’s finger gleaming golden in the sun. The flash seemed to remind Danny of an important matter, for he held up his right hand and cried: “Look at that! Isn’t that a peach? It’s a new gold ring I got for my birthday.”

“You’re lucky,” remarked Bert, as Danny held the ring out to be admired.

“I guess I am,” boasted Danny. “No fellow in our school has a valuable gold ring like that! My father gave it to me.”

“I should think you wouldn’t like to wear it for fear you might lose it,” remarked John.

“Naw, I won’t lose it,” drawled Danny. “Go on, Bert!” he cried. “I dare you to throw a snowball at the signboard. You can’t throw as straight as I did!”

“Yes, I can!” said Bert, who did not like this said of him.

“Go on! Let’s see you!” cried Sam Todd.

As the lads were still more than a block away from the school, they could, without breaking the rule, throw snowballs.

[Pg 22]